Singapore's Police Force said on Wednesday that its streets are safe during night and day but crimes in the intent pushed its crime rate up. Loan Scams that are usually done through WhatsApp and other messaging platforms contributed to the largest increase in 2018.
The force said that technology-natured crimes including credit-for-sex and e-commerce scams are increasing at a fast rate. Last year, the released annual data of the police showed that 33,134 crimes were reported. It increased by 1.4 percent compared to the 32,668 cases in 2017. The rise in the nation's crime rate is greatly fuelled by the 20.6 percent increase in scams in transactions online or on the phone.
Police record showed that the total amount from the scams decreased S$170 million in 2017 to S$158 million last year. However, the total number of crimes reported in Singapore decreased by 1.9 percent to 27,338 cases in 2018 excluding cases from the top 10 types of crimes.
The police warned to watch out for loan scams since the number of cases of loan scams increased by 151 percent reaching 994 cases last year. The total amount lost to cheats amounted to S$2 million. It increased by about four times from 2017, a record.
According to the police, scammers usually sends unsolicited messages on chat platforms like WhatsApp to attract debtors and the users who respond are instructed to transfer money as a deposit before the loan can be disbursed. The perpetrator can no longer be reached after the money was transferred.
The police also warn against impersonation scams wherein Perpetrators pretends that they are officials from the government. The cases of these type of scam increased by not less than 60 percent reaching 302 cases in 2018. The cases lost $12.7 million last year a slight decrease in the total amount of S$12.8 million in 2017.
Credit-for-sex scams are increased by about 30 percent to 533 in 2018. The total amount lost in this scam increased by 50 percent to S$1.5 million.
E-commerce scams also increase by 11.4 percent reaching 2,125 cases last year. 70 percent of the cases happened on Carousell, an online marketplace. According to the police, the victims are commonly cheated while purchasing electronic products and tickets to events and attractions like the tickets for the Universal Studios Singapore.
The total amount cheated by e-commerce scams increased by 35.7 percent from S$1.4 million in 2017 to about S$1.9 million last year.
