How Cryptocurrency Has Changed the Scamming Game

UTICA, N.Y. -- Regardless of the currency type, scams can come in the same forms, but scams involving cryptocurrency become close to untraceable.

"From a scam perspective, the goal is always to gain money in an untraceable format," said Tony Martino, the president of Anjolen Cybersecurity.

There are cryptocurrency scams that are similar to ones that use the U.S. dollar, like scams involving an alleged romance or the "too-good-to-be-true" offer of a lifetime.

But Martino said cryptocurrency can change the mechanism of how the money gets moved. Whereas fiat currency can take an entire day to transfer the money across the world, digital currency allows fraudulent actors to move the money instantaneously.

In the context of fiat currency, it is not always easy to move it to a foreign country, especially when banks won't do business with countries known for high levels of fraud, Martino said.

This gives time to conduct an investigation and potentially stop the transaction if it is determined to be suspicious.

"With cryptocurrency, we're literally talking about seconds," he said. "There just simply is not enough time to change it."

Cryptocurrency has little to no regulations, he said, because of two main problems.