Macau’s casino-related crime stats took a dip in the first half of 2018, even as the number of loansharking cases rose significantly.

On Tuesday, Macau’s Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak gave a press conference to update crime figures recorded by the Judiciary Police (PJ) in the six months of 2018. The overall number of casino-related cases sent to the Public Prosecutions Office was 840, a 3.3% decline over the same period last year.

The number of gaming-related forcible detentions – in which gamblers are held against their will until family or friends agree to make good on a gambler’s debt – was down 41% to 229. The secretary credited this decline to the PJ ramping up efforts to disrupt the gaming hub’s loansharks.

That enhanced effort led to a surge in gaming-related loansharking cases, which rose over 38% to 254 cases in H1. Police widened the scope of their traditional anti-loansharking investigations to include areas further away from the casino properties, including apartments, where the lenders were still predominantly targeting gambling clients.