Stanbic Bank is the latest victim of Uganda’s growing cybercrime. PHOTO/FILE The bank has since mounted efforts with security agencies to recover funds from an undisclosed number of implicated agents.
In a related development, CID spokesperson Mr Charles Twine said ‘‘detectives had recovered over Shs600m that was part of the Shs3b loot that had passed through an account of a fictitious commission agent.’’
Stanbic Bank Uganda said Wednesday it had suffered a breach of its banking systems by unidentified fraudsters amongst banking agents intending to fleece the firm, consequently affecting monetary transactions.
‘‘Stanbic Bank has countered fraudulent activity by a few of its 3,500 banking agents- aimed at defrauding the bank through a process-flow error that affected some third-party agent banking transactions,’’ the firm said in a September 1 statement.
The bank has since mounted efforts with security agencies to recover funds from an undisclosed number of implicated agents from the error in the banking model adopted by the organization three years ago.
‘‘The incident did not affect customer transactions or balances and agency banking services continue to operate normally. Effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences,’’ Stanbic Bank’s corporate communications wing added.
The bank did not necessarily reveal the amount of money retained by the agents that account for nearly 30 per cent of its total transactions.
‘‘Effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences,’’ the bank said.
Numerous cases of cybercrime have recently been reported and related to the ‘Agents’ banking model across the country.
An exponential growth of quickly accessible bank-agents across the country has bred hackers or even organized criminal syndicates that take advantage of the gaps in the model and steal money from accounts upon accessing vital-private data of bank customers.
In a related development, Crime Investigation Department (CID) spokesperson, Mr Charles Twine September 1 said ‘‘detectives had recovered over Shs600m from some suspects at Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation.’’According to him, the money was part of the Shs3b loot that had passed through an account of a fictitious commission agent. Police displays part of the money that was recovered. PHOTO/COURTESY An annual 2020 Police report estimates that cybercrimes occasioned loss of almost Shs16b in Uganda.
