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Scam victims lost $168 million to conmen across the top 10 scam categories during the first six months of this year, a sharp spike from $63.5 million in the same period last year.
This comes on the back of a 16 per cent rise in the number of reported scam cases and an 11.2 per cent hike in overall crime, according to mid-year statistics released by the police yesterday.
A total of 19,444 cases were reported between January and June this year, up from 17,492 in the same period last year.
Scam cases climbed from 7,247 to 8,403.
“Scammers are constantly evolving their tactics and have been taking advantage of the Covid-19 situation to prey on victims’ heightened vulnerability and sense of uncertainty,” said the police.
In particular, loan scams had the highest number of reported cases among scam types, with $10.6 million lost by victims, compared with $5.6 million last year.
The victims were mostly duped into providing personal information to…
