After years of threats, he closed the store. Why is the ransomware problem in Mexico becoming more and more serious

Mexico City (AP) – The phone number started at the men’s clothing store in the center of the historic center of Mexico City. “I need you to prepare 10,000 pesos ($500) for me a week or we have to do something.”

The master hung up the phone and didn’t answer the phone again for a few days. But when another call came in the next week, in courage and indignation, the owner told the caller that he would not pay and the money asked for would be half of the store’s daily income. “Okay, prepare to face the consequences,” the voice said.

After several years of threat escalating, Goons and the armed robbery visit, until the store owner (shop owner) demanded anonymity because he was still worried about revenge, he decided to close the store that his grandfather opened in 1936.

Ransomware is strangling Mexico’s business. It has something to do with Mexico’s powerful organized crime groups, but not all. While some larger companies use it as a business cost, many smaller companies are forced to close.

Coparmex, a Mexican employer association, said that ransomware companies cost about $1.3 billion in 2023. This year, while other major crimes are falling, ransomware continued to grow, up 10% nationwide in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.

In Mexico City, the number of reported ransomware cases reached 498 in the first five months of 2025, up from 249 in the same period last year. That’s the highest total in the past six years, according to federal crime data.

Reports to the police are nowhere to go

After the first conference call in 2019, the store owner asked his employees to stop answering the phone for eight months. Things were quiet, but in early 2020, two men came to the store to ask for payment. The owner pretends to be a shopper and slips out.

In 2021, weekly summons money to demand in exchange for “safety”. At the advice of his lawyer, eventually stop entering the store instead of managing everything remotely.

During several robberies, his employees were detained at gunpoint and tied to the bathroom, while the thief took the money from the cash register.

Eventually, after two years of threats and robbery, he reported it to the authorities. He said investigators asked him to provide him with evidence that he could not provide because the threat was always verbal. There is nowhere to go for investigation.

Only reported score ransomware cases

The reported blackmail situation is only a small part of the reality.

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico estimates that no approximately 97% of ransom cases were reported in 2023.

Reports are low because of the combination of fear and skepticism, what the authorities will do.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the city’s police chief Pablo Vásquez Camacho said police were receiving more ransomware reports but realized they still didn’t hear more. “We can’t solve what we didn’t even see, or weren’t reported,” Vásquez said.

The President of the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco said the issue is in Mexico, especially in the capital in recent years.

Daniel Bernardi’s family has been running a popsicle shop in the historic center for 85 years and he quit the situation. “There’s not a lot to do,” he said. “You have to pay when you pay.”

Last month, the Mexico City Attorney’s Office announced that it was creating a special prosecutor’s office to investigate and prosecute blackmail.

Pay or die

In July, President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would propose legislation that would give the government greater power to pursue extortionists.

This week, her administration also announced a national strategy to resolve ransomware. There will be an anonymous report of ransomware; immediately cancel the power to the phone number associated with the ransomware call; investigate the case and involvement of the Mexican financial intelligence department to freeze the place of bank accounts related to the ransomware to investigate the case.

Nationally, the increase in ransomware cases is more than 6%.

The rapid expansion of blackmail has been linked to the massive amounts it generates for organized crime, drawing on the country’s most powerful drug cartel. Security analyst David Saucedo said the extortion of the new generation of cartels in Sinaloa and Jalisco is “one of the divisions of its crime portfolio.”

With the involvement of cartels, the little scammers exploited their fear and took on their own little blackmail rackets, pretending to be associated with large organized criminal groups.

The owner of a Mexican city clothing store has no idea who is blackmailing him. But without the help of the authorities, he felt lonely and exposed. The threat became even stronger and now they say that if he didn’t pay, they would kill him.

The owner recalled that a nearby restaurant opened around the same store as his own and closed after its owner was killed, said to have not paid for the need for extortion.

So in December 2023, he had no other choice but to close. He watched little by little as the old furniture passed on his grandfather to his father to him, and his grandfather passed it on to his father.

“I felt so sad when I closed it. Then I thought I could still move on, which made me angry, but I couldn’t do it because of fear.” “You destroyed it for them all your life.”