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

MEXICO CITY (AP) — 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's 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.

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, the owner 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 robbers 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.

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 Vázquez 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,” Vázquez 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.

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.”

A K-9 police dog sniffs the ground at a park in Mexico City, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexico City police patrol a neighborhood in Mexico City, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexico City's Secretary of Security Pablo Vázquez Camacho gives an interview in his office in Mexico City, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Pedestrians traverse Francisco I. Madero Avenue in downtown Mexico City, Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

A soldier patrols a street in downtown Mexico City, Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss investigators believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles started a fire in a bar at an Alpine ski resort that left 40 people dead and another 119 injured during a New Year’s celebration.

Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar in southwestern Switzerland in the early hours of Thursday.

Officials believe the candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, ignited the fire when they came too close to the bar's ceiling. Authorities planned to look into whether the material on the ceiling that was designed to muffle sound conformed with regulations.

The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue. Overnight, the Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.

Here’s what we know:

The blaze broke out about 1:30 a.m. Thursday during a holiday celebration inside the Le Constellation bar.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female colleague on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

People tried to escape from a nightclub area in the basement, up a flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.

A young man at the scene said people smashed windows to escape, BFMTV reported. He said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames.

Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, rushed to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the inferno. He described a scene of people trapped on the ground, severely injured and burned.

“I have seen horror and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Campolo told French broadcaster TF1.

Investigators will examine whether sparklers were permitted for use in the bar. They will also look at the safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers, escape routes, and compliance with regulations, Valais canton Attorney General Béatrice Pilloud said Friday.

She also warned of possible prosecutions if there was any criminal liability involving individuals.

“If this is indeed the case and these individuals are still alive, an investigation will be opened against them for negligent arson, negligent homicide, and negligent bodily harm," Pilloud said.

Swiss officials described the blaze as a likely flashover, meaning that it triggered the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently.

The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country and elsewhere in Europe.

Of the 119 injured, 113 have been identified, officials said Friday.

The injured include 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said Friday. The nationalities of 14 people remain unclear.

The severity of the burns has made it very difficult to identify bodies, bringing fresh agony for families who now must hand over DNA samples to authorities. In some cases, wallets and any ID inside turned to ash in the flames.

Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old golfer who competed internationally, is officially listed as one of Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle, Sebastiano Galeppini, told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation announced on its website that he had died.

Top-flight French soccer team FC Metz said one of its trainee players, 19-year-old Tahirys Dos Santos, was badly burned and has been transferred by plane to Germany for treatment.

On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who remained unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips about the whereabouts of the missing.

The nearby regional hospital in Sion took in a flood of victims from the fire. Its general director, Eric Bonvin, recounted how staff scrambled to determine the extent of people’s injuries.

The hospital — in the heart of the Alps and no stranger to winter sports accidents — was well staffed for the end of the year, when crowds flock to the mountains. On top of that, many colleagues who had not been scheduled to work rushed in to lend a hand.

Still the hospital, which is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the resort by air, quickly hit full capacity, authorities said, taking in dozens of seriously injured people in just three hours.

By Friday afternoon, most had transferred to other hospitals, with medical evacuation flights leaving from Sion’s airport, while others had been discharged, Bonvin said.

With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit.

The resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final events before the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.

The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club, down the street from the bar, stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.

Dazio reported from Berlin and Leicester reported from Sion, Switzerland. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

People lay flowers near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/ Antonio Calanni)

People mourn behind flowers and letters near the sealed off Le Constellation bar, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/ Antonio Calanni)

People light candles near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/ Antonio Calanni)

A police officer helps a boy to light a candle near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

Police officers inspect the area where a fire broke out at the Le Constellation bar and lounge leaving people dead and injured, during New Year’s celebration, in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)