Then and now: Catch me if you can in Singapore

In a Liverpool court in August 1936, a “smartly dressed” man by the name of Herbert Powell stood accused of a series of false pretences committed across England. He was sentenced to three years in jail.

Among his many ruses, the 39-year-old Londoner posed as the “travelling editor” of The Straits Times in an attempt to borrow money from a Liverpool-based director of a rubber company in the Straits Settlement.

“Please do appreciate how bitterly humiliating it is for me to have to write such a letter as this,” Powell had written to the director under the name of his fictitious editor, Vernon Stanton.

The director was not fooled, and the law soon caught up with Powell, a bankrupt father of two with past convictions for stealing typewriters and forging cheques. The police also asked the court to consider 28 other offences, including one for assaulting a woman.

“He is, in the eyes of the police, a very plausible and clever swindler, and an imposter of the worst type,” declared Inspector T. Sullivan, as reported in The Straits Times.

Whether in the 1930s or the 2020s, scams like Powell’s are part and parcel of life. What has changed is how technology is now used to fake identities.

While the word “scam” is commonly used today, it took on its modern meaning of fraud in the United States only around the 1960s. It was rarely seen in the pages of The Straits Times before the 1980s.

But fraud was by no means absent in Singapore’s past.

A century ago, cheating cases regularly made the news, from forged cheques to embezzlements. The nature of the goods involved, however, reflected the simplicity of the economy then.

Conmen dealt in imitation fountain pens, whisky or cigarettes, or ruses involving coffee seeds or dried coconut kernels.

In 1929, the paper reported that fraud involving doctored scales, or dachings, was “still rife” despite a crackdown. A confectioner in Serangoon was fined $25 for giving six ounces short per pound; a People’s Park pork seller was fined $50 for shaving off three-quarters of a cattie from each transaction.

These rackets often surged during hard times.

In the 1930s, with the economy in a slump after the Great Depression, fraud cases rose.

In the post-war 1950s, bus conductors were jailed for pocketing 10 or 15 cents. Later, cases ranged from bogus magic stones and fake free gifts to offers to sell human blood.

By the 1990s, fraud became increasingly faceless. Scammers began targeting bank accounts and credit card details, moving their operations online.

The stakes are high. In Singapore alone, a record $385.6 million was lost to scams in the first half of 2024.

Through the years, The Straits Times has played a part in exposing deceit, raising awareness and helping readers stay one step ahead.

On Jan 29, 2022, it launched its

Stop Scams campaign

to educate the public on how scams work and to provide victims with a platform to share how these crimes affected their lives.

Deputy news editor Andre Yeo, 52, notes: “The word ‘scams’ became more prevalent in the past four years, as such crimes had usually been referred to as cheating cases.”

He adds that it’s heartening to hear of readers sharing scam articles with their loved ones to prevent them from being cheated.

“I believe the campaign has helped stop more people from losing their life savings and falling prey to scam syndicates,” he says.