Fraud Victims’ Mental Health Suffering Long After the Money Is Gone, Which? Finds

18 Sep 2026

More than half of people who lost money to fraud in the past two years say the experience has had a negative effect on their fraud victims’ mental health, according to new research from consumer group Which?. The findings point to a harm that extends well beyond the financial loss itself, with victims describing shame, depression and lasting anxiety long after the original incident.

Which? commissioned Deltapoll to survey more than 1,500 people across the UK who had lost money to scams in the past two years. The survey was carried out in June.

What the Which? survey on fraud victims’ mental health found

Of those surveyed, 63% said fraud had a negative impact on their stress levels, 54% said it had affected their mental health, and 47% said it had affected their financial situation. Unauthorised fraud was the most common type reported: 44% of respondents had their bank account or card details harvested, and 16% lost a physical card, mobile phone or other device to opportunistic thieves. Impersonation scams, where victims were groomed into authorising payments to fraudsters pretending to be trusted organisations or individuals, accounted for 35% of cases. The remaining 5% involved other types of scam.

The personal accounts gathered by Which? are difficult to read. One person said: ‘It has made me feel stupid and ashamed. I haven’t fully told my family. I have tried to cover up the full financial loss.’ Another described the effect on their relationship: ‘I was so nervous and stressed. It had a big impact on my marriage as well. My husband thinks I don’t have enough knowledge to maintain my finances. I’m so depressed.’ A third said their mental health ‘was affected very badly’, adding: ‘I feel like a failure.’

The shame many victims feel appears to compound the original harm, cutting them off from the support networks that might otherwise help them recover.

UK government data shows how long the effects can last

UK government research on the experiences of fraud and cyber-crime victims, published on GOV.UK, puts the lasting nature of these effects in sharper focus. Difficulty sleeping or fatigue was the most commonly cited health impact, experienced by 2 in 5 (37%) victims. Of those who experienced depression, 4 in 10 (39%) still felt its effects at the time they were surveyed, making it the second most long-lasting impact after self-harm, which affected 41% on an ongoing basis. Among those who experienced fear, 22% still felt it at the point of the survey; for anxiety, that figure was 18%.

These numbers suggest that for a significant portion of victims, the psychological injury is not a short-term shock but a condition that lingers for months or longer.

A global picture: the financial and human cost of scams

The mental health consequences Which? describes are not confined to the UK. A Gallup poll estimated that scams cost US victims $68 billion in 2025, equivalent to an average of $186 million stolen every single day. Reporting on those findings, Al Jazeera noted that among adults in households affected by scams, more than a quarter (28%) said the experience had a very negative impact on their mental health or wellbeing, with a further 45% describing the impact as moderately negative. Taken together, that means nearly three quarters of affected households in the US reported some degree of lasting psychological harm, a pattern that maps closely onto what Which? is now documenting in the UK.

What Which? wants from tech companies and regulators

Which? used the research to renew its call for technology companies to do more to tackle scams on their platforms. Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, said: ‘Fraud takes a serious toll on victims’ stress levels and mental health as well as their finances, and many were left too ashamed to tell the people closest to them. Despite the financial harm and human misery they cause, we believe that the tech giants who profit from scams on their platforms will not take enough action against fraudsters unless they are legally compelled to do so.’

A Meta spokesperson told Which?: ‘Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet. We fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services.’

An Ofcom spokesperson told Which? that combating online fraud is ‘a priority’, adding that tech firms ‘don’t have to wait, they can start making improvements for their users now’, and that sites and apps failing to meet their legal duties ‘can expect to face serious consequences’ once new rules come into force. Ofcom said it is ‘working at pace to implement new rules on paid-for fraudulent ads.’

Which? continues to press for those legal obligations to be introduced, arguing that voluntary action has so far not been sufficient to protect people from fraud or from the mental health consequences that follow it.

Brendan Carey

Brendan Carey spent sixteen years in education before he started writing about it. He trained as a secondary school computing teacher, ran an ICT department for a decade, and spent his last years as a digital learning lead at a multi-academy trust trying to get procurement budgets to match curriculum ambitions. He writes about edtech, digital skills, curriculum policy, and the reality of teaching technology in schools where the Wi-Fi drops out during inspections. He knows what works in a classroom and what works in a sales demo, and they are rarely the same thing. Brendan lives in Leeds. He has opinions about the computing curriculum that he considers constructive and Ofsted would consider robust.