More elderly fall prey to robbers, thieves
ELDERLY folks are increasingly the "soft targets" of robbers and thieves, according to the police's half-year report card, which shows a 25 per cent spike in such crimes against the silver-haired.
Other areas of concern include rising phone scams and opportunistic thefts from parked vehicles.
Statistics for the first six months of this year released by police on Wednesday showed that overall, the crime situation in Singapore is pretty much under control, with only a marginal 1 per cent rise, or 16 more cases, over a year ago - from 16,189 to 16,368.
But an area of growing concern to the police is the rising number of elderly people - those over 60 years - who are falling prey to criminals.
Specifically, robbery and snatch theft targeting elderly victims rose 25 per cent between January and June.
Police said 145 elderly fell prey to robberies and snatch theft, against 116 in the first half-year in 2007.
Generally, elderly victims were robbed at common areas of HDB estates in the day when they were alone going about their daily routine.
Police have arrested three serial offenders responsible for at least 40 cases of robberies and snatch thefts committed against elderly victims.
Seventy elderly were also cheated of valuables like handphones and jewellery in various scams. The figure was 62 a year ago.
Phone scams
A total of 180 people were cheated of a total of $2.4 million by phone scammers, who made random cold calls to try their luck on the unsuspecting public.
The culprits have varied their modus operandi and resorted to new tactics.
For example, some victims were persuaded to make advance payments to claim a prize in lucky draw and lottery.
The scammers now use SMS to inform the victims that they have won in lucky draws.
There were also cases where the culprits claimed that the victims have won luxury cars in lucky draws and asked to transfer money as administrative fees.
The conmen also cheated 21 victims of about $322,000 in the first six months, using the "kidnap hoax" which first surfaced in August last year.
They would call the victim and claim that one of their family members had been kidnapped. The conmen would then demand that the victim transfer a sum of ransom money to them, failing which the 'kidnapped' family member would be harmed.
Some of the cheats also used the pretext that the alleged kidnapped family member failed to service illegal loan repayments or acted as a guarantor for these loans.
Some of the racketeers even impersonated Supreme Court or police officials and accused the victims of involvement in criminal offences such as money laundering. They would then ask the victims to make money transfers via remittance houses to close the investigations into their offences. Fifty-two people were cheated of about $1.6 million by this ruse.
SOURCE: Straits Times Singapore
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