Current State of Extorting Businesses

[ElDiablo]

On 6/26/2020 at 4:06 PM, Chef said:

There's a popular belief that somehow in 2020 extortion is extinct. This is an utter farce. Take a look at any major organized crime take-down in the last decade; extortion is typically within the first of the crimes mentioned in many different indictments. Is it possibly too common in Los Santos? Yeah, I would lean to agree with that. However that has to do with the fact that the balance of civilians to criminal types is pushed too far to the criminal side which leaves us with a twisted ratio. Policing is also an issue, but that's IC. Also the city isn't as large as it is in real life which leaves a fraction of the space on the map for stores and shops to exist, and also forces criminal groups to take a majority of the map where as in real life due to the larger geography, there'd be more zones that have no occupation or "turf."

 

If you read up on LA, the extortion that happens is typically through major businesses such as the porn industry OR it's in immigrant communities within the city. Most immigrant communities stick to their own people and they're very tight knit - meaning they're going to feel more pressure from their own people to act a certain way. Criminals take advantage of that knowing that for instance: a fresh Mexican immigrant family isn't going to run to the police when their shop is extorted because they don't trust the police. Which is why they likely consider getting protection in the first place, for fear that prejudice would leave them screwed if they were ever robbed or vandalized.

 

As much as we want to, we can't genuinely replicate that in our city. The problem that I see mostly is groups going too far out of their reach to commit extortion. If there's a highly popular, well profitable business that's on a particular block where you operate? 100% it makes sense that your crew would want a piece of it. HOWEVER driving half way across the city to extort a club that's nowhere near you or your people? I suggest you read up on extortion and figure your shit out, because that's not right.

 

Ideally what would be the case is there would be more diverse civilians that would have backgrounds that align with certain groups, I'll use my own faction as an example. In Little Armenia (Morningwood) we mostly get random Caucasians (an alarming number are young females which goes back to what @Bek mentioned on the previous page) setting up businesses in an ethnic enclave. In real life, these properties would be owned by immigrants mostly of a similar background to our group. Thus, we would target our own people knowing that they'd be more likely to come to an agreement with us due to our shared heritage - and less likely to run to the police in fear of becoming labeled as something nasty in our little community. Instead we deal with what exists. There's not many avenues of criminal earning that can be done in game due to the script restrictions. Unfortunately extortion is one of the biggest earning rackets that we can rely upon in game.

 

 

 

TL;DR the city demographics are not set up in a way to realistically portray how (most) extortion happens irl. The high rates of extortion are an IC problem and unfortunately it's not going away.

 

 

I agree with the ethnicity thing 100% and the extortion to be done around an organization's turf.

 

On 6/26/2020 at 7:30 PM, UTOPIA said:

Should really just ring the cops! If you're being extorted, threatened, harassed, and you're a civilian? If you really feel like there is no way to escape your circumstances, I'm sure there are plenty of detectives who would love to hear about your problems, who's causing them, etc.

 

There are a multitude of ways to escape your difficult circumstances, and though I understand it can be frustrating to be throwing away your character's hard earned cash, you also need to realize; this is a role-playing server, what happens to your character is what happens to your character. If you've invested your time in grinding out money rather than investing your time in genuine role-play? Shame on you, it deserves to be taken!

 

Why not take an alternative approach, befriend these people, get involved in some way? That's the beautiful thing about role play, you can solve your problems in hundreds of different ways, there is not just one path that can be gone down. For those of you asking for OOC intervention because you are so hopeless? I can't help but laugh at you.

 

I would like there to be a TRANSIT police and other polices, I never liked how normal cops stopped people for speeding and such. Not sure if it's appliable game-design wise but it would be a great addition so police officers could actually focus on preventing crime and such. There should also be more corruption around the local police and a special unit should exist to create real cases on factions that can't be corrupted. 

 

1 hour ago, Viebrantz said:

However, I also believe that it doesn't make sense for a faction to extort companies far away from their turfs, because there wouldn't be a way of actually keeping an eye on the extorted businesses and it would only difficult things, ended up being a pain in the ass for both parts involved. A faction can't be ubiquitous and would never have the ability of running the entire city, hence why I believe the staff must lay their eyes on this kind of RP, preventing it to be done in a poor manner. The community can also warn the staff about bad roleplays.

 

And I agree with @Shanks and @Henning when they say it is an IC issue. Still, I think that the ones who are trying to extort a company must have some subjects in their minds (sometimes an OOC one, so it doesn't become an abusive OOC relationship that will force the extorted company to vanish). Things like the size of the company (and consequently their profits) and the actual OOC capacity of making money (sometimes a company is purely RP based and can't really get the community to cooperate with it, so it ends up making a tiny amount of money) must be taken into account while RPing around extortion.

 

And as @Chief said before, the recent incorporation of bugs & wires will spice this RP, helping civilians to cooperate with the police and take down the mob and also forcing the mobsters to be more careful.

 

When people do it right, the extortion RP can be very pleasuring for both sides.

 

I also agree with that.

 

Some interesting videos;

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_crime_family

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Milano

 

The last thing the mafia wants in 2020 is being exposed at all. They are involved in at least six figure operations which a lot of times are done through legal business (and they've done this since always), you won't have an Italian organized crime group with ties to the American Cosa Nostra extorting or burning down places these days themselves, specially on the West Coast where they are even less relevant. I know this can start some debates but people need to leave the Sopranos nostalgia aside. I'm a fan of the series too btw, just let it go.

 

If the mob gets their hands dirty these days is acting as middle men on some deal and using groups under them as muscle such as the Albanian Mob or African Americans.

 

There's too much tech these days, specially in American cities and no one wants to have RICO cases on themselves at all. This applies to every modern mob which then again brings the ethnicity point back where groups stick to their own and might get people from the neighborhood in gambling debts, loan shark debts and then extorted by their own kind, cus' it's easier to control. 

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by ElDiablo

[Busch]

Never been extorted to this day, but to be honest extortion is something that does happen irl but not so much as it does here. Here I hear about other businesses getting extorted daily.

[Engelbert]

2 hours ago, Chuck Lee said:

Never been extorted to this day, but to be honest extortion is something that does happen irl but not so much as it does here. Here I hear about other businesses getting extorted daily.

Pretty much my point, ways of extortion changed. That's what I meant, I never said it doesn't exist anymore. Juuust maybe not in the way it used to. Maybe in US still does, but still not as widespread as before.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Engelbert

[Aaron_Mancuso]

The problem isn't with the extortionist the problem is with the people being extorted. If your character is too scared to go to the cops... don't and get extorted, its a roleplay server you can RP fear and loosing a couple bucks because you want to live, with that being said, we're in 2020 I doubt an OCG will merk you for calling the cops lol unless they're Albanian or MS-13 ETC (groups that don't really care about getting caught) , that's an easy RICO case. We have snitches from the 2000s running around New York and LA today like nothing happened, its very uncommon that you'd get killed but then again that's a decision YOUR character has to make because you can't control how people react, somebody might be dumb and do something stupid and they would have to deal with the consequence IC.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Aaron_Mancuso

[Caporegime]

36 minutes ago, Engelbert said:

Pretty much my point, ways of extortion changed. That's what I meant, I never said it doesn't exist anymore. Juuust maybe not in the way it used to. Maybe in US still does, but still not as widespread as before.

So I'm just suppose to take your word for it that extortion has changed or maybe it didn't in the U.S. and it's just isn't as wide spread? Well shit.

[Engelbert]

19 minutes ago, Caporegime said:

So I'm just suppose to take your word for it that extortion has changed or maybe it didn't in the U.S. and it's just isn't as wide spread? Well shit.

Well it doesn't exist where I live anymore. Not in the form as it was back in 90s. Maybe it doesn't even exist at all here. What I am saying is, that on the server it reached ridiculous level.

[Ink]

I've lived in the United States my whole life, have owned businesses, and have a pretty diverse OOC network of people across multiple states/cities who range from owning businesses to being involved in questionably legal businesses. 

You know what is not a threat any average business owner in Los Angeles has to deal with? The god damn mafia showing up and asking for chump change. This isn't the 1960's. That era is over. This isn't the heart of New York City in the early 90's. 

In the real world--at least in the most developed parts of the world--the consequences are just too high for extorting businesses. It would make no sense for criminal enterprises of any degree of professionalism to engage in petty extortion of corner shops, corporate-owned 24/7s (like what?), and so on. Real life organized crime syndicates these days engage in far more profitable and far more easily hidden criminal revenue streams, and use legal businesses to launder the income. 

This isn't Serbia. This isn't Russia. This is a representation of Los Angeles. In the United States we have a highly sophisticated, competent FBI who is dedicated almost entirely to combating racketeering. Our legal system is not thoroughly corrupt like it is in many European countries; if the FBI catches you on racketeering your ass is going away for 10-20 years at minimum. If you go and smash up a business and get caught, you've just served to expose your associates and bring heat on your organization, and for what?

I've seen people in this thread purport that extortion is "unique" roleplay. I will respectfully disagree: there is nothing unique about it. It's generic, it's boring, everyone does it, it's been on every GTA server since the beginning. It requires virtually no creativity. It doesn't create roleplay, it's a blatant display of hijacking people's roleplay. From what I've seen on this server (especially with the recent case of two legal characters being CK'd over extortion after having paid and had the price ratcheted up on them and other families come to extort them), extortion is just a one-way street to having your character treated as an ATM or otherwise harassed, beaten, threatened, sabotaged, or CK'd. This isn't fun roleplay for the people on the receiving end of it. It's not dynamic roleplay. It's scripted and for the average legal roleplayer there is no recourse.

Saying "this is an IC issue" is reductive because our game world lacks the same consequences that would realistically be in place for extortion. With how many people are extorting and how much stuff the PD has on its plate, it's unlikely there is any real opportunity for legal characters to actually get real investigative help. Unlike in real life where extortion would almost always be met with successful police action and safety for the one being extorted, in the game world a person reporting extortion is just an excuse for the faction to escalate the roleplay. 

Summary: Extortion roleplay is unoriginal, lacks creativity, is little more than bullying. It takes advantage of unrealistic parts of our game world and exploits them to give criminal characters an advantage in lieu of finding interesting, organic, and creative ways to portray realistic criminal enterprise. Currently with extortion almost all consequences fall squarely on legal characters who did not opt-in to this treatment, while very little consequences present themselves for the criminal roleplayers. It is a blatant disregard of IC fear of consequences on behalf of these criminals who know OOCly that the odds of them getting in any real legal trouble are slim, and criminal roleplayers fragrantly hide behind the CK system to allow themselves to clean up any roleplay they make a mess of. This type of roleplay is an incredibly unrealistic portrayal of the United States in the modern year and represents something more akin to developing countries or far more corrupt nations on the other side of the world.

I will finish with a scene from the Sopranos which summarizes this well enough. Notice how these two fine gangsters do not proceed to say "let me talk to da owna or I burna dis coffee shoppa down an' killa you a wife."

 

 

[Torlo]

11 minutes ago, Ink said:

I've lived in the United States my whole life, have owned businesses, and have a pretty diverse OOC network of people across multiple states/cities who range from owning businesses to being involved in questionably legal businesses. 

You know what is not a threat any average business owner in Los Angeles has to deal with? The god damn mafia showing up and asking for chump change. This isn't the 1960's. That era is over. This isn't the heart of New York City in the early 90's. 

In the real world--at least in the most developed parts of the world--the consequences are just too high for extorting businesses. It would make no sense for criminal enterprises of any degree of professionalism to engage in petty extortion of corner shops, corporate-owned 24/7s (like what?), and so on. Real life organized crime syndicates these days engage in far more profitable and far more easily hidden criminal revenue streams, and use legal businesses to launder the income. 

This isn't Serbia. This isn't Russia. This is a representation of Los Angeles. In the United States we have a highly sophisticated, competent FBI who is dedicated almost entirely to combating racketeering. Our legal system is not thoroughly corrupt like it is in many European countries; if the FBI catches you on racketeering your ass is going away for 10-20 years at minimum. If you go and smash up a business and get caught, you've just served to expose your associates and bring heat on your organization, and for what?

I've seen people in this thread purport that extortion is "unique" roleplay. I will respectfully disagree: there is nothing unique about it. It's generic, it's boring, everyone does it, it's been on every GTA server since the beginning. It requires virtually no creativity. It doesn't create roleplay, it's a blatant display of hijacking people's roleplay. From what I've seen on this server (especially with the recent case of two legal characters being CK'd over extortion after having paid and had the price ratcheted up on them and other families come to extort them), extortion is just a one-way street to having your character treated as an ATM or otherwise harassed, beaten, threatened, sabotaged, or CK'd. This isn't fun roleplay for the people on the receiving end of it. It's not dynamic roleplay. It's scripted and for the average legal roleplayer there is no recourse.

Saying "this is an IC issue" is reductive because our game world lacks the same consequences that would realistically be in place for extortion. With how many people are extorting and how much stuff the PD has on its plate, it's unlikely there is any real opportunity for legal characters to actually get real investigative help. Unlike in real life where extortion would almost always be met with successful police action and safety for the one being extorted, in the game world a person reporting extortion is just an excuse for the faction to escalate the roleplay. 

Summary: Extortion roleplay is unoriginal, lacks creativity, is little more than bullying. It takes advantage of unrealistic parts of our game world and exploits them to give criminal characters an advantage in lieu of finding interesting, organic, and creative ways to portray realistic criminal enterprise. Currently with extortion almost all consequences fall squarely on legal characters who did not opt-in to this treatment, while very little consequences present themselves for the criminal roleplayers. It is a blatant disregard of IC fear of consequences on behalf of these criminals who know OOCly that the odds of them getting in any real legal trouble are slim, and criminal roleplayers fragrantly hide behind the CK system to allow themselves to clean up any roleplay they make a mess of. This type of roleplay is an incredibly unrealistic portrayal of the United States in the modern year and represents something more akin to developing countries or far more corrupt nations on the other side of the world.

I will finish with a scene from the Sopranos which summarizes this well enough. Notice how these two fine gangsters do not proceed to say "let me talk to da owna or I burna dis coffee shoppa down an' killa you a wife."

 

 

You my friend could not be anymore right. People seem to want rp as of they were a mobster in the 60's, I hate to the bearer of bad news but it's 2020. 7/11's are not extorted nor as fast food chains, nor are most businesses for that matter. Stop trying to be a 1960's wise guy, this server is based in 2020.

[mj2002]

Perhaps the FIB faction suggestions need to be reevaluated again?

[eTaylor]

Just now, Torlo said:

You my friend could not be anymore right. People seem to want rp as of they were a mobster in the 60's, I hate to the bearer of bad news but it's 2020. 7/11's are not extorted nor as fast food chains, nor are most businesses for that matter. Stop trying to be a 1960's wise guy, this server is based in 2020.

Extortion definitely happens in 2020. But crime exists because of opportunity, and the current environment permits the stupid extortion we have now. It’s not that people want to be an old school wise guy, it’s just that it works and it’s easy. This is a beautiful example of “change the way people play”. If you want to change this it shouldn’t be so stupidly easy to extort a huge chain, owners should have recourse and the police should be able to hand down harsh punishments and easy convictions.