Highly educated professionals are vulnerable to financial cybercrime, finds IIT-Madras study

A study led by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) has found that financial cybercrime victims in India are often highly educated professionals, challenging the perception that victims are primarily careless, financially unaware or greedy. The study found that high digital literacy does not necessarily protect individuals from cyber fraud. Victims included IT professionals, bankers, doctors, management and finance professionals, public-sector officers and individuals with cybersecurity certifications.

The researchers found that victims were often targeted during periods of stress or life disruption, including illness in the family, retirement, job searches, or workplace pressure. Fraudsters exploited fear, financial expectations, and reputational concerns to create an “engineered brain freeze,” with victims describing a state of “mind arrest” that impaired their ability to think clearly. Financial losses ranged from a few thousand rupees to more than ₹1 crore, while victims also reported shame, insomnia, depression, and damaged family trust. The study also found that institutional responses varied, with some banks and cybercrime cells responding quickly while others lacked the required technical capabilities and coordination.

The study was led by retired IPS officer P. Kandaswamy and Nandan Sudarsanam, from IIT Madras in collaboration with Akanksha Jaiswal, Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia, Chennai Campus and Ameeta Fernando from Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai. The research received support from the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras.

The study sample comprised victims of financial cybercrime residing in various Indian cities including Chennai, Bengaluru. Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai. The team contacted the cybercrime cells in these cities, sharing the study’s purpose with police officers who, in turn, shared victims contact details and provided an initial brief to the victims about the research study. The final details included 11 females and 22 males, mostly married with dependents. Among them, 12 were senior citizens, including one visually impaired individual.

Mr.Kandaswamy IPS (Retd), Adjunct Faculty, Department of Data Science and Artificial intelligence, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras said, “The response to cybercrime must move beyond blaming victims. Banks and law-enforcement agencies need stronger systems for early detection, rapid intervention, and coordinated response, along with better support for victims.”

Nandan Sudarsanam, Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Madras, said, “Our findings show that financial cybercrime is not simply a problem of inadequate digital literacy. Even highly educated and digitally experienced individuals can become vulnerable when fraudsters exploit fear, stress, and urgency. Understanding these factors is essential to designing more effective prevention strategies.”

India’s rapid digital transition near-universal mobile access, UPI, and the wider Digital India push has brought hundreds of millions of first-generation users into digital finance within a decade, opening an unusually wide attack surface for investment and stock-trading frauds, task and job scams, digital payment frauds, malware attacks, and the distinctly Indian “digital arrest” scam.

While official statistics from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) record the transactional breach, they remain silent on the human trauma behind the numbers, prompting the research team to ask a human question rather than a technical one.