Court Grants Bail to BLord in VDM Impersonation Case

The Federal High Court in Abuja granted bail on Friday to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Linus Williams Ifejirika, known as BLord, who had been detained for 16 days at Kuje Correctional Centre on charges of impersonating social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan.

Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia approved the bail on self-recognizance, setting it at N20 million with two sureties of good public standing. The court ordered BLord to deposit his international passport with the registrar and barred him from making public statements about the case. The matter was adjourned until April 27 for further hearing. BLord, 28, was arraigned on April 1 on six counts including criminal conspiracy, impersonation, and unauthorized use of VDM's identity and image for commercial purposes. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The bail decision followed a motion filed by BLord's defense team under the Constitution and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, supported by a 10-paragraph affidavit. The application cited the non-violent nature of the offenses and BLord's status as a first-time defendant. In a key development, VDM's lawyer withdrew a counter-affidavit that had...