DennisK notes:
All sounds a bit odd to me apart from the idiocy of a guy with little or zero rotary experience chancing his arm.
It's easy to assume that this guy had "little or zero" r/w experience. But the mere fact that he wasn't r/w rated doesn't prove that. If he felt comfortable enough to attempt to commit aviation with a passenger in an R-44, then we can assume he was not "RW: 0.0 TT."
How do we stop such guys?
We can't. People will continue to do stupid things - some of them with aircraft. Wishing that the FAA/CAA will never let them fly again is also dumb: The lack of a helicopter rating certainly didn't stop this guy, nor did the lack of an airworthy helicopter. Revocation of his certs would be no deterrent.
It's the same thing as enacting strict gun laws in the naive and futile hope that it will reduce gun-related crime, forgetting that criminals by nature are not law-abiding citizens. Dang it!