Mexican City (AP) – It began with a phone call to a men’s clothing store in the heart of the Mexico Historical Center. “I need to make me 10,000 pesos every week ($ 500), otherwise we will have to do something,” the voice said.
The owner hung and did not respond to the phone again for a few days. But when another call came next week, because of courage and resentment, the owner told the caller that he would not pay, that the money required would have been half a day’s day of income. “Well, get ready to face the consequences,” the voice said.
For several years, the threats, goons and armed robbery visits followed as long as the store owner, who asked for anonymity, decided to close the shop that his grandfather opened in 1936.
Property extortion is a strangling business in Mexico. Many, but not all of it is related to powerful groups of organized crimes of Mexico. While some larger companies eat it as business costs, many smaller ones are forced to close.
The Mexican Employers’ Association Coparmex says that 2023 Ecstor prices cost around $ 1.3 billion. This year, and other major crimes are decreasing, and the extortion continues to increase – in the first quarter, national level increases by 10%compared to the same period last year.
The number of extortion reported in Mexico in the first five 2025 Up to 498 months increased almost twice as compared to 249 in the same period last year. According to federal crime data, this is the largest amount this year in the last six years.
Report to the police will not disappear anywhere
After the first call in 2019 The store owner allowed his employees to stop responding to the phone for eight months. Things went silent, but in 2020 In the beginning, two men came to the store and demanded to pay. The owner pretended to be the buyer and slipped.
2021 Weekly calls require money in exchange for “security” updated. When advising lawyers, the owner eventually stopped going to the store, instead of managing everything remotely.
In one of the several robberies, his staff were kept at a weapon point, bound and locked in the bathroom, and the robbers took money from the cash register.
Finally, after two years of threats and robberies, he reported it to the authorities. Investigators demanded that he could not provide because the threats were always verbal, he said. The study did not disappear anywhere.
Only cases of extortion of fractional assets have been reported
It is reported that cases of extortion are only a small part of reality.
The Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography estimated that in 2023 About 97% of property extortion was not reported.
The message is low due to the combination of fear and skepticism that the authorities will do something.
Mexico’s city police chief Pablo Vázquez Camacho interview told the AP that the police were receiving more reports of extortion, but admitted that they still had not heard much more. “We can’t solve what we don’t even see or not report it,” Vázquez said.
The problem, said the President of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, has “established himself” in Mexico and especially in the capital in recent years.
Daniel Bernardi, whose family has been led by a popsicle store at the historic center for 85 years, has been resigned. “There’s not much to do,” he said. “You pay when you have to pay.”
Last month, the Mexican City Prosecutor’s Office announced that it was creating a special prosecutor’s office to investigate and prosecute.
To pay or die
In July, President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would propose laws to give the government a greater authority to seek extortion specialists.
This week, its administration also announced a national extortion strategy. There will be a phone number anonymously to report asset extortion; Power immediately cancel the telephone numbers related to the extortion calls; Local anti-statement units to investigate cases and participate in the Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit to freeze bank accounts related to extortion.
National -scale extortion cases increased by more than 6%a year.
The rapid expansion of property extortion is related to significant amounts it creates for organized crime, including drawing in the most powerful drug cartels. The new generation of cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco have made extortion “one of their criminal portfolio units,” said security analyst David Saucedo.
In the presence of cartels, small -time scams use fear and control their small assault rackets, pretending to be related to larger organized crime groups.
The owner of the Mexican men’s clothing store did not know who squeezed it. But without the help of the authorities, he felt alone and exposed. The threats have become stronger and now they said they would kill him if he did not pay.
The owner recalled that a nearby restaurant opened at about the same time as his own store was closed after his owner was killed, allegedly not paying the asset extortion requirements.
So 2023 December He did not see any other possibilities but to close. Little by little, he watched the old furniture deported from the store, which his father handed over to him when his grandfather handed him to his father.
“When I closed, I felt very sad. And then I was so angry to think that I could continue, but I couldn’t,” he said. “You work for a lifetime to destroy them.”