Magician sells weed to cop on viral video: How did it disappear?

Magician Calen Morelli apparently had a lot of nerve, pranking a cop by asking if he'd like to buy a bag of weed then making the bag disappear.

A YouTube video of the stunt, found by many to be hilarious, has racked up more than 7.5 million views, since it was posted just last Thursday.

Of course, all sorts of questions were raised about how much of the trick, including the cop and the pot, was real.

One common idea seems to be that the video was edited to delete frames showing the bag simply being dropped to the ground. Here's a video arguing that case:

But along with such YouTube comments as "This is so messed up a white kid can do this but anyone else would be killed" there was this idea: "Fake thumb, right hand."

Huh? Well, a little research shows how magicians use a fake thumb to make things disappear.

Here's a YouTube video spelling it all out in detail.

And here's an image of Morelli's right hand flattened against the wall, looking kind of odd, as if he has a fake thumb that goes nearly down to his wrist, instead of just being a fake thumb tip:

On Twitter, Morelli said he got arrested when he refused to tell a cop how he did the trick.

Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com. Follow @petemucha on Twitter.