Mexico City (AP) – It started by phone call to the clothing store in the heart of the historic center of Mexico City. “I need you to assemble 10,000 pesos ($ 500) a week for me, otherwise we’ll have to do something,” the voice said.
The owner hung up and did not respond to the phone again for several days. But when the next week came another call, in the increase in courage and indignation, the owner told the caller that it would not be true that the required money would be half the daily revenue of the trade. “Well, get ready for.” face the consequences“He said.
Several years of growing threats, visiting Goons and armed robbery until the shop owner asked for anonymity because he was still worried about retaliation measures, he decided to conclude a shop that his grandfather opened in 1936.
The blackmail is the strangulation of businesses in Mexico. Much, but not all, is associated with powerful groups of organized crime in Mexico. While some larger companies Eat it as business costs, many smaller ones are forced to close.
The Association of Mexican Employers, Coparmex, says that the blackmail of businesses in 2023 in 2023. And this year, while other main crimes are falling, blackmail in the first quarter is growing by 10% of the national compared to the same period last year.
IN Mexico CityThe number of reporting cases was almost doubled in the first five months of 2025 to 498, out of 249 for the same period last year. According to federal crime data, this is the highest sum at this point of the year in the last six years.
After the first call in 2019, the store owner had his employees stop responding to the phone for eight months. Things calmed down, but at the beginning of 2020 two men came to the store and demanded payment. The owner pretended to be shoppers and slipped.
In 2021, a weekly call requires money in exchange for “safety”. According to the Council of his lawyers, he eventually stopped going to the store and instead managed to far away.
In one of several robberies, his employees were held at the shooting range, tied and locked in the bathroom, while the thieves took money from the cash register.
In the end, after two years of threats and robbery, he reported it to the authorities. Investigators demanded proof from him that he could not provide, because the threats were always verbal, he said. The investigation was not going anywhere.
Reported blackmail is only a small fraction of reality.
The Mexican National Institute for Statistics and Geography estimated that some 97% of the extortion cases have not been reported In 2023.
The report is low due to a combination of fear and skepticism that the authorities will do something.
Police chief in Mexico City Pablo Vaquez Camacho said in an interview with AP that the police were receiving more news about blackmail, but acknowledged that many others still could not hear. “We can’t solve something we don’t see nor is it reported,” Vaquez said.
The problem, said Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, President of the Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City, “rooted” in Mexico and especially in the capital in recent years.
Daniel Bernardi, whose family operated a trade in ice lollies in a historic center for 85 years, was resigned from the situation. “There’s not much to do,” he said. “You pay when you have to pay.”
Last month, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Mexico City announced that it was creating a special prosecutor’s office to investigate and prosecute blackmail.
In July, President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would propose legislation that gives the government more power to persecute earnings.
This week, its administration also announced the national strategy for the solution of blackmail. There will be a phone number for anonymously announcement of blackmail; force immediately to cancel the phone numbers associated with blackmail call; Local units against expanding for investigation of cases and involvement of the Mexican financial intelligence unit in freezing bank accounts associated with blackmail.
At national level, blackmail in the year is more than 6%.
The rapid expansion of blackmail is related to the significant amounts that it creates for organized crime, and among other things draws into the strongest drug cartels in the country. The new generations of Sinaloa and Jalisco have created blackmail “One of the divisions of his criminal portfolios,” said security analyst David Saucedo.
And with the cartels connected Little fraudsters use fear And they run their own small blackmail missiles and pretend to be associated with larger groups of organized crime.
The owner of the clothing store in Mexico City did not know who was blackmailing him. But without the help of the authorities he felt alone and exposed. The threats increased and now they said they would kill him if he did not pay.
The owner remembered that the nearby restaurant, which opened at about the same time with its own shop, closed after its owner was killed, allegedly after he did not pay the requirements for extortion.
In December 2023, he did not see any possibility other than to close. He gradually watched the old pieces of furniture that won from the store that his father gave him when his grandfather handed him over to his father.
“When I closed myself, I felt very sad. And then it was so crazy when I thought I could continue, but I couldn’t because of fear,” he said. “You work all your life to destroy it.”
(Tagstotranslate) blackmail
