We explain what extortion is, how it can occur, its legal nature, the crimes it involves and various examples.
What is extortion?
Extortion is a situation in which an individual is pressured or coerced through the violence or coercion, to carry out a certain action (or inaction), with the purpose of obtaining a material benefit or of another nature. Those who engage in this practice are called extortionists and those who suffer from it, extorted.
This word comes from Latin extorquere (“To force something out”), and it is considered more or less synonymous intimidation, coercion or coercion. Extortion can occur through the threat of physical actions, such as violence towards the individual or their loved ones or the destruction of assets, or through other types of pressure, such as the obstruction of their future social or economic activities, emotional blackmail. or affective, and so on.
Similarly, it may have the objective to force someone to carry out an action in a certain way, or not to carry it out, or simply to give them a sum of money or of their own property to their extortionists.
Therefore, extortion is considered a crime by the different legal regimes of the world. It is usually punished with imprisonment or other appropriate sanctions, since it not only causes damage to the extorted person, but also corrupts or hinders the fair passage of the social relationships, economic or even legal.
Legal nature of extortion
In legal terms, extortion is classified into three simultaneous types of crime:
- Seizure crime, since there are profit motives, that is, extortion is usually carried out to obtain a material benefit of some kind.
- Crime of fraud, because by forcing the extorted person to act in one way or another within what is contemplated by the law, she is deceived and the authenticity of the events carried out is subverted.
- Crime of conditional threats, given that there is a real threat from the extortionists towards the extorted subject.
For this reason, the crime of extortion is considered a multi-offensive crime (that is, it violates different instances of the legal order (the property, the Liberty and the integrity physics), and is usually handled in a separate category of its own.
Examples of extortion
Possible examples of extortion are the following:
- The kidnapping of a relative to ask for a sum of money in exchange for their release (ransom).
- The threat of physical violence towards an individual or their loved ones in the event of a complaint to the authorities.
- The threat of dismissal from a boss towards a subordinate who possesses information that incriminates him before the law or before the authorities of the business.
- Cyber or telephone harassment towards a person to terrorize him and thus force him to change his address, renounce his aspirations or accept conditions contrary to his will in a business.
- Anonymous death threats to a judge to dissuade him from taking a certain verdict in a legal case.