On April 3, 2013 two people, Gaster Nsubuga, a former employee of Cargo Supplies Limited, and Robinhood Byamukama, a former employee of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), were sentenced to 12 years in prison for hacking into the URA IT infrastructure, causing the disappearance of crucial tax files and causing financial losses.
Mary Kamuli Kuteesa, who led the prosecution team, presented 25 witnesses, who proved beyond reasonable doubt that the two hacked into computers databases and servers and updated data on URA motorcycles registration and over 200 vehicles were cleared fraudulently. The head of the Anti-corruption court, Justice Paul Mugamba, ruled that although the convicts had expressed remorse over their acts, they placed the credibility of URA under question not only locally but also internationally.
For that, he said the two needed to be taught a lesson. Justice Mugamba further fined each convict US$45,000 for abusing the East African Community Customs Management Act 2004. This is one of the major cyber crime cases in the modern history of Uganda’s infant computer age, in a country where most victims of cyber crime are either ignorant about their losses or simply don’t know what to do.
When Faces Lie: Tatenda Chinodakufa on Fighting AI Fraud in Africa’s Digital BoomThe other larger corporate victims are rather silent about their losses, preferring to settle the matter with their insurers. The Ugandan banking sector for example lost over Ushs 1 billion in IT fraud in 2012 according to Gideon Twesigye, the internal audit manager at KCB Uganda. This was executed through e-card scheming, password theft, email hacking and phishing (stealing someone’s personal identity to access their accounts) on the internet banking service delivery platform.
According to the Uganda Police Annual Crime Report 2012, 62 cases of cyber-crime were investigated compared to 13 cases in 2011. A total of Ushs1.5 billion was lost through hacking victims’ email accounts and an additional Ushs1.2 billion was lost from 700 victims through ATM/VISA Card fraud by use of scheming devices from ATM locations. Between August 2012 and November 2012 alone, Ushs 207 million was transferred via mobile money without authority from the hosting networks.
But the above is just a fraction of the actual problem, cyber crime is a fast growing blue collar crime, that according to Jimmy Haguma, the Uganda Police Ag Commissioner in charge of electronic counter measures, happens every day but people do not report because they do not understand the seriousness of it as a crime. “Over the last 5 years, online trade has grown in Uganda and the more technologically savvy criminals are taking advantage of this to cheat the often unsuspecting Ugandans,
