By Vinayak D. Porob
Cyber crime involving deception for wrongful gain does not merely affect the finances of a victim, but also deeply impacts the mental and emotional well-being of a person. A victim who is cheated through fraudulent representations experiences a constant feeling of betrayal, helplessness, and humiliation. The psychological trauma caused by such offences often continues long after the monetary loss is suffered.
The suffering caused by cyber fraud is not restricted to the victim alone. Family members of the victim also undergo immense emotional harassment and mental torture. Witnessing one’s own parent, spouse, child, or relative weeping in pain, stress, anxiety, and helplessness after being cheated causes severe emotional disturbance to the entire family. In many cases, victims lose peace of mind, suffer sleepless nights, depression, social embarrassment, and emotional breakdowns, which directly affect the mental stability and happiness of their loved ones as well. Unfortunately, society often ridicules or mocks victims of cyber fraud by treating them as foolish or careless persons, without understanding the manipulative and deceptive methods used by cyber criminals. Very often, people fail to appreciate the gravity of such emotional suffering unless they themselves become victims of similar cyber deception.
The accused persons in such crimes use manipulative skills of persuasion, false promises, and tempting offers of greed or saving money to gain the confidence of innocent persons. By creating an illusion of profit, urgency, or financial advantage, they deceitfully induce victims to part with their hard-earned money, ultimately causing total financial loss. Such acts destroy the confidence of victims, demoralise them mentally, and adversely affect their trust in society and legitimate financial transactions. Cyber fraud, therefore, is not merely an economic offence but a serious crime affecting the dignity, peace of mind, and psychological stability of individuals.
One must remain extremely careful while making purchases or investments through unrecognised online shopping applications, unknown investment platforms, or schemes offering unrealistic promises of double or triple returns. Fraudsters often attract innocent persons by guaranteeing huge profits, assured returns, heavy discounts, or exclusive benefits upon payment of additional money. Such false assurances are commonly used as bait to gain the trust of victims and induce them to transfer funds. In many cases, once the money is paid, the promised goods, services, or returns never materialise, resulting in substantial financial loss and mental distress to the victim.
People should also avoid sharing OTPs, banking details, passwords, UPI PINs, or personal financial information with unknown persons or suspicious links received through calls, messages, emails, or social media platforms. Cyber criminals often impersonate bank officials, customer care executives, or company representatives to gain confidential information and illegally withdraw money from accounts.
Victims of cyber fraud should carefully preserve screenshots, payment receipts, transaction details, chat records, links, phone numbers, emails, QR codes, scanner details, and all digital communications sent by the fraudsters for the transfer of money. Such information becomes crucial evidence for tracing the bank account, account holder, mobile number, IP address, and digital trail connected with the fraudulent transaction. In many instances, cyber fraudsters immediately delete or deactivate the scanner, QR code, account link, or communication after receiving money through deception in order to destroy evidence and avoid identification. Preservation of such material at the earliest stage greatly assists investigating agencies in tracing the accused persons and recovering the defrauded amount.
In several cyber fraud cases, the QR code or scanner shared by the fraudsters becomes one of the most important modes for tracing the accused scammer. Since the QR code is directly linked to a bank account, UPI ID, payment gateway, or digital wallet, it often provides the first and most vital lead for investigators to identify the beneficiary of the fraudulent transaction and trace the movement of money.
Awareness, verification, and caution are the strongest safeguards against cyber fraud. A small moment of negligence, blind trust, or temptation for easy profit can lead to irreversible financial loss, damage to reputation, emotional suffering, harassment to family members, and severe mental trauma.
