SINGAPORE — Scams continued to drive an increase in overall crime in the first half of the year, with S$227.8 million lost to the top 10 scam types, which is an increase of about 60 per cent in value from the same period last year.
The biggest jump in scams involved job scams, where the victims were enticed by fake offers of lucrative employment, often supposedly to be done from home. These scams soared seven-fold in the first half of this year.
In all, 25,593 crime cases were reported from January to June this year, up from 18,725 cases in the first half of last year, police crime data released on Monday (Aug 29) showed.
More than half of the crimes reported during the first half of this year involved scams, and scams made up about 56 per cent of all crimes reported. In the same period last year, that figure was about 41 per cent.
“Scammers have been constantly evolving their tactics, facilitated by the increase in online activities,” the police said in a statement.
“Job scams, phishing scams, e-commerce scams and investment scams remain of particular concern.”
The police’s mid-year crime statistics also showed that there were 9,825 reported cases of physical crimes in the first half this year, up slightly from 9,748 in the same period last year.
The number of physical crimes, which comprises all crimes excluding scams and cyber crimes, was still lower than the pre-Covid-19 figure of 13,015 reported in the first half of 2019, the police…
