SINGAPORE -- Singapore's casinos have attracted more than 3 million visitors, created thousands of jobs and spurred spending at hotels, restaurants and shopping malls. They're also keeping the courts busy.

Since the opening of Resorts World Sentosa in February and Marina Bay Sands in April, the island-state has seen cases of fraud, embezzlement and identity theft. Some offenders were fined or sent to prison, three European suspects have jumped bail and two Africans have been charged for cheating the casinos out of about $100,000.

Named Asia's most livable city in a Mercer Consulting survey last month, Singapore dropped its 45-year ban on casinos to help double tourism revenue by 2015 and shed what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called an "unexciting" image. One of the world's safest countries according to the Overseas Security Advisory Council, Singapore has prepared for a potential increase in loan sharking, pimping and fraud.

"Casinos mean money, money means temptation and temptation means there's bound to be some sort of crime," said Song Seng-Wun, an economist at CIMB Research in Singapore. "Is it worth it in terms of its impact and contribution to the Singapore economy? Definitely."

The $5.5 billion Marina Bay Sands, owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corp., held its grand opening Wednesday after unveiling the casino, some convention facilities, a mall and 963 of 2,560 hotel rooms on April 27. Genting Singapore's $4.7 billion Resorts World casino on Sentosa island, featuring a Universal Studios theme park, opened on Feb. 14.

Singapore's per-capita crime rate of 684 per 100,000 people in 2008 was about a third that of New York City, Law Minister K. Shanmugam said last year. The "handful" of casino-linked cases so far hasn't contributed "significantly" to the Singapore Subordinate Courts' caseload, the court said in an e-mail.

"As the emergence of these cases is a recent phenomenon, the actual impact remains to be seen," the court said.

Mr. Lee rejected a proposal for casinos in 2002 when he was heading a committee to seek growth strategies for Singapore. He said they could lead to "undesirable activities" such as money laundering, illegal lending and organized crime.

Three years later, Mr. Lee justified the decision to allow gaming by saying the country had "no choice but to proceed" with the casinos to keep attracting tourists.

The popularity of Macau supports his view. The southern Chinese city surpassed the Las Vegas Strip as the world's biggest gambling center in 2006. Revenue there may rise 50 percent this year, Karen Tang, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a June 11 report.

About 3 million to 4 million people have visited Singapore's casinos so far, according to Jonathan Galaviz, an independent gaming industry strategist. The resorts may add about 0.8 percentage point to Singapore's gross domestic product this year when fully operational, Mr. Song said.

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