"Engineered brain freeze": IIT Madras study finds cyber fraudsters target doctors, bankers and even security experts

Victims of financial cybercrime in India are not mainly careless, greedy or unfamiliar with technology, according to a new study led by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Many are highly educated professionals, and some hold cybersecurity certifications.

The study's victims included IT professionals, bankers, doctors, management and finance professionals and public-sector officers. Their common vulnerability was not ignorance but timing.

Fraud at the worst moment

The researchers found that people were often targeted during periods of stress or upheaval: illness in the family, retirement, a job search, pressure at work. Fraudsters then used fear, financial hopes and worries about reputation to create what the study calls an "engineered brain freeze". Victims described a state of "mind arrest", in which they could not think clearly.

The losses were serious, from a few thousand rupees to more than ₹1 crore. The harm went beyond money. Victims reported shame, insomnia, depression and damaged trust within their families.

The response from institutions was uneven. Some banks and police cybercrime cells acted quickly, the study found, while others lacked the technical capacity and coordination to help.

Who ran the study

The research was led by P. Kandaswamy, a retired Indian Police Service officer who is adjunct faculty at IIT Madras, and Nandan Sudarsanam of the institute's Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. They worked with Akanksha Jaiswal of the University of Western Australia's Chennai campus and Ameeta Fernando of the Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai.

The team approached police cybercrime cells in Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai. Officers explained the study to victims and passed on the contact details of those willing to take part. The final group was 33 people, 11 women and 22 men, most of them married with dependants. Twelve were senior citizens, one of whom is visually impaired.

The sample is small and was drawn from people who had reported crimes to the police, so it cannot tell us how common each pattern is. Its value lies in the detail of what victims experienced.

"Move beyond blaming victims"

"The response to cybercrime must move beyond blaming victims," Mr. Kandaswamy said. "Banks and law-enforcement agencies need stronger systems for early detection, rapid intervention, and coordinated response, along with better support for victims."

Dr. Sudarsanam said financial cybercrime was "not simply a problem of inadequate digital literacy," because even experienced users become vulnerable when fraudsters exploit fear, stress and urgency.

Why it matters

In a decade, near-universal mobile access, UPI payments and the Digital India push have brought hundreds of millions of first-time users into digital finance. That has opened a wide target for investment and stock-trading frauds, task and job scams, payment frauds, malware and the "digital arrest" scam, in which callers pose as officials and keep victims on video calls under threat.

Official statistics from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre count the transactions but not the trauma. The study's lesson for banks and police is practical: warning people to be careful is not enough. Systems that slow down suspicious transfers, and helplines that answer quickly, matter more when a frightened person is on the phone.

If you have been targeted, report it immediately on the national cybercrime helpline 1930 or at cybercrime.gov.in.