Reports of extortion are rising again in Peru, suggesting the crime is becoming increasingly common and victims are more willing to seek help from the authorities.

Peruvian police received 3,921 extortion reports in January and February this year, a roughly 7% increase compared with 3,669 in the first two months of 2024, according to Peru’s national police. 

Several recent high-profile incidents have pushed the issue to the top of the political agenda. A grenade attack at a country club left 11 wounded on March 15 and a popular singer was killed in a similar attack the following day. Extortion gangs have also targeted victims who were previously largely immune, including schools.

“We are in a phase where extortion is much closer to small and micro-entrepreneurs, families, homes, and for quite small amounts [of money],” Nicolás Zevallos Trigoso, director of Peruvian non-governmental organization the Institute of Criminology and Studies on Violence (Instituto de Criminología y Estudios sobre la Violencia), told InSight Crime.

Even though reports of extortion nationwide dropped around 3% last year, 2024 still saw more than six times as many extortion reports made compared to 2019, with the crime registered in every department at least doubling during this period.

Some parts of the country saw even more dramatic jumps, such as the capital Lima, where reports of extortion grew almost 900% during this period.

Frustrations at the failure of authorities to address the issue have led to large protests across Peru over the past year.

InSight Crime Analysis

The increase in extortion reports likely reflects an actual growth in the incidence of the crime, but it also could be an indication of growing levels of trust in Peru’s law enforcement and justice institutions.

Institutional efforts to convince people to report extortion may have had an impact.

“The state was very intense in its campaigns to get people to report extortion from 2021 to 2023,” said Zevallos Trigoso. “In 2024, this was not done with such intensity.”

In Lima, where there is a greater state presence than in many other of Peru’s departments, reports rose dramatically compared with the rest of the country during that time frame, though they dropped by 22% in 2024, when the national average dropped only 3%.

But a drop in reports does not necessarily mean less extortion is happening. Underreporting of extortion is a widespread problem across Latin America and the Caribbean because victims often feel the police are unable or unwilling to help, or fear they may suffer reprisals for reporting the crime. Those dynamics may have been responsible for the decrease in extortion reports in 19 of Peru’s 26 departments and provinces in 2024 compared with 2023, when all but one department saw an increase.

“What we want is for reports to increase, because there is a huge underreporting,” Noam López Villanes, researcher and investigator at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, told InSight Crime.

Other official methods of measuring extortion, such as surveys carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, can also be manipulated, according to López Villanes. He told InSight Crime that intermediaries known as “chalecos” who accompany government officials to dangerous zones can impact the results, as they often have links to criminal organizations and may intimidate survey respondents.

But despite the challenges of measuring extortion via victim reporting, experts say other evidence – such as declarations from industry representatives and figures related to the number of residents considering leaving their home districts – refute the idea that extortion has decreased.

“Representatives of specific economic groups who have come together to protest in the last year because their losses are, for example 15%, 30% compared to previous years due to paying extortion,” López Villanes said. “Last year you also had four or five demonstrations in Lima, which has never happened before.”

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