Paedophile Jacky Jhaj has been behind a bizarre series of the stunts – the latest being a BBC lorry explosion which caused chaos alongside the Thames in London.
The serial prankster has previously hit the headlines for organising a fake movie premiere as well as a funeral featuring an empty coffin.
The convicted sex offender was jailed for four years in 2016 for having sexual activity with two 15-year-old girls.
In his latest stunt, he stood naked as a terrifying explosion was triggered by using gun powder and a detonation cord on Saturday evening.
The blast sent the roof of a police van 50ft in the air at an open-air yard in Silvertown in Newham, east London, across the river from the O2 Arena in Greenwich.
Jhaj was filming a scene for a production dubbed ‘Project Dover’, according to sources.
The 38-year-old sat at a typewriter surrounded by hundreds of newspapers on the floor before he flicked cigarettes at a police car, a police van and a BBC World News branded lorry which all exploded into a huge blaze.
The filming was first due to take place on August 24 with Jhaj wearing a ‘grotesque evil villain mask’.
But the special effects and film crew pulled out when Jhaj removed his prosthetic mask and one of the cast recognised who he was. He had been using the name Toby until that point.
Jhaj is said to have offered cash incentives for people to continue, including engineers who he offered £5,000 instead of their usual £750 fee.
A source exclusively told : ‘He has apparently got form in terms of setting up fictitious films and things like that, hiding the agenda and his identity from the legitimate and professional businesses and individuals that get booked via a separate production company to carry out the film work.
‘Now we think this one was a giant F U to the BBC, the police and the newspapers for outing him for the offences that he was committed or charged with.’
The explosion was the latest in a string of bizarre London events involving Jhaj.
He was arrested in June on suspicion of breaching a sexual harm prevention order after he was accused of attending a casting session with children where he videoed and photographed them.
He was pictured with a large group of children gathered around him and a £3.2million Bugatti Chiron outside dance school The Hub Studios in east London.
He is said to have got them to cheer for him as he gave them golden envelopes and a necklace.
The Hub Studios, the choreographer and the cameraman were not aware of the nature of the session.
One father, whose eight-year-old daughter attended the session, said he was ‘horrified’ by the scene.
His daughter – who has previously appeared in short films – did not take part in the group around Jhaj after they became aware of who he was.
The father said: ‘If you saw it on a programme, you’d be like, this is ridiculous – there’s no way that would be allowed to happen.
‘I feel disgusted, angry, let down, to the point now where she probably won’t do another audition for a long time.’
Jhaj, who poses as a film producer, faces trial at Isleworth Crown Court on August 4 next year accused of breaching notification requirements and a sexual harm prevention order.
He was previously filmed last October 17 with up to 200 children and young women playing fans of his during a fake movie premiere at London’s Leicester Square.
He was spotted outside the Odeon Luxe cinema, where a red carpet was set up with barricades.
Jhaj was seen repeatedly parading up and down in different outfits and then greeting some of the extras, in videos and photographs seen by the BBC.
Dozens of child actors as young as six were recruited as supposed film extras dressed in school uniforms and asked to pretend to faint.
Casting agencies insisted actors were kept safe and children had chaperones.
then revealed in April that he had used internationally renowned casting platform Backstage to hire child actors in order to stage an elaborate £10,000 fake funeral at the London Oratory in west London.
The hoax a month earlier sparked international media attention when it emerged that the presiding priest had dramatically stopped the service upon realising that it was being filmed, that the mourners were paid actors and the coffin was empty.
Jhaj had paid for a horse-drawn hearse to carry the empty coffin.
Father Rupert McHardy, who was conducting the ceremony meant to be for missing Latvian man Lauris Zaube, 23, 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 to raise concerns.
He has since said he did not initially suspect the funeral was fake but after speaking to some of the mourners – who said they had been hired – he realised the whole event was being staged.
He told : ‘I have no idea why anyone would want to stage a false funeral.
‘When I knew nothing was going to happen I went to try and speak with the person who said his brother was being buried, but he had gone.
‘I have never been involved in anything like this and it is very disrespectful to the church.
‘We haven’t lost any money but it’s very, very weird. I was quite shaken afterwards. I felt very disturbed by it. Normally you take people at their word.
‘No expense was spared – top hats, a horse-drawn hearse, two expensive vintage cars, a full choir.
‘I was worried there was going to be some sort of violence. I thought, I have got to stop it because it’s all fake. It was very spooky.’
Mr Zaube went missing after a New Year’s Eve party near an iced-over dam, but his body has seemingly not yet been found.
When 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 premiere.’
A movie industry source who knows of Jhaj said: ‘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.’
Convicted paedophile Jhaj, from Feltham in west London, was jailed after supplying two 15-year-olds with alcohol and taking them to parties in Hounslow in his silver Range Rover.
He pretended he was 21 and a top Hollywood producer before assaulting them.
The BBC has said it had no involvement in Saturday night’s film set event.
Residents living close to the blast told of their fury as they likened the explosion just across from the Thames to a ‘bomb going off’ and an ‘earthquake’.
The blaze sparked mass confusion as Greenwich Council had warned residents that there would be a ‘loud explosion’ during filming on August 24 rather than Saturday.
Newham Council, which manages the Silvertown area, has said it would be working with the film company, fire brigade and Greenwich Council to ‘understand what led to the incident’.
A spokesperson for the Met Police said it was a ‘pre-planned filming event in the Canning Town area’ and that there was no risk to the public.
Scotland Yard added: ‘It appears this information was not disseminated as widely as it should have been and we are looking at the systems currently in place to establish why this was the case in this instance.’