Kidnapping and extortion in Mexico no longer center on a handful of high-profile foreign hostages. Conventional kidnappings have fallen from their Covid-era peak, but the market has widened: more lower-value local targets, shorter negotiations, and a much larger extortion economy that now ranks as the crime most frequently experienced by Mexican businesses. In January 2026, an armed convoy abducted ten mine workers from a camp in Concordia, Sinaloa; nine were later found dead and no public ransom demand ever surfaced. The case is extreme, but it shows what powerful local factions can do in a setting where outsiders lack ground truth.

 

Official files and victimization surveys point in the same direction, even as they understate the problem. INEGI’s ENVIPE survey found that 43.5 percent of kidnappings in 2024 lasted less than 24 hours, while 98.1 percent of kidnappings and 97 percent of extortions that year were unreported or never became an investigation file. Recorded extortion investigations rose by about 74 percent between 2015 and 2025. The burden is geographically concentrated: in 2025, eight entities accounted for 76.1 percent of extortion investigations and eight for 63.4 percent of kidnapping investigations, together only twelve of Mexico’s 32 federal entities. Telephone and virtual schemes can land anywhere; cobro de piso and coercive abductions cluster where criminal groups can monitor, tax, or punish on the ground.

 

This report maps that market as a set of distinct practices rather than a single crime. It sets out a working typology (conventional kidnapping for ransom, coercive and signaling abduction, express kidnapping, virtual kidnapping, and extortion) and traces how tactics change with motive, from negotiated payment to recruitment, retaliation, territorial control, or immediate theft. It then shows why attributing an incident to a “cartel” is rarely enough: Sinaloa, CJNG, the Gulf Cartel’s successor factions, Cárteles Unidos, La Nueva Familia Michoacana and others sit atop a much larger field of factions, plaza bosses, cells, contractors, and independent crews. Drawing on Merrill Herzog ground sources as well as public data, the report identifies the exposure factors that raise or lower targeting risk (perceived value and leverage, physical access, and available information) while stressing that residual risk cannot be eliminated. Underreporting, it concludes, does not only hide the scale of harm; it blurs patterns, weakens response, and leaves businesses and communities operating in a low-information environment.

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