Sheema Municipality Member of Parliament Dicksons Kateshumbwa says that hackers who took over his account on Saturday demanded £70,000 and threatened to damage his reputation.
On Saturday 18th March 2023, UOT woke up to chaos on the timeline as Hon. Dicksons Kateshumbwa’s account spilled secrets about NBS TV journalist Samson Kasumba.
Screenshots of Kasumba begging for money from the Sheema MP left several Ugandans on Twitter in shock before the same account then threatened to spill more secrets.
The hacker who identified himself as “Hogo” also shared screenshots of alleged conversations between Hon. Kateshumbwa and Canary Mugume, Esther Birungi, Hon. Diana Mutasindwa, and Tracy Ninsiima.
It was not long before sources close to Hon. Kateshumbwa revealed that the account had been hacked and that efforts to retrieve access were underway.
Early on Sunday morning, Kateshumbwa managed to regain access to his account and he revealed how the hacker wanted to extort money from him through blackmail.
Kateshumbwa narrated how ‘Hogo’ asked for £70,000 (approximately Ugx315M) before threatening to damage his reputation but he refused to bow to the threats.
The Sheema MP noted that all the screenshots of the conversations that were shared were fabricated and went on to apologize to the victims of the day.
My IT team has been able to recover my acct these malicious hackers wanted to character assassinate me so they used a fake tweet generator to fake conversations inorder to damage me and other people’ reputations.
They asked me for £70,000 or else they would damage my reputation which I refused to do and they went one and made countless fabricated screenshots which many of you believed.
I apologise to Samson Kasumba, Esther Birungi, Canary Mugume, Hon. Mutasingwa, Ninsiima Tracy for any damage done to their reputation.
Dicksons Kateshumbwa (Twitter)