Despite having a law since 2008 that criminalises computer fraud and a Specialised Fiscal Unit for Cybercrime, the Argentine justice system always arrives too late. Digital fraudsters execute their operations in milliseconds: a fraudulent transfer can pass through four virtual wallets in less than ten minutes before being converted to cash.
Legal access to the digital trail of a suspicious transaction requires weeks of paperwork. The prosecutor must issue an official document, the entities have deadlines to respond and, if the funds crossed borders, the process must go through channels of international judicial cooperation. By the time the records are obtained, the fraudster has already launched another campaign and the trail has gone cold.
A survey by the Public Bar Association of the Federal Capital published in January 2026 revealed that 75% of Buenos Aires lawyers consider the timeframe for processing legal cases "slow" or "very slow", attributing the delays to lack of staff efficiency and organisational failures in the courts. Cybercrime, which requires a technical response speed that most courts do not possess, faces an even more unfavourable situation.
43% of Argentines fell victim to digital fraud in 2025 and early 2026, a figure that has grown nearly five times in four years. There is a bill to create a national register of accounts used in scams that would allow real-time blocking, as happens in Brazil, but the bill remains in committee.
Victims know that reporting often does not serve to recover anything. However, each report provides data on the true scale of the problem. Without that data, experts point out that no public policy is possible and the percentage of victimisation continues to rise.
