A storytelling content creator has gone viral on Instagram for sharing the tale of a man who forged a freeway sign so well that the LA transport department left it in its place.

It all started when the man missed an exit and got sick of it, wanting to make sure no one else did ever again.

Dommy Stories is an Instagram and YouTube content creator who focuses on telling interesting stories that “you didn’t know you needed,” according to his bio. He tells many different kinds of tales, and his Reels have gone viral a few times.

His most recent viral moment came from his retelling of the story of artist Richard Ankrom, who, after missing an exit on a Los Angeles freeway, decided to forge a sign indicating the exit and install it. The video racked up 6.5 million views on Instagram in less than a month, as well as over 500,000 likes and thousands of comments.

"So this man dressed as a construction worker climbed over razor wire onto a catwalk 30 feet above a Los Angeles freeway and bolted a sign into place as traffic roared beneath him," Dommy explained at the beginning of the video, introducing the story as clips of the man's actions played above him.

"But although the whole thing was completely illegal, the state would quietly decide his crime was better than their own work," he continued.

"You see, artist Richard Ankrom had once missed the exit from the 110 freeway onto Interstate 5 in downtown LA," he said, explaining how the situation had begun, "because no sign told drivers it existed."

"Years later, he realized the mistake had never been fixed," he said, "so he decided to fix it himself, in what he called 'guerrilla public service.'"

Dommy then explained how the sign had been made. "Ankrom, a sign painter by trade, held Pantone swatches up to real freeway signs to match the paint, dangled off bridges to measure them, and studied the federal sign manual."

Once Ankrom had everything he needed, he got to work. "He fabricated a perfect Interstate 5 shield, then planned the job like a bank heist; cutting his hair, buying a hardhat and an orange vest, and putting a fake contractor decal on his truck," Dommy explained as footage of Ankrom doing all of this played above him.

Finally, it was time to install the sign. "On August 5th of 2001, he climbed up, hung the sign in under 30 minutes, and vanished while his friends filmed everything."

But if this was so carefully planned, how do we know about what Ankrom did? Well, Dommy explains that "A friend leaked the story to a newspaper, and the transportation department finally inspected the forgery."

Thankfully, Ankrom not only didn't face any negative consequences for his actions, but his sign also stayed there a long time.

Dommy explains that the forgery passed the transportation department's own specifications "perfectly," and that they "simply left it up and replaced it with an identical one eight years later during routine maintenance in 2009."

In the comments, people said that Ankrom did a much better job than the state government would’ve, while others complained about how people like Ankrom have to take initiative themselves to make things happen.

Other people commented that the sign Ankrom installed was much needed and thanked him for what he did.