Mohammed Kabba received a 16 month custodial sentence last summer for pretending to be a solicitor during an immigration case
A man who was jailed for duping senior judges into thinking he was a solicitor in order to represent a client in an immigration case has been banned from the profession.
Mohammed Kabba — a Sierra Leone national living in Kidlington, Oxfordshire — was jailed for 16 months last summer at Birmingham Crown Court for attempting to pervert the course of justice.
According to an Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) decision published late last week, Kabba presented himself as a solicitor not only to Home Office officials, but both a High Court judge and an Appeal Court judge.
In February 2013, Kabba — who according to the SRA report “was previously involved in a legal practice” — made an application via telephone to High Court judge Mr Justice Mitting. During the application Kabba falsely told Mitting that he was a solicitor.
Having ruled against him, Kabba then made a further application — again via telephone — to the Court of Appeal, and judge Sir Stephen Price Richards. During this application Kabba once again falsely told the judge that he was a solicitor.
Banning the 52 year-old, the SRA stated in its decision that it would be “undesirable for him [Kabba] to be involved in a legal practice”.
But this isn’t the first time members of the public have been caught attempting to forge a legal career without the appropriate credentials. David Sydney Evans — who had no legal training — popped on a wig and gown and strolled into Plymouth Crown Court to represent a friend in a criminal trial back in 2012.
It was only after Evans made a series of glaring legal errors during submissions that he was eventually rumbled. The fake barrister was jailed for 18 months.