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According to the LSK, the cunning man managed to access its portal illegally, find an account with a name that matched his, alter the information, and submit his photo, all in a bid to enter the legal profession in Kenya.
In a statement, the LSK said it convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday to initiate an urgent investigation into how Brian Mwenda was able to get past LSK security and take on the persona of a legitimate attorney.
The security breach only got to the attention of LSK after a legitimate lawyer with a similar name, Brian Mwenda Njagi reached out to its secretariat on September 28 to complain about the inability to access the membership portal.
A preliminary investigation by ICT personnel at the LSK found that the legitimate lawyer was unable to access his membership site since the information in the system, especially his email address, did not belong to him.
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“On the 5th Day of August 2022, Brian Mwenda Ntwiga was admitted to the Bar and his correct email address was captured and an Account opened for him in the Advocates portal.
“We reached out to Advocate Brian Mwenda Ntwiga who confirmed that he had not applied for a practicing certificate since his admission, reason being that he had been working at the Office of the Attorney General and did not require a Practising Certificate.
“It was only until sometime in September 2023 when he attempted to login into the system and activate his profile with the intention of applying for his Practising Certificate that he realized he could not access his LSK Portal.
“The preliminary findings indicate that the masquerader applied the use of a common international fraud scheme known as Business Email Compromise (BEC) where a criminal in this case Brian Mwenda identified a genuine advocate status as being inactive, made contact to the secretariat to make an application for payment of his PC but which he couldn't because his email credentials are incorrect.
“Upon being allowed access to the account, he took control of the portal and changed his profile picture, the workplace and applied and paid for the practicing certificate. However, his application was not processed since he was required to provide documents including the certificate of business incorporation,” the LSK statement said.
The statement added that the Council of the Law Society in Kenya has always been worried by the activities of imposters parading as lawyers, so the matter has been reported to the country’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).
The LSK maintained that Brian Mwenda must face the rigours of the law despite overwhelming public support for him, with calls for him to be certified to practice the law because he has proven to be even more adept at the legal profession than the trained ones.
Last week, news broke about the handsome young man being arrested for practising law in Kenya and winning all 26 cases he had handled, although he didn’t have the training and license.