Two operations to 'cure' HIV, two clinic stamps and a haul of medical equipment: the plumber arrested as a fake doctor in Godomey, Benin, August 2025

Benin's medical profession is overseen by the Ordre national des médecins, and the country's law punishes illegal practice of medicine and usurpation of a professional title. In the August 2025 case at Godomey, on the western edge of Cotonou, the matter surfaced through the police rather than the regulator, and it shows how little an impostor needs to look like a surgeon to a patient who wants to be cured.

According to Bénin Web TV, reporting on 13 August 2025 and citing Peace FM radio, officers at Godomey arrested a man identified only by the initials A.C. on Saturday 9 August 2025. A plumber by training, he had presented himself as a practitioner at the Centre hospitalier de Menontin and persuaded a patient that surgery could cure HIV. He carried out two procedures, one on the ribs and one on the thigh, with no medical competence, and the outlet said the operations could have had irreversible consequences for the patient. Icilome, which reported the case on 16 August, also citing Peace FM, said the two interventions were performed without authorisation or competence and seriously endangered the victim's health, and that a police investigation was under way.

A search of his home, Bénin Web TV reported, turned up a quantity of medical equipment and two stamps bearing the names of different clinics. Investigators believe he had previously worked as a maintenance agent in several clinics under false identities, had been dismissed for theft, and had taken the equipment and gathered the information he later used to pass as a doctor during that time. Both outlets said he was to be brought before the prosecutor on charges of illegal practice of medicine and usurpation of a professional title. Neither reports a verdict.

The mechanism was borrowed credibility. The name of a real public hospital, stamps from real clinics and instruments taken from real wards made a plumber look like a surgeon to a patient who wanted to believe him. None of those props can be checked by a patient in the moment, but the man's name on the Order's roll could have been, and the hospital he claimed to work for could have been telephoned. The claim itself, that an operation cures HIV, should have ended the conversation.

For patients and families, any promise to cure a chronic infection with a procedure is a warning sign, and a doctor who works away from the hospital he names should be checked with that hospital. For clinic managers, a staff member dismissed for theft needs his stamps, badges and access recovered, because this case shows what the leftovers are used for. For students, the case is a reminder that a white coat and a stamp are what impostors use, and that the thing they cannot fake is a registration number that someone bothers to check.