Somebody rented a venue at Disneyland Paris to film a fake wedding with people paid to act as guests. The “brude” was 9 years old. But she “suffered “no violence, either physical or sexual” and “was not forced to play the role” of bride”.
So what, exactly, was the end goal of this, and what exactly was the crime?
He’s a sex offender. Maybe he hoped to convince the girl that she was now actually married and had to submit to him.
Maybe, but there were people hired to play her father and sister, and she wouldn’t be fooled by that.
Per the BBC article linked in one of your sources, the charges were “fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, and identity theft,” presumably because he used a fake ID and represented the event as a real wedding when he booked the venue. He also seems to have made a habit of putting on and filming elaborately staged productions involving minors; it may be a case of “we know this guy is doing something creepy and exploitative, but it’s so weird that there isn’t a law against it, so we’ll get him on what we can whenever he gives us the opportunity.”
Now if the guy had some sort of injunction or parole condition from convictions for prior offenses of some sort of child exploitation, they could easily include conditions about not associating with minors.
Whether he does have that, whether French privacy laws would allow the press to know about them, etc., is all unknown to me. But at least in US practice it would not be a nutty possibility. And might explain why the charge list looks like it does.
It’s a very bizarre story. Apparent he previously staged a fake film premier and a fake funeral, and filmed a stunt where he created a fireball outside the O2 Arena in London. Completely mental.
“I’m making a movie” can be cover for acting out a lot of odd fantasies.
The advent of “content creators” on YouTube et al has thoroughly democratized the making of fantasy content. I bet this goofball is just the tip of a huge iceberg of nutballs living out their fantasies from behind a camera.
Yeah I also thought, like the OP, that there was an elephant in the room here that the reporting was missing (it’s fairly common for this to happen IMO, particularly with British reporting of criminal prosecutions*, where the bare publicly available facts just leaves you with more questions than answers)
But it really doesn’t seem like this is the case here. This is just a really really creepy really really weird guy who does really weird really creepy stuff. There is no master plan or motivation beyond that.
I wonder what position he’ll fill in Trump’s cabinet? 
‘*’ - TBH I generally agree with the way reporting of crimes works in the UK more than in the US, where big hideous high profile crimes are treated basically like sports matches where every detail and peice if evidence is analysed and discussed, long before they end up in court
And the jurors are expected to not have seen any of it.
What I can’t figure out is where his money is coming from. He’s spending thousands and thousands on “actors” for his videos.
I’m afraid I don’t wanna know. Terrible story.
He apparently made millions as a tech bro - including running a supposedly data-driven curated online dating service for other wealthy tech bros (at $50 000 a pop for essentially just vetting ordinary dating site applicants!)
ETA: Oh, wait, that’s the wrong J. Jhaj.
Never mind. I’m going to guess family money, then.