Five people have been arrested in Bungoma town masquerading as law advocates. Speaking to the media in Bungoma town after a crackdown, Steve Mbugua, a Law Society of Kenya (LSK) in charge of a committee that handles imposters, said that the council has decided to conduct a crackdown with an aim of safeguarding the lawyers space of practice.
The council member revealed that they chose to do a search in Bungoma upon the request by the local leadership of the Law society of Kenya (LSK) in the efforts to help them in weeding out people masquerading and pretending to be advocates conning members of the public in the same name.
“In today’s operations we have managed nab five individuals who have been running four separate law firms which they purport to be legal,” he said, adding upon interviewing the suspects it was established the fake offices have been there for many and have conned the public millions of shillings.
Mbugua added that that during the search, they recovered serious documents such as title deeds, file cases in which its matters are pending in court which is a clear indication that these fake lawyers have been also appearing in court especially the virtual court sessions.
He also said, in some offices secretaries have modified stamps and receipts where they receive cash from clients without the knowledge of their bosses.
“It is very unfortunate that we continue witnessing this especially in our upcountry, the Law Society of Kenya has made it a permanent resolute to weed out all masqueraders out of these profession and to safeguard the public interests pursuit to section IV of the LSK act which mandates us to weed out and protect this space of practice,” he said.
Mbugua implored on the members of the public seeking legal services to verify the names of the providers in the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) search in the google search engine.
“To verify if the legal provider is our members feed in the names of the person purporting to be an advocate and shall provide you with the picture, the details of their validity of the license and their office location,” he stated.
He says the society has put in place various teams which are working in coordination with the national office to ensure that those who have been arrested have not re-opened their offices in case they are given a bail in court.
“Those who intend to come and are not lawyers just know that our teams are in place monitoring that,” he said.
However, he said that those arrested masquerading as lawyers the penalty is that they would serve 1 to a maximum of 3 years in imprisonment, fine or both.
“There are other offences which we shall judge suspects with under the penal code and various acts of parliament such as forging documents and impersonations,” he said.
The suspects were taken to Bungoma police station for processing.
Written by Sostine Wanji
