The Stanbic Bank employee who is averred to have masterminded the recent telecom electronic fraud which led to loss of over Shs10 billion has been arrested.
His arrest has been confirmed by the spokesperson of Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Crime Intelligence (CID) Charles Twiine.
In October, unidentified thugs hacked Pegasus Technologies, information and technology service provider of Stanbic Bank and the leading telecom service providers, Airtel Uganda and MTN Uganda. The thugs are averred to have robbed over Shs10 Billion.
“Mugerwa Alvin an employee of Stanbic Bank has been arrested for allegedly masterminding  the recent Telecom Electronic fraud Police will not leave any stone unturned and will have him charged to Court today,” Mr Twiine said on twitter.
Upon hacking into Pegasus Technologies, the Chief Executive officers of the companies; Anne Anne Juuko Stanbic Bank Uganda, Wim Vanhelleputte MTN Uganda and VG Somasekhar Managing Director Airtel Uganda, dismissed that the system incident did not impact on any balances on both Bank and Mobile Money accounts.
“Our technical teams are analyzing the incident and will restore services as soon as possible. We apologise to all customers for any inconvenience that this has caused and reiterate our commitment to delivering seamless banking and mobile money services,” they said.
Below is the full Police Statement from ASP Twiine Charles;
Police has today charged Mugerwa Alvin a 30 year, to Court on allegations of Unauthorized AccessC/S 12(11), &11(7) and Access with intent to commit or facilitate the commission of a further offence C/S 13 of the Computer Misuse Act 2011.
It is alleged that Mugerwa Alvin who is an employee of Stanbic Bank Uganda as well as an External Consultant/System’s Administrator with Pegasus Technologies between July 2020 and October 2020 having an access to Pegasus fraudulently manipulated its system there by causing loss of substantial amount of money through Mobile money transactions. (UGX 10,441,000,000)
Our investigators have since established this was an organised crime that involved about 1630 Telecom simcards from both MTN and Airtel that were fraudulently registered and later used to withdraw cash from various Mobile money Agents across the country especially in Greater Kampala and major towns.
Earlier, Police had arrested and charged two people with Electronic Fraud and Theft to Buganda Road Court having been caught with the telephone lines that were used to transact mobile money withdraws,and were remanded to Kitalya government prisons.
Police will continue investigating this matter especially to establish the the involvement of employees of the Telecom companies that fraudulently registered the simcards well knowing that their act was to enable fraud.
Police greatly appreciates the cooperation that was from MTN Uganda, Airtel, Bank of Africa and more importantly Stanbic Bank Uganda, during the process of investigations.
