A Look At The 'Jail Saga' Hoaxster's NYC 'Welcome Home' Party
By O.A. CARRY FOR: 65,000〡PUBLISHED: April 6th, 2025
William Banks at his NYC "Welcome Home" Party on March 14th, 2025.
PHOTOS by JACK LUDKEY, FULL GALLERY at END of PAGE
There’s a spot between William Banks' eyebrows that, if laminated, slips, squeaks (just barely), then catches, like running your finger down a cardboard cutout. There’s a spot there between his eyebrows that catches. Your finger rumbles. There’s a bubble in the surface right after—an inconsistency. You’re running your index finger across the “Free William Banks Poster” with his mugshot on it, outside of his welcome home party. That squeak that you feel—it mimics how his head feels in real life.
I’m serious. I’ve touched it.
Maddy van Buren, William Banks, Asad Benbow.
He came out on the dance floor, letting people touch his head to cleanse their souls of Atheism. The walls of Mi Sabor Cafe in Bushwick were similarly caked in a glossy, sometimes sticky lacquer. “Mi Sabor Cafe” it reads in faux-wood letters on the wall. TVs above the buffet sneeze-guards cast William Banks on stage. He’s jumping, celebrating, stomping like a dimwit. His girlfriend, and friends, and more of his posse are grabbing the mic. “Shouts out to William!” Metal spoons are clanging. Stacked, empty, metal containers are being muscled through the crowd by apron boys a part of the restaurant. “Shouts out to William!” More bodies in the crowd don’t know where to stand. More bodies in the crowd don’t know if they should dance. Technical difficulties in the DJ booth cause ear-raping blares to sound off every few minutes.
“We’re working on it!” shouts someone in Banks’ entourage. Their oversized, ill-fitting suits contain arms that command the room they’re in—the room that they filled.
Maddy van Buren as Banks' girlfriend on stage at Mi Sabor Cafe.
A quick recap: back in November, I began following a white, bald guy in jail who I later discovered was a Brooklyn, alt-comedy hipster who was unfairly prosecuted for uprooting Zionist signs in a Connecticut neighborhood.
His name was William Banks. His mugshot was taken. He was run through the books. And a few months later, he announced that he was going to jail for an eight-month stint. His socials went ghost for two weeks until a photo from inside the prison walls leaked. “Got a phone,” the caption read.
One would be hard-pressed to find any real evidence of his incarceration, but the bit went on, as videos from inside the prison walls made their way onto Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. The whole thing was highly orchestrated and confusing because, if it was a hoax, how’d they get a prison set that was so convincing?
He eventually escaped jail and ran a series of meme coin rug pulls that stripped $50,000 from gullible crypto bros. The sum was divided between five Palestinian charities to aid the people suffering in the ongoing genocide.
On a Friday night in March, people gathered to witness the mythos in real life, but what did they want to see?
Party goers outside, discussing.
“Free William!” shouted Will Duncan, who had the biggest suit in Banks’ crew. It was tan and oversized—paired with a Bushwick mullet, small hoop earrings, and some laceless, suede, Oakley shoes (the ones that aging DJs wear because they look sci-fi).
He met Banks after applying for Car World and now the two are roommates. They’re both donning the same formal attire on this night, likely from the same Goodwill bin marked, “Big and tall.” The frumpy aesthetics of Car World are still there for them, ignoring the look’s cultural saturation accelerated by Andrew Callaghan and every other I Think You Should Leave sketch.
“We’re trying to build a community here,” Duncan said into the mic. “Let’s all start a WhatsApp groupchat together, tonight!”
I heard someone in a Patagonia hat whisper, “I think we’re all just in media here.”
Inside on the dancefloor.
Approaching the venue, a camera crew was outside filming a man in a baseball cap with a comically long brim. It went out over a foot. I was standing with Jack in the background of the shot. He was the bouncer. We scoffed. “They’re giving me a bad vibe,” he said.
“They’re zooming in on us right now,” I told him. “They’re isolating our subtitles, putting up codes and numbers zipping by our heads, like a futuristic Frank Hassle scene.”
I met the director, Adam, later in the night. He was an independent filmmaker. “It’s not a film about William,” he said. “He’s the beginning of a movie on extremist, internet symbolism and how it’s used for political movements, from both the left and right.” He was interested in how Banks “shocked the system,” using the viral optics of jail, escape, and romance to amass Palestinian aid and support. In his opinion, these viral optics stemmed from the playbook of 4channers and groypers, which have been legitimized at the highest political levels by way of J.D. Vance.
William Banks talking to the documentarians. The "comically long" brim.
Piercing through the crowd—purple lights and shoulders—I found a mix of pro-Palestinian activists and disaffected Dimes Square orbiters. In jail, Banks’ nerdy whiteness contrasted his Black peers. As the story developed, it played on that old saying, “He’s invited to the cookout,” as the white boy filled the role of the Black Meme, subverting and mimicking Blackness for a hipster white audience.
One could say it’s touchy, but the Gaza support and chants of “Free all incarcerated peoples” at the show allowed Banks to change whatever problematic role he filled into something tangibly progressive and anti-genocide. The provocateur was vindicated.
“It was based,” said a woman named Jane in the crowd. She called things retarded and got off track as we spoke, talking about seals and how the new X actually recommends better “seal content” than “whatever Jack Dorsey was doing.” Her pigtails bobbed when she swung around to greet her bald boyfriend. He was in a wool quarter-zip vest, as if he walked out of the Fulton St. station to clock in on the NYSE floor.
Not Jane and boyfriend pictured.
The DJ played “Crazy Frog” from start to finish, leaning into the turntable when the beat dropped as if he was doing the transition himself.
A tall, coked-out kid in an Airwalk flannel stopped dancing, turned around, and jumped when he saw my friend Grant. “I think I’m tall, and then I see someone like you,” he said.
“The sticks” is how he and his friend described their north Jersey town. They said they drove over an hour to see William Banks. “Everyone’s here, talking,” the first guy rambled. “The music’s good. It’s a good vibe and… You’re like inside a meme.”
“By the way, I’m not homosexual,” he told Grant. “I’m not hitting on you.”
Picture unrelated.
Current hypebeast wear, like BB belts and SP5DER hoodies, started filing in. Girls with nose rings in bedazzled “I Heart NY” hats refused to take them off as they lightly bounced to the music, shaking booty in all-over print mini-skirts. A tall woman wearing a white mesh hoodie and big Hollywood sunglasses moved through the bodies like a buoy adrift.
People were starting to organize for the headliner 454. The music started getting particularly good.
People crowded the stage. Dancing started happening. Those people there for “media” suddenly realized it was a party too. A voice chanting “Free Gaza” and “Fuck IDF” were buttons on 454’s deck. They were routinely pressed, making the whole place shake, as voices chanted back the statements. The “community” that Will Duncan wanted to build was starting to feel real, energized, and ecstatic.
Party goers on the dance floor.
A lot of people came out for 454. A kid named Donte and his friends were some of them. I asked him if he knew who William Banks was, and he said, “Not really. I’ve seen his face before. I’m glad he’s out of jail, though.”
A group of white boys—all the same height—were similar. They came after 454 reshared the poster on his Twitter. “That face is crazy,” one of them said, pointing right at Banks, who was talking in the adjacent group. One of them, in Denim Tears pants, laughed the hardest, almost spilling his gin and tonic on the already sticky floor.
Vince was another 454 fan. He drunkenly took issue with Banks’ entourage onstage. “I know him, but who are these other guys?” he asked as they were all up there, trying to make everyone say, “William! William! William!”
“You’re not a martyr. No one died for you,” said Vince. “You’re not a civil rights icon.”
“William Banks is the Kurt Cobain of this generation!” shouted Will Duncan from the stage.
I started to wonder… Did any of this mean anything?
Bathroom break.
I saw my friend Ivan in the crowd. “I got in here for free,” he told me. “I came in with a bunch of beautiful women.” They were all dancing in the front as 454’s set went on. The crowd was surprisingly well-organized by height, with the short girls in the front and the tall dudes in the back.
Vince was onstage all of a sudden. He wandered up there, unknowingly sneaking up the stairs when the guard was away peeing. He was shaking his hair and jumping up and down, touching his favorite rapper whenever he wanted. When William Banks took the stage to announce the next act, I saw Vince touch Banks and comically scream in joy.
One of Ivan's friends, Eden, was also onstage. She later told to me that it was hot up there. “Take your jacket off,” she said to Banks. He started to, but then a guy came up and whispered in his ear. Banks put the jacket back on. “He’s being controlled,” she said. “He’s got negative people in his corner.”
At the bar I found Peter McIndoe, who started the "Birds Aren't Real" movement. I asked him how he got up on stage.
“Well, I created the whole thing,” he said. “I created the William Banks jail saga.” He had so many drinks in his hands that he was pushing into one mass. The ice cubes in each plastic cup clinked together as he did. He quickly rushed them back to the crew. Banks downed most of them in an instant.
The VIP drink table. Peter McIndoe conferring with William.
By 1 a.m., 454’s set was over, and the people there for him skidaddled. The room felt empty as stragglers stayed for the next act, who screamed into the mic and got almost naked, down to a blue piece of underwear, paying tribute to Benson Boone in the best possible way.
The cushioned seats on either side of the dance floor were halves of dining booths. I took refuge in one. The table was rotated slightly, making a diamond instead of a square, likely pushed by bodies escaping the noise. I found myself adjusting my body to the angle, getting a better view of the man freaking out on stage.
Outside, I met a guy known simply as "the Atheist" in William Banks’ jail lore. He was the bully during Banks’ stint. “This guy is being mean to me,” read one viral post from early on. Throughout the night, the Atheist was brought up to be a symbol of Banks’ conversion powers. “I eradicated Atheism from this man’s life!” he yelled to the crowd.
“Thank you, William,” he said back.
"The Atheist".
“Are you an Atheist?” I asked.
“Hell no,” he said. The band-aid on his cheek folded while the Yankee brim stood stiff. You’d think he was a New Yorker, but he was from Baltimore. He was set to rap towards the end of the night under his stage name Bullet Brak.
More than others, Bullet was open to talk about the operation. “It was filmed in one day,” he said. “In Florida.” For the audition, the first question they asked him was, “Do you know anything about jail?”
“I got the script, and there were no lines. It just said, ‘Act like you’re in jail.’ I sent a photo of it to my buddy, and he said, ‘You have to do this.’”
When the photos and videos started seeping out, Bullet’s friends were worried. “A real ghetto black dude from Baltimore,” he described. “He was like, ‘Yo, you’re locked up? And you’re an atheist?!’”
Someone else freaked out about the “fake name” his character was using. “You’re using a fake name? Are you a rat?!” they pressed.
“That shit almost got me killed,” Bullet said. At the time, he was on the phone in Brussels on a movie set. He was about to go to Greece for another gig soon.
Bullet Brak with other party goers outside.
I went back inside for a minute. The worst music you’ve ever heard was playing, but at another time, it might have been the best music: it was a mash-up of “Clarity” by Zedd and the Mii Channel song. It’s just William Banks’ girlfriend on stage dancing. She occupies this weird zone between not fucking him and maybe kissing him once.
When I got back outside, Bullet told me that Banks was arrested. “They got him for a fake gun. He had it in his pants, sticking out over a wifebeater in midtown. What a fucking idiot,” he laughed. “You got locked up for real?” he asked Banks. “I’m gonna treat you like you're from the streets now.”
Banks’ cellmate Ant arrived after the party was over, pulling up to the venue in his Virginia-plated Chevy Equinox. He didn’t get out of the car. Banks approached the passenger-side window and drunkenly danced for him.
In a conversation shortly after, Banks said, “I’m getting a little aggressive. I just walked up to Ant’s car and did this,” he grabbed his crotch with force.
Okay, maybe Ant did leave his car for a minute, pictured left.
Whenever I tried talking to Banks, he had a deflection.
“He’s writing this for a blog,” our mutual friend Jack told him.
“He’s studying abroad?” Banks asked back loudly. Then he started dancing, moving away, and I wondered if he was playing the role of an autist for the so-called journalist.
“I don’t think he’s autistic,” said someone after talking to him. “He’s actually well-spoken. I think it’s all a bit.”
“Do you think he’s autistic?” I asked my friend Ivan.
“I think I’m passed that question,” he said. “He just is, he’s just being, and I think we have to accept whatever he’s doing because he’s not going to tell us.”
William Banks talking to party goers. William Banks with a friend.
The crowd was really thin by the end of the night, but the promise of an afterparty kept me there. My approach started to lose its sharpness.
When Maddy, his girlfriend, asked me if her perspective would be worthwhile, I said, “Of course. So, how did you get involved in this whole thing?”
She smirked and turned her face, coyly saying, “When I picked him up from jail, of course.” Then she walked away.
Maddy van Buren inside the party.
William Banks was wasted. “Don’t mind him,” Maddy later said to me.
I saw him walk down the street, holding his poster. His mugshot was larger than himself.
The doors closed at Mi Sabor, and William Banks kept walking. His friends joined him, and they all wandered off. The whole night felt more like a “Congratulations” party than a “Welcome Home” one.
Probably because he really did it. He really went to jail if you asked him then. And if you asked him if he had changed the world, he’d probably say, “Not just yet. I still have to eradicate Atheism,” with his eyes looking forward, set on the bit ahead.
Don’t worry. It’s not going to waste, though.
There’s a button, a toy car, and a Dave and Buster’s gift card in there.
No one knows how much is on it.
There’s an empty can of Dr. Pepper that’s protecting it.
