The notion of extortion comes from the Latin extorsio . This is the name given to the pressure that an individual exerts on another to force him or her to act in a certain way and, in this way, obtain an economic or other type of benefit.
Extortion can consist of threats , intimidation or attacks with the aim of breaking the will or desire of the victim. It is a crime and, as such, is punishable by law.
Due to its characteristics, extortion is part of multi-offensive crimes because it attacks more than one legal asset. It not only affects the victim's property , but also his freedom and physical integrity.
It is possible to recognize different aspects of extortion. At first, the victim is intimidated and forced to act in a way that is not what they want. Then the extorted person, forced by the situation, performs the required action , with the extortioner achieving a benefit for it.
Suppose a man sees his neighbor with a mistress . Willing to take advantage of this discovery, he tells the neighbor that, if he does not start paying him 1,000 pesos a month , he will tell his wife about the infidelity. This practice constitutes extortion.
In recent years, cases of sexual extortion , also called sextortion , have increased. This crime is carried out by a person who has in their possession photos or videos of another subject who is naked or carrying out a sexual act. In exchange for not spreading the material on the Internet, he demands money , carrying out the extortion.
Extortion is a figure that is found in the group of so-called seizure crimes , since there is no profit motive , and also in the crime of fraud , since it is necessary for the passive subject to consistently participate in a business or a legal act, or that omits it. It is also correct to say that extortion is a crime of conditional threats , because the legal transaction is carried out after the active subject exercises coercion on the passive.
Here the term coercion comes into play, which is widely used in the legal and forensic fields, as well as blackmail , and that is why it is necessary to point out the similarities and differences between these two and extortion . First of all, we can say that the three are framed in a criminal typology that can lead to criminal sentences ranging from one to five years of imprisonment, if the authorities manage to prove them.
Although these three crimes may be equally intolerable and harmful to those who suffer them, for legal purposes there are clear differences between them. In the case of coercion, a subject carries out an act voluntarily but after having been intimidated by another, which usually results in the theft or theft of property (whether movable or immovable) of a third party. It is important to emphasize that this action is considered "voluntary" but is not equivalent to a crime planned and carried out with complete freedom of decision, since there is a threat that drives it.
With respect to blackmail , it is a process carried out by a person to obtain benefits by threatening a third party to spread certain information or defame them. It is not easy to find clear differences between the three crimes, although extortion is the only one that can be plural, while coercion is usually direct, and blackmail is the least violent of the two, given that it is usually carried out simply by using force. word. Authorities must carefully examine each case to understand which of these crimes they have in front of them.