The organiser of a mysterious fake funeral with an empty coffin and extras as mourners is a convicted paedophile who caused outrage last year by staging a similar event involving children, MailOnline can reveal.
The extraordinary story emerged today of how a vicar halted a funeral at the famous London Oratory in Brompton Road this week on discovering that the whole thing was fake – prompting widespread speculation about who was behind the bizarre event.
Now MailOnline has learned that the chief ‘mourner’ who organised the fake funeral is sex offender Jacky Jhaj – who has a reputation for similar stunts.
Fake London Funeral (Credits: Denver Westword)
Jhaj, 38, was behind a similarly bizarre event last November when a fake red carpet scene was shot in London’s West End which saw 90 children and dozens more teenage extras hired to provide a crowd to be filmed.
Dozens of child actors as young as six were recruited as supposed film extras dressed in school uniforms and asked to pretend to faint as Jhaj paraded up and down wearing a red tuxedo as if he were a film star at a premier outside the Odeon Luxe cinema in Leicester Square.
Those taking part were not aware of the identity of the man they were to pretend to cheer for and be fans of – or that he had been jailed for preying on schoolgirls in 2016.
The sexual predator, from Feltham, had claimed to be a top Hollywood film producer as he befriended two 15 year old schoolchildren, plying them with alcohol and giving them lifts to parties, before going on to sexually assault them.
Father Rupert McHardy who was conducting the ceremony said of the man who organised it ‘I saw him in the church and he was wearing dark glasses and whenever I looked at him he turned away. ‘I have no idea who he is and why he would do such a thing.’
Father McHardy, 49, had prepared a sermon and was in his robes, ready to start the service when the choirmaster took him aside.
However, while Lauris Zaube is a 23-year-old Latvian man who went missing after a New Year’s Eve party near an iced-over dam, his body has seemingly not yet been found.
When MailOnline showed pictures of Jhaj at that Leicester Square event to another church regular who witnessed Monday’s funeral at the Chelsea church, they immediately replied: ‘That’s him. He’s the guy who was organising the funeral. Definitely the same man who did the Leicester Square fake film premier’.
A film industry source who knows of Jhaj told us: ‘This man is not a film star or a pop star. He’s a a self-aggrandising fantasist and conman.
The motivation last time when he hired all those children in Leicester Square seems to have been to boost the profile of his alter ego on social media. I have no idea what he was trying to do here but it’s certainly the same kind of fake enterprise.’
Meanwhile MailOnline has learned that the firm of undertakers were paid more than £10,000 up front to carry out Monday’s fake funeral.
The five figure fee was paid in advance by bank transfer to T. Cribb and Sons in the days before they were to take part in the funeral.
The funeral directors have now passed on all that they know about the organiser to the Met Police who are understood to be investigating what happened on suspicion of fraud.
