As social-media use, and thus social-media sharing, have grown more popular, kidnappers and extortionists have seized on resources like Facebook and Twitter to identify new targets.
Drug trafficking has been the primary focus of Mexican cartels, providing most of their obscene profits and motivating much of the bloodshed they’ve caused.
But as cartels have expanded into other areas of operations, and as law-enforcement efforts have forced them to seek new moneymaking ventures, those cartels have started kidnapping and extorting Mexicans with more frequency.
And social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been a boon to these new criminal endeavors.
“Well, the extortion business is a profitable one for organized crime. And in countries like Mexico, it’s sadly pretty common that people get these threats,” Tom Wainwright, the author of “Narconomics” and the Economist’s former reporter in Mexico City, told Business Insider.
“And the new way of doing this, of course, is by social media.”
“People get messages though Facebook or through Twitter. And the thing about Facebook is that of course the people who are extorting you know about your family,” Wainwright said. “They’ve seen pictures of them, and they can intimidate you with these details. And so what we’re seeing is an increase in that kind of extortion.”
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