More Than Just Money
In 2023, a group of 25 Australian investors lost their savings to a syndicate posing as legitimate financial advisors. The money was gone, but what lingered long after was something far harder to recover from the anxiety, the shame, and the inability to trust again. Cyber fraud, it turns out, does not end when the transaction does.
The real cost of cyber scams goes beyond money; they can have lasting effects on a person’s mental health and social life. However, the discussion on cyber fraud is surprisingly centered on the money aspect alone. The mind appears to be the forgotten factor here.
Every year, millions of people receive a message from a stranger online who seems genuine, trustworthy, and kind. Over time, a sense of connection builds. Then, without warning, money is lost and the person disappears. The financial damage is visible, but the psychological wound runs much deeper and takes far longer to heal.
The belief that cyber fraud is simply a financial crime is one that researchers have sought to break down. While the effects of online fraud on its victims are obviously detrimental, a meta-analysis revealed that in addition to financial hardship, some victims experience negative effects on their mental health, physical health, and personal relationships. In the case of India, the people may experience symptoms like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress, along with a lack of trust in digital technologies, and the latter is especially relevant because the number of cases of financial fraud in the country has been rising sharply.
The Fear That Follows
The psychological impact of cyber fraud's most underexplored aspect may be the aftermath of the event, rather than merely the event itself. Victims may live with a general fear of victimization and approach all online interactions with a sense of suspicion. Victims often endure symptoms similar to traumatic stress, including shock, confusion, and a sense of betrayal, acute emotional responses that can evolve into long-term psychological issues such as depression and anxiety.
Nearly 34% of global respondents in one study felt overwhelmed by the efforts needed to protect themselves online, leading to what researchers call “cyber fatigue,” a state that plays a significant role in causing mental exhaustion and undermining the mental resilience of individuals. This is a vicious cycle where fraud attacks resilience, and low resilience attacks the fear of future fraud.
The social dimension compounds things further. There is social rejection and shame attached to accepting that one has become a victim of these crimes, meaning most victims continue to endure their trauma without seeking help. Romance scam victims undergo a phenomenon called a "double hit," which is the loss of money combined with the emotional pain of a relationship that was never real. The isolated experience of being a romance scam victim may cause a person to seek ways to cope with the situation without the understanding and empathy from family and friends. Victims may undergo a constant shift in deep emotions that makes it difficult for them to self-regulate.
Resilience: The Road Back
Recovery from cyber fraud victimisation is not linear, but it is possible. Research on individual cyber resilience identifies a process of recognition, coping, processing, and recovery. Cyber resilience is simply how well a person bounces back after being scammed online. It includes the support they have around them, their ability to process what happened, and their capacity to regain a sense of safety and trust over time.Though there may be difficulties in coping with post-traumatic stress and even thoughts of suicide in some victims, there is the ability to bounce back from victimization with fewer negative residual effects on one’s life, with the presence of cyber resilience. Social support and self-regulation appear to be powerful protective factors.
Resilience building in the aftermath of cyber fraud involves regaining a sense of agency, and victim support communities, where individuals share their experiences openly, are important in this context. Developing spaces where victims feel comfortable sharing their experiences without fear of judgment, and normalising discussions about scams, can reduce stigma and encourage earlier reporting. When victims stop carrying their shame silently and start talking, healing becomes possible.
Laughing Through the Wound: The Role of Humour
Surprisingly, humour is another tool that is found to be effective in the context of discussions about financial trauma and psychological pain. Humour is considered an adaptive coping strategy that can reduce the burden of perceived stress and increase positive emotional states when dealing with stressful situations.
The mechanism behind this is cognitive reappraisal, a shift in how one interprets a painful experience. People who use humour to cope with stress tend to see difficult situations more positively, handle them better, and as a result, feel less stressed overall. Humour, in this sense, is not denial; it is a conscious reframing, a way of reclaiming control over a narrative that was violently taken from you. A study examining psychological trauma in survivors of terror attacks found that having a healthy style of humour was correlated to having fewer trauma symptoms, and that the use of humour to shift one's perspective on trauma from serious to lighthearted may help regulate stressful emotions. This does not, however, mean that the trauma and pain people suffer should be made light of. Rather, the use of humour is a form of self-enhancing and affiliative coping that allows people to shift their trauma and stigma into more workable challenges. However, it is also important to acknowledge that everyone does not share equal rights when it comes to laughing. In most cases, the individual who is a victim faces mockery from people around them saying how silly they were to be fooled by it. This just makes them feel worse. Humour can only work when it comes from within the individual.
In fact, the online communities for those who have been the victims of cyber fraud have quietly adopted the use of humour. From the memes about the absurd stories told by scammers to the stories that have gone viral about people “scambaiting” the perpetrators for hours, there has been a growing cultural acceptance of the notion that we should all be able to laugh at the absurdity and trauma we have all been subjected to.
Conclusion
There are marks left by cyber frauds that bank statements cannot show: the anxiety, the shame, the hyper-vigilance, and the broken trust that follow a scam are all very real, long-lasting effects of cyber frauds, and they deserve all the attention they receive. But it doesn’t have to end here. Resilience, developed through community, support, and the small act of speaking up, is one way forward. And, of course, at times, there is laughter. Not because the pain was any less real, but perhaps because rediscovering your sense of humour could be the first sign of healing itself.
Palak Parashar
