He closed his store after years of threats. Why Mexico's extortion problem is getting worse

MEXICO CITY — It started with a phone call to a men's clothing store in the heart of Mexico City's historic center. ''I need you to put together 10,000 pesos ($500) for me weekly, or else we'll have to do something,'' the voice said.

The owner hung up and didn't answer the phone again for days. But when another call came the following week, in a surge of courage and indignation the owner told the caller he wouldn't pay, that the money demanded would have been half the store's daily income. ''Well, prepare to face the consequences,'' the voice said.

Several years of escalating threats, visits from goons and armed robberies followed until the shop owner, who requested anonymity because he still fears retaliation, decided to close the store his grandfather had opened in 1936.

Extortion is strangling businesses in Mexico. Much, but not all, of it is linked to Mexico powerful organized crime groups. While some larger companies eat it as the cost of doing business, many smaller ones are forced to close.

The Mexican Employers' Association, Coparmex, says extortion cost businesses some $1.3 billion in 2023. And this year, while other major crimes are descending, extortion continues to rise, up 10% nationally in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.

In Mexico City, the number of reported extortion cases nearly doubled in the first five months of 2025 to 498, up from 249 for the same period last year. It's the highest total at this point in the year in the past six years, according to federal crime data.

A report to police goes nowhere

After the first call in 2019, the store owner had his employees stop answering the phone for eight months. Things quieted, but in early 2020, two men came to the shop and demanded payment. The owner pretended to be a shopper and slipped out.

In 2021, the weekly calls demanding money in exchange for ''security'' resumed. Under advice of his attorneys, eventually stopped going into the shop, instead managing everything remotely.

In one of several robberies, his employees were held at gunpoint, tied up and locked in a bathroom, while the thieves took money from the cash register.

Finally, after two years of threats and robberies, he reported it to authorities. Investigators demanded proof from him that he couldn't provide because the threats were always verbal, he said. The investigation went nowhere.

Only fraction extortion cases reported

Reported extortion cases are only a small fraction of the reality.

Mexico's National Institute for Statistics and Geography estimated that some 97% of extortion cases were not reported in 2023.

Reporting is low because of a combination of fear and skepticism that authorities will do something.

Mexico City police chief Pablo Vásquez Camacho said in an interview with AP that police were receiving more reports of extortion, but recognized that they still weren't hearing about many more. ''We can't solve something that we're not even seeing or that isn't being reported,'' Vásquez said.

The problem, said Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, president of the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce, ''has become entrenched'' in Mexico and especially the capital in recent years.

Daniel Bernardi, whose family has run a popsicle shop in the historic center for 85 years, was resigned to the situation. ''There isn't much to do,'' he said. "You pay when you have to pay."

Last month, the Mexico City prosecutor's office announced that it was creating a special prosecutor's office to investigate and prosecute extortion.

Pay up or die

In July, President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would propose legislation giving the government greater powers to pursue extortionists.

This week, her administration also announced a national strategy to address extortion. There will be a phone number to anonymously report extortion; the power to immediately cancel phone numbers associated with extortion calls; local anti-extortion units to investigate cases and the involvement of Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit to freeze bank accounts associated with extortion.

Nationally, extortion cases are up more than 6% on the year.

Extortion's rapid expansion has to do with the significant sums it generates for organized crime, drawing in the country's most powerful drug cartels among others. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have made extortion ''one of the divisions of their criminal portfolios,'' said security analyst David Saucedo.

And with the cartels involved, small-time crooks take advantage of the fear and run their own little extortion rackets, pretending to be associated with larger organized crime groups.

The Mexico City men's clothing store owner didn't know who was extorting him. But without help from authorities, he felt alone and exposed. The threats had grown stronger and they now said they'd kill him if he didn't pay.

The owner recalled that a nearby restaurant that had opened around the same time as his own store, had closed after its owner was killed, supposedly after not paying extortion demands.

So in December 2023, he saw no other option but to close. Little by little he watched old pieces of furniture carried out of the store that his father had passed on to him as his grandfather had passed it on to his father.

''When I closed I felt very sad. And then it made me so mad to think that I could still go on, but because of fear I couldn't,'' he said. ''You work your whole life for them to destroy it.''