A missing Latvian student who was the subject of an elaborate fake funeral in London knew the hoaxer who staged the bizarre stunt, MailOnline can reveal.
Last week’s bizarre burial service at the London Oratory church sparked international media attention when it emerged that the presiding vicar had dramatically stopped the service – upon realising that it was being filmed, that the mourners were paid actors and the coffin was empty.
This prompted the question as to who had gone to such lengths to stage the funeral and why – the church alone having cost £10,000 to book – until MailOnline was able to establish that the organiser was an exhibitionist would-be influencer with a track record of staging strange events to be filmed.
That organiser was Jacky Jhaj, 38, a convicted sex offender, who has on at least two occasions posed as a film producer or film star – once hiring dozens of young extras to shoot a fake film premiere in Leicester Square to boost his online following.
The name Jhaj used for the supposed dead person when booking the Oratory was Lauris Zaube – a 23-year-old Latvian man missing since the early hours of New Year’s Day – and Jhaj pretended to be Lauris’s mourning brother during the bogus event.
A missing Latvian student who was the subject of an elaborate fake funeral in London knew the hoaxer who staged the bizarre stunt, MailOnline can reveal. Pictured: The pair together
In an incredible twist, the mystery of Lauris’s disappearance has deepened after his family confirmed he and Jhaj knew each other
Three years ago Lauris appeared in a music video (pictured) for the hoaxer who organised the bogus church service
The family of Lauris Zaube, 23, (pictured) who went missing at a New Year’s Eve party and is feared to have drowned say they are horrified after a hoaxer staged an elaborate fake funeral for him
Pictured: The stretch of river in Latvia where the phone signal for Lauris Zaube disappeared
Convicted paedophile Jacky Jhaj, 38, organised the bizarre fake funeral with an empty coffin
Last week’s bizarre burial service at the London Oratory church (pictured) sparked international media attention when it emerged that the presiding vicar had dramatically stopped the service – upon realising that it was being filmed, that the mourners were paid extras and the coffin was empty
Lauris’s brother Āris (pictured) discounted the possibility that he had staged his own disappearance as part of Jhaj’s twisted scheme
The funeral was meant to be that of 23-year-old Latvian man Lauris Zaube (pictured)
Lauris is feared to have drowned that night in an icy river after accidentally falling in after leaving the party near the Latvian capital Riga – but he is still officially missing rather than dead as no body has yet been recovered.
But in an incredible twist, the mystery of Lauris’s disappearance has deepened after his family confirmed he and Jhaj knew each other – and that three years ago Lauris appeared in a music video for the hoaxer who organised the bogus church service.
The family of Lauris only heard of the fake funeral when they read news reports about it and are horrified that his name was used with fake documentation, not least because his body has not been found despite intensive searches in the 11 weeks since he disappeared.
But his brother Āris discounted the possibility that he had staged his own disappearance as part of Jhaj’s twisted scheme, knowing that it would have put his relatives and friends through the agony of believing he was dead.
When asked by MailOnline if it was possible that he might have done so, Āris insisted: ‘No, he would never have done that.’
Instead, it is believed that Jhaj may have recognised the name of Lauris in online news reports about his disappearance and decided to use his identity in a cruel deceit.
Jhaj pretended to be a brother of Lauris called Clyde and presented undertakers with a bogus death certificate for him, written in Russian, in order to stage the lavish service at the famous London Oratory church in Kensington, west London.
A horse drawn carriage, two vintage cars, men in top hats, a full choir and even a videographer were all arranged after the bill of more than £10,000 was paid in advance.
Āris confirmed that Lauris and some of his friends had met Jhaj three years ago at the annual Baldones Waterfest music festival in central Latvia and they had ‘filmed a music video together’.
The amateurish video entitled Butter Gang is still on the YouTube account which Jhaj has under his alternative name Jilliah and features him striking poses bare-chested and dancing with several young Latvians including Lauris.
Āris said he did not believe that his brother had much to do with Jhaj after the making of the video which has had 1.2million views.
He said: ‘I think it was the only project for them. At least Lauris didn’t tell about anything else.’
Lauris (pictured) is feared to have drowned that night in an icy river after accidentally falling in after leaving the party near the Latvian capital Riga
Pictured: The guest house venue of the New Year’s Eve party from where Lauris Zaube disappeared
MailOnline has tracked down Lauris’s family and discovered that they were just as stunned as the vicar at what happened at the church in Chelsea on Monday last week. Pictured: Inside the party venue
Lauris’s family are outraged at Jhaj appropriating the tragedy in the name of his twisted game. Pictured: Inside the party venue
Lauris disappeared during a New Year’s Eve party attended by 80 people at the end of last year at a hired venue in the remote hamlet of Straupciems around 20 miles from the centre of Riga
Lauris vanished from a party attended by 80 people at a hired guest house in the hamlet of Straupciems on a remote island around 20 miles from Riga, the capital of Latvia.
His friends realised he was missing in the early hours, and used a mobile phone app to track him as he apparently walked along a man-made earth bank, built as a flood defence beside the River Lielupe.
But his phone signal disappeared at 3.30am after he had walked for two miles in the darkness, wearing only a white T shirt on his upper body to protect himself from temperatures of up to -8C, having left his jacket behind.
When his concerned friends reached the scene at 4am, they found it was at a spot where the earth bank, known locally as a dam, was blocked by a former farm building being renovated as a riverside home.
The phone signal seemed to disappear near a narrow path through a reed bed which led directly down to the fast-flowing river at a point where it becomes 9ft deep within a few metres of the shore.
Searches involving divers, tracker dogs, a drone and volunteers were carried out along the river and in numerous water-filled ditches, but no body was found, suggesting to local villagers that he had been swept away.
In another bizarre twist, MailOnline was sent a rambling and anonymous email on January 5 from someone claiming to have knowledge of the case, saying that Lauris had been abducted by criminals and was being held to ransom.
The far-fetched email, which had all the hallmarks of having been written by Jhaj, said that Lauris had been lured outside from the party, believing he was going to meet Jhaj secretly.
It added that the alleged plan was then for Lauris to take Jhaj back inside as a ‘surprise’ for his friends who had been in the music video with him.
It went on to claim that Lauris was instead snatched by a gang and the real Jhaj had been contacted by the kidnappers demanding a ransom ‘to be transmitted immediately to an anonymous crypto hard wallet’.
Jhaj’s motivation for staging the fake funeral is not known, but it has been suggested it was a prank to boost his social media profile.
Lauris’ brother Āris said: ‘When I first read the UK article, I was in a bit of shock. Afterwards, I called Latvian police and they did confirm that it actually happened, and they are working together with the UK police on this.
‘I don’t know what were his intentions in faking the funeral for Lauris. But I hope that UK police together with Latvian police will find out.’
The path leading down to the river at the point where Lauris Daube’s mobile phone lost its signal
His friends realised he was missing in the early hours, and used a mobile phone app to track him as he apparently walked along a man-made earth bank, built as a flood defence beside the River Lielupe
But his phone signal disappeared at 3.30am after he had walked for two miles in the darkness, wearing only a white T-shirt on his upper body to protect himself from temperatures of up to -8C, having left his jacket behind
When his concerned friends reached the scene at 4am, they found it was at a spot where the earth bank, known locally as a dam, was blocked by a former farm building being renovated as a riverside home
The phone signal seemed to disappear on a narrow path through a reed bed which led directly down to the fast-flowing river at a point where it becomes 9ft deep within a few metres of the shore
The earth bank which Lauris Zaube was tracked walking on with a ditch on one side and the river on the other
The path led down to the river at the point where Lauris Daube’s mobile phone lost its signal
Āris said family members were still clinging on to the remote hope that Lauris might be alive, potentially after wandering off while suffering a mental breakdown or possibly amnesia.
He insisted that his brother had no suicidal thoughts and would not have deliberately killed himself by jumping in the river.
Āris said: ‘Lauris was friendly and most of his free time he would go to the gym, snowboard or wakeboard, or play video games.
‘We had booked a snowboarding trip with him to Livigno in Italy at the end of January. We were all waiting and excited about the trip.
‘He was studying business management. This was his final year to get a Bachelor’s degree. Most of his time, he hung out with his friends and nothing indicated that he would tend to have suicidal thoughts.’
Āris added: ‘Some mentioned that there was a fight (at the New Year’s Eve party), but most said that Lauris wasn’t involved in it.
‘He went missing only wearing a T shirt, or someone’s hoody. He left his jacket and his wallet with his ID card and all other cards at the guest house. None of the 80 people saw when or how he had left the party.
‘With help from friends, relatives and lots of volunteers, we searched the whole island.
‘We are still trying to find Lauris, and if anyone has seen him (in the UK), they should contact UK police. He has been confirmed missing in all Europe since early January.
‘I know the chances that he went or was taken to the UK, are close to zero, but you never know.’
Lauris’ uncle Jānis Zaube added: ‘Lauris is my brother’s son. I read about this supposed funeral, and I am really upset about it. Lauris has not been declared dead, as his body has not been found.
‘It is outrageous and I am very angry. The whole thing is just rubbish and a terrible nonsense. How can anyone to do such a thing? It is totally stupid. We are decent people.’
A friend of Lauris who asked not to be named, added: ‘It is ridiculous to suggest that he faked his own death to allow some silly pretend funeral to take place.
‘He would never have put his family through the heartache of thinking that he had died. It looks like he went into the water, but he is still missing.
‘The person who organised this funeral is an idiot. He must be a fraudster. How can he produce ashes and a death certificate for someone when their body has not even been found?’
Sexual predator Jhaj from Feltham, Middlesex, was jailed for four years in 2016 for four counts of sexual activity with two 15-year-old girls.
He pretended to be a top Hollywood film producer as he befriended the girls, plying them with alcohol and giving them lifts to parties, before sexually assaulting them.
Jhaj staged a fake red carpet scene last November outside the Odeon Luxe cinema in London’s Leicester Square involving dozens of young children and teenagers hired as supposed film extras.
The child actors, some aged as young as six in school uniforms, were asked to pretend to faint as Jhaj paraded up and down in a red tuxedo as if he were a film star at a premier.
Lauris’ real brothers Āris and Māris said at the time of his disappearance that there were different accounts among party-goers, and they had no idea why he had left the venue.
Māris also told local TV news how his brother was not suicidal and had never gone missing before.
He said: ‘From the beginning we hoped that somebody had arrived by car and picked him up. We thought that maybe his phone was just off.’
Mother-of-five Vere Gogole, 67, (pictured) who lives nearby, said: ‘My sons and nephews helped search for the young boy. It is sad that we don’t know what happened to him. The search went on a long time. Hundreds of people were helping’
A professional hunter called Aldis (pictured) who lives in the village of Gātciems where Lauris lost his mobile phone connection, confirmed that there was no snow on the ground on the night he disappeared
The home under construction blocking the earth bank at the spot where Lauris disappeared
The lake is on the left side of the earth bank, with a water-filled ditch on the right
The river where Lauris Zaube is thought to have been swept away after the New Year’s Eve party
Māris added that his brother’s friends had looked up his location on a mobile phone tracking app after noticing he had left the party.
He said: ‘Supposedly, they followed his phone location, but then the GPS location signal was lost at 3.30am, and they got to the place 30 minutes later.’
The party was held in a guest house called Peterstraupes which is surrounded by agricultural land, woods, and farmsteads on an island bordered by the River Lielupe and the Babites lake.
The guest house was hired by a 26-year-old woman who invited her Facebook friends. She refused to comment to MailOnline.
Lauris did not know most guests, and attended with five or six friends who were invited by one of the people there.
The owner of the house, who lives next door, told MailOnline that he had converted the venue from a former stables for his own events, and friends’ celebrations, but rented it out to the woman after she found his phone number and asked to hire it.
The retired lawyer who is also called Māris said that party-goers had danced in the open plan downstairs room, and used the sauna with some apparently taking icy dips to cool down in the pond behind his home.
The party was still going on when he and his wife who had held their own New Year’s gathering went to sleep at around 2am.
He said: ‘I got up at around noon and I realised something was wrong when I saw people searching around and looking confused. They told me their friend had gone missing at about 3am, and later on the police arrived.
The party was held in a guest house called Pēterstraupes (pictured) which is surrounded by agricultural land, woods, and farmsteads on an island site beside the River Lielup and the Babites lake
The pond at the back of the party venue where party-goers had an icy dip after enjoying a sauna
The owner of the house, a retired lawyer who is also called Māris and lives next door, told MailOnline that the house was a former stables which he had converted into a venue. Pictured: The village of Straupciems
He said party-goers had danced in the open plan downstairs room, and used the sauna with some apparently taking icy dips to cool down in the pond behind his home. Pictured: Straupciems
His real brothers described Lauris (pictured) as being a university student who was ‘a positive, cheerful and friendly person’ with ‘big and bright plans for his life’
‘The police first thought he had gone into the pond. I go in the water every day, even when it is iced over. I had broken some of the ice at the edge where it is shallow so the young people at the party could go in after a sauna.
‘But he was not in the pond, or anywhere else. His friends and family searched for him for weeks. There was also a police search. They would not have done all this if they had thought he had disappeared deliberately.
‘He was from a good family. If he had gone in the river, I do not think he would have lasted long. It is very sad. I think he would have been found, if he was in a ditch.
‘The people at the party were well behaved, and just normal young people. Everything was left in order. There was no signs of a struggle or anything.’
A professional hunter called Aldis who lives in the village of Garciems close to where the mobile phone connection for Lauris was lost, confirmed that there was no snow on the ground on the night he disappeared.
But he said temperatures had plummeted on New Year’s Eve, leading to snow covering the area two days later.
Aldis said he had not been drinking on New Year’s Eve and saw nobody walking around as he returned home at 2am.
The 23-year-old went missing near an iced-over dam after a New Year’s Eve party
Pictured: Search teams look for the youngster beneath the ice near the party venue
Police near Riga joined ‘hundreds’ of people searching for missing Latvian man Lauris Zaube
He said: ‘I walk 8kms every morning with my two hunting dogs, and I have been keeping an eye out for this young man.
‘The river was running very high at the time. There was a strong current and it was fast moving with chunks of ice swirling around. Even a drunk person could not have mistaken this.
‘I don’t believe he could have stumbled into the water – but he could have had hypothermia as he did not have a jacket, and it could have caused him not to think straight.
‘If he had gone in the river, he would have been swept away. But it is a mystery because his body has not been found. People have not stopped searching for him. They were even here a couple of weeks ago.
‘I have two theories. Either he went into the water, or he could have been picked up by someone in a car. We don’t have killers around here. All the people and families are normal.
‘I spoke to people who were searching, and they said he was a very joyful young man with no tendency for sadness or suicidal thoughts.’
Married father-of-two Aldis said he was in the seventh generation of his family to have lived in the area over the last 300 years.
He recalled how the earth bank which Lauris had walked on beside the river and the lake had been built by workers including his great grandfather during the Soviet occupation of Latvia in the 1960s.
Jhaj hired a group of actors to pretend to be mourners and arranged the entire service online
Video footage from inside the fake funeral showed people dressed in smart suits for mourning
Many of those in attendance wore long black coats and puffer jackets, with black clothes underneath
Jhaj even hired a director to film the funeral using cameras set up inside the historic London church
Aldis who gave MailOnline a tour of the area in his 4 X 4 vehicle said that walking on the overgrown path in the darkness would have been perilous, partly due to beavers digging holes in the bank which could cause someone to trip over.
Mother-of-five Vere Gogole, 67, who lives nearby, said: ‘My sons and nephews helped search for the young boy. Everyone who lives around here was involved.
‘We didn’t know the people at the party, but we just wanted to help. It is sad that we don’t know what happened to him.
‘The search went on a long time. Hundreds of people were helping. The road was full of cars. People who didn’t even know him came to search. Some young people came by bus and walked here.
‘People checked abandoned buildings, and looked in the ditches, but I think he went in the river because there is no alternative. If someone had picked him up in a car, he would have been found somewhere by now.’
Mrs Gogole who has 11 grandchildren, added: ‘Many decades ago, there was someone who landed up in the river in the winter and their body was only found about 3km away in the spring.’
The spot where Lauris disappeared is about three miles from an area full of open water where a young mother vanished last November. Her four-month-old baby daughter was found dead at the spot in a hire car, but the body of the mother has not been found.
Two fishermen were also swept to their deaths on a nearby stretch of the river in February last year after their flimsy boat capsized, although their bodies were quickly recovered.
Jhaj previously held a similar event in which he hired young girls to pretend to faint as he walked up and down a red carpet
Dozens of child actors as young as six were recruited as supposed film extras dressed in school uniforms for the event
A worshipper at the London Oratory recognised Jhaj as being at the fake funeral when shown pictures of him at his fake film premier in Leicester Square.
A film industry source told MailOnline last week: ‘This man is not a film star or a pop star. He’s 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.’
Father Rupert McHardy, 49, who was due to conduct the funeral said of the organiser: ‘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.’
The priest had prepared a sermon and was in his robes, ready to start the service when the choirmaster warned him that something was suspicious.
He added last week: ‘I have never been involved in anything like this and it is very disrespectful to the church.’
Fr Rupert described mourners who turned out to be actors as being respectful and polite, although one complained about not being paid.
He added: ‘There was another group of people in puffer jackets and balaclavas, Clyde Zaube included. They had hoods and dark glasses. They were sinister-looking.
‘I tried to speak to this Clyde Zaube and he wouldn’t speak to me. It became clear he wasn’t who he claimed to be.’
He continued: ‘When I realised it wasn’t a real funeral, we said we can’t do this. We told them to leave and they all left relatively happily. If they had been a real family they would have been weeping and crying.
‘We were paid. The funeral directors were paid. We haven’t lost any money but it’s very, very weird.
MailOnline was told that undertakers T. Cribb and Sons had been paid more than £10,000 in advance by bank transfer after being contacted online a week before he service.
The Met Police are believed to have launched a fraud investigation after being contacted by the funeral firm, although Scotland Yard could not confirm its involvement.
A spokesman for Latvian Police said: ‘The State Police has been informed about this event. Lauris Zaube has not been found. We are not making further comments.’
