Mexican cartels are taking away $1.3 billion sips from the economy through fear tor.

The owner hung up and didn’t answer the phone for days. However, the following week, when another call came, on courage and digging, the owner told the caller that he would not pay. “Well, prepare Face the outcomeA voice said.

Years of threat escalated, visits from fools and armed robbers demanded anonymity in fear of retaliation and decided to close the store, which his grandfather had opened in 1936.

Fright tor is strangled a Mexican business. It is, but not all, linked to a powerful organized crime group in Mexico. some Large companies When you eat it as a cost to run your business, many small things are forced to close.

Coparmex, the Mexican Employers Association, said the forced cost business will go from $1.3 billion to about $1.3 billion in 2023. Other major crimes have fallen this year, but continued to rise 10% nationwide in the first quarter.

in Mexico Citythe number of reported cases of terror almost doubled in the first five months of 2025, up from 249 in the same period last year. According to federal crime data, this is the highest total at this point in the last six years.

Reports to the police are not going anywhere

After the first call in 2019, the shopkeeper forced the employee to stop answering calls for eight months. Things went quiet, but in early 2020, two men came to the store and asked for payment. The owner slid down pretending to be a shopper.

In 2021, weekly calls for money in exchange for “security” were resumed. Under the advice of his lawyer, he eventually stopped going to the store and instead managed everything remotely.

In one of several robbers, his employee was restrained at a muzzle, tied up and locked up in the toilet, and the burglar took money from the register.

Finally, after two years of threats and robbery, he reported it to the authorities. Investigators demanded evidence from him that he could not provide because the threat was always verbally, he said. The investigation went anywhere.

Only the reported percentage of terr cases

The reported cases of fear tor are only a small part of reality.

Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography estimated some of it 97% of cases of fear tor have been reported 2023.

Reports are low due to the combination of fear and skepticism that the authorities would do something.

Mexico City Police Chief Pablo Vazquez Camacho said in an interview with the Associated Press that police are receiving more reports of fear tor, but they realized they haven’t heard anything more. “We can’t solve anything we haven’t even seen or reported,” Vazquez said.

The issue was “established” by Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, president of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, in Mexico, particularly in the capital.

Daniel Bernardy, whose family has been running a popsicle shop at the History Center for 85 years, has resigned to the situation. “There’s not much to do,” he said. “I pay when I have to.”

Last month, the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had set up a special prosecutor’s office to investigate and prosecute fear tor.

Pay or die

In July, President Claudia Sinbaum said she would propose laws that would empower the government to pursue terror.

This week, her administration also announced a national strategy to address fear tor. I have a phone number anonymously reporting a scary tor. The ability to immediately cancel telephone numbers related to forced calls. Local anti-expansion units to investigate the incident and involvement of the Mexican financial information unit to freeze bank accounts associated with the Frightor.

Nationwide, the number of cases of terror has increased by more than 6% per year.

The rapid expansion of fear tor has to do with the large sums produced for organized crime, and, among other things, draws in the country’s most powerful drug cartels. The new generation of Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels “are one of the splits in their criminal portfolio,” said security analyst David Saucedo.

And the cartel involved Little Time Crimes Take advantage of fear And run your own little terror racket, pretending to be associated with a larger organized crime group.

The owner of a men’s clothing store in Mexico City had no idea who was forcing him. However, without the help of the authorities, he felt lonely and exposed. The threat would become stronger and if he didn’t pay he would kill him.

The owner recalled that a nearby restaurant, which opened around the same time as his store, was closed after the owner was killed after it probably didn’t pay the request for fear tor.

So in December 2023 he saw no other options other than closing. Little by little he saw the old furniture brought from the store and saw his father handed it to him as his grandfather handed it to his father.

“When I closed, I felt very sad and then I was so angry to think I could still continue, but I wasn’t afraid so I couldn’t,” he said. “You’re working for your life to help them destroy it.”