A large, intimidating man walks into a profitable liquor store in the heart of the city, not to buy anything but to offer "protection" to the shopkeeper (for a weekly fee, of course). She declines, but he insists. The man casually lists the names of her four children and mentions that he would hate to see anything "bad" happen to them. The shopkeeper relents and reluctantly agrees to pay him a weekly fee. She has become a victim of extortion.
Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force or threat of violence, property damage, harm to reputation, or unfavorable government action. Extortion is often charged as a felony in most states. Usually, states will set the severity of the charge based on the dollar amount extorted from the victim. Lower values can lead to less serious charges (even misdemeanor charges).
extortion
Blackmail is a form of extortion in which the threat is to expose embarrassing and damaging information to family, friends, or the public. Inherent in this common form of extortion is the threat to expose the details of someone's private life to the public unless some form of payment is exchanged.
Extortion can take place over the telephone, via mail, text, email, or other computer or wireless communication. If any method of interstate commerce is used in the extortion, it can be a federal crime.
Nearly all extortion statutes criminalize a threat against the person or property of the victim. Threats to harm the victim's friends or relatives may also be included. It is not necessary for a threat to involve physical injury. It may be sufficient to threaten to accuse another person of a crime or to expose a secret that would result in public embarrassment or ridicule. The threat does not have to relate to an unlawful act.
Other types of threats sufficient to constitute extortion include those to harm the victim's business and those to either testify against the victim or withhold testimony necessary to their defense or claim in an administrative proceeding or a lawsuit. Many statutes also provide that any threat to harm another person in their career or reputation is extortion.
While some may believe that extortion only happens in smoky backrooms or among shady mobster characters, it can also happen in the modern digital world. Cyber extortion is a new way for criminals to find victims and ensnare them via their keyboards or smartphones.
If your heated discussions with a business associate, a client, a friend, or a family member cross the line and your words are taken as a threat to gain money or any other sort of advantage, then the police could arrest you and charge you with extortion.
The verb extort is commonly used in this literal way, but it can also be used in a more general or figurative way meaning to overcharge for something or to obtain through relentless and unreasonable demands. These senses liken such actions to the actual crime of extortion, as in The way they raise tuition every semester is extortion, if you ask me.
A federal jury convicted a Puerto Rican man today of extortion and obstruction of justice related to his involvement in a scheme to obtain money in exchange for preventing the release of chat messages involving senior officials in the Government of Puerto Rico.
Díaz Colón was convicted in the District of Puerto Rico of one count of attempted extortion, one count of interstate extortion, and one count of obstruction of justice. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5 and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the top counts. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Kevin Tomilson was arrested and accused of extortion of Jill Hertzberg and Jill Eber. The Jills had been manipulating their listing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) website used for real estate agents and brokers. When they presented him with a check for $400,000 to make his threat go away, he demanded double and was subsequently arrested.
CoA arises in extortion where with malicious intent the defendant causes injury to the plaintiff by forcing or compelling the latter to do or to abstain from doing an act against the will of the plaintiff. Penalties for extortion are mentioned hereunder:
It was observed that, it is the responsibility of the prosecution to demonstrate that there was a malicious threat of harm against a person that was transmitted to compel that person to act against his will or stop from acting to prove extortion. Additionally, while though generally speaking, a claim of extortion cannot be based on a threat to carry out an act that a person has a legal right to do, one may not threaten to carry out an otherwise legitimate act to further his own financial interests.
There are various areas where extortion could be observed such as in commercial or business cases, family cases, property cases etc. It ranges from blackmail to cyber extortion. Extortion claims are frequent in the workplace and are categorized as white-collar crimes. Other extortion allegations occur in a domestic setting between ex-lovers and might be categorized as a crime of passion or domestic violence. The CoA for extortion is sufficed wherever all the elements of extortion are present.
Single extortion involves deploying the ransomware, which then encrypts and bars access to files. The operators then demand payment from the affected organization in exchange for decrypting the files. This had been the case even in the early days of ransomware.
What makes double extortion tricky to deal with is that even when a victim company could restore all lost data, the threat of having sensitive information publicized remains. This was the case with a video game development company that was able to restore its data from backup but still had to struggle with the theft of source codes and other sensitive information, which were later released on a site associated with Babuk Locker.
Triple extortion follows a straightforward formula: adding DDoS attacks to the aforementioned encryption and data exposure threats. These attacks could overwhelm a server or a network with traffic, which in turn could halt and further disrupt operations.
This was first performed by SunCrypt and RagnarLocker operators in the latter half of 2020. Avaddon soon followed suit. Malicious actors behind REvil are also looking into including DDoS attacks in their extortion strategy.
Different ransomware families use different levels of extortion; some implement only the first phase, while others are dabbling in fourth-phase strategies. Also, these levels are not always performed in order, as in the case of Clop, which went straight from double extortion to quadruple extortion.
How do gangs compete for extortion? Using detailed data on individual extortion payments to gangs and sales from a leading wholesale distributor of consumer goods and pharmaceuticals in El Salvador, we document evidence on the determinants of extortion payments and the effects of extortion on firms and consumers. We exploit a 2016 non-aggression pact between gangs to examine how collusion affects extortion in areas where gangs previously competed. While the non-aggression pact led to a large reduction in competition and violence, we find that it increased extortion rates by 15% to 20%. Much of the increase in extortion rates was passed-through to retailers and consumers: retailers experienced an increase in delivery fees leading to an increase in consumer prices. In particular, we find an increase in prices for pharmaceutical drugs and a corresponding increase in hospital visits for chronic illnesses. The results point to an unintended consequence of policies that reduce competition between criminal organizations.
Under current law, it is criminal extortion to threaten to report another person's immigration status to law enforcement to induce the threatened person to give the person money or another item of value. The act adds to that version of criminal extortion a prohibition against threatening to report a person's immigration status to law enforcement to induce the threatened person to perform an act or refrain from performing a lawful act.(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
Extortion occurs when someone attempts to obtain money, property, or other valuables by threatening to commit violence, accusing the victim of a crime, or revealing private or damaging information about the victim. Both state laws and federal law make extortion a crime.
Traditionally the crime of extortion only covered actions done by public or government officials. Today, however, this unlawful act applies to the conduct of private citizens as well. (In some states, extortion involves public officials' actions, while blackmail applies to those of private citizens, even though the conduct is similar.) Let's break down the elements of extortion.
The type of property an offender tries to obtain when using extortion encompasses almost anything that has value. However, the property doesn't need to be actual physical property or have a dollar value. It's also not necessary for the accused to actually deprive the victim of property, as attempting to extort property constitutes a crime as well.
Courts have held that the property involved in extortion can include such property as cash, tangible goods, liquor licenses, debts, and even agreements not to compete in business. Typically, sexual acts are covered, though some states have specific laws that govern sexual extortion, such as Arizona.
Extortion requires the actor to make some type of threat that states an intention to commit an injury or harmful action against the victim. The threat itself must be able to cause fear in the victim. The fear can be based on almost anything, such as the fear of violence, economic loss, social stigma, deportation, or anything else that might cause the victim to act or hand over the property. For example, under California's law, a person can commit extortion by threatening to injure the victim or another person, accuse the victim of a crime or of some other disgraceful conduct, expose a secret, or report a person to immigration. 2ff7e9595c
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