The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has apprehended a 38-year-old man in Lagos for allegedly parading himself as a legal practitioner and using a forged Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) seal to authenticate several legal documents.

The suspect was arrested at a high-end business district following a whistleblowing tip and a subsequent sting operation conducted by the Commission’s Lagos Zonal Command.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the suspect had been operating a shadowy legal consultancy for over two years, representing unsuspecting clients in various property transactions and corporate filings.

The arrest was triggered when a financial institution flagged a suspicious “Letter of Administration” bearing a forged NBA stamp. Upon verification with the NBA’s national database, it was confirmed that the suspect’s name did not appear on the roll of legal practitioners, and the serial number on the seal was traced to a deceased lawyer.

This arrest comes at a time when the Nigerian Bar Association has intensified its crackdown on “fake lawyers” through the recent relaunch of its Digital Stamp and Seal program. The new digital security features, introduced earlier this year under the current NBA leadership, were specifically designed to prevent the manual forgery of seals—a loophole the suspect reportedly exploited by using high-quality counterfeit physical stamps on his fraudulent filings.

The EFCC spokesperson stated that the suspect has provided a cautionary statement admitting to the forgery and is currently assisting investigators in identifying other accomplices within a wider forgery ring. Items recovered from the suspect’s “office” included several forged court orders, fake letters of attestation, and a cache of counterfeit seals belonging to various legal authorities.

The Commission has reaffirmed its commitment to sanitizing the professional services sector to protect the public from predatory fraudsters. The suspect remains in custody and is expected to be arraigned in the Federal High Court as soon as the investigation is concluded.

Meanwhile, the NBA Lagos Branch has urged members of the public to always use the Association’s online verification portal to confirm the status of any individual claiming to be a legal practitioner.