How does someone get out of extortion?

[eTaylor]

18 minutes ago, TritonXVII said:

I think extortion either needs to get some admin attention and get locked behind some kind of chain rule, OR people should be allowed to CK extorters.

 

It's incredibly silly for every single gang that pops up to want to extort a business. Practically every single business in LS is controlled by someone, even the ones in rich areas. 

I'm very sceptical of whether the percentage of extorted businesses is actually realistic or not.

Do you own a business? If so, were you extorted? If you were could you detail what you did to curb it? And if you tried using the legal system/private security, and what the results were? I’m very curious where people actually get stuck.

[Koko]

The main problem is that extortion here is punished with two days in prison, after which the offender is free to go back and get revenge, or send a person to do it for them. In real life in California you'd be looking at a good 4 years in prison (along with a felony charge on your record if you're trying to present as a 'legitimate businessman') , that's whithout taking into account every other crime that organizations in GTAW who extort businesses also commit in-game (and that could easily be uncovered if put on the right investigative trail). The problem, as always, is that illegal RPers also want to play, because otherwise in realistic terms a lot of these operations would be instantly shut down legally and harshly, but LEOs have to give them a chance.

 

Illegal organizations extorting people perhaps should show a bit more fear of actual investigation of their organizations. If someone gets scared and goes to the police, in realistic terms a lot of these organizations would be immediately shut down, considering that no matter the power they claim to have in their backstories, many only have a small handful of actual characters on the ground doing the actual work.

 

If extortion is rampant in Los Santos, then we can only hope that laws pass to tackle the crime according to the scale and damage it is doing to businesses, and that criminals are dissuaded from it further.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Koko

[knppel]

What people in the ("legal") business scene often don't take in account is what realistically any business should do when spending money, a cost-profit evaluation.

The real question if you pay someone money is what you get back for it.

 

Is it only a bunch of obscure people promising to "protect" your shop from rumoured dangers you're not aware of ic?

Maybe they're not worth any money and should just be told off.

 

It lays in the nature of the organized-crime-setting that factions of all themes try to also extort businesses of whatever kind.

So as business operator, you better get ready to not just give in to the first best guys' demands.

This is how extortion works irl btw too.

You keep paying and paying hoping it stops eventually, but as long as you pay, it doesn't stop.

 

10 minutes ago, Koko said:

Illegal organizations extorting people perhaps should show a bit more fear

Here again we need to take a much closer look at this matter.

 

What's the danger in entering a business and asking whoever seems to be managing it for money?

Basically: none.

Worst thing to happen, someone aggro gets violent, or someone strictly law-and-order type will call the cops on you.

By the time they arrive, you're either long gone, or alternatively, you just stay and pretend you were there to drinka beer/buy some whatever same as any ordinary customer.

 

Thus, specially for new uprising syndicates that don't yet have that many clients to lose or operations to be investigated, going around by trial and error to see who will pay up makes total sense.

 

Lower end syndicates typically will shy back from actually enforcing demands, however (as unlike the better established organisations, small starter groups tend to not have vast resources at hand to spare to harm some tedious dumb local business just for a few dollar and the rp).

Besides the resources, here the mentioned "Show fear"-factor actually has weight:

The established bosses can send scapegoats that, in case of an investigation, will hopefully loyally take the blame.

Unlike this, smaller syndicates, where the "boss" and his right hands themselves march from business to business to ask for money, risk much harsher (judicial) punishment for their direct leadership when taking the typical follow-up actions of refused extortion (breaking knees, kidnapping relatives, burning a place, sending troopers to disturb openings and so on), as these violent crimes lead to much harsher sentences which the organisation might not survive (specially as it relies on these core protagonists).

 

tl;dr,

Evaluate BEFORE you pay up.

 

To get back to the original question, once you are paying, the economic way to get out is as was mentioned by many indeed to find the one that charges less.

That is not limited to crime syndicates, either. You can liaise to cops. You can hire security. Company or freelance. You can try to find leverage on your extortioner to make him more cooperative.

You can stop paying and see what he does, if he has the balls to actually follow with consequences- as mentioned above, not everyone will risk that for those few measly dollars your business makes them.

 

[JustAnM43]

There are so many ways you can get rid of extortion, you just gotta think outside the box. Is your garage getting extorted? Work up a contract with PD to provide service and repair for their vehicles. Gun shop? Supply them with gear etcetera. There are many many ways you can outplay extortion and come out on top without firing a single bullet. Just gotta think.

[Trupiano]

1 hour ago, Koko said:

The main problem is that extortion here is punished with two days in prison, after which the offender is free to go back and get revenge, or send a person to do it for them. In real life in California you'd be looking at a good 4 years in prison (along with a felony charge on your record if you're trying to present as a 'legitimate businessman') , that's whithout taking into account every other crime that organizations in GTAW who extort businesses also commit in-game (and that could easily be uncovered if put on the right investigative trail). The problem, as always, is that illegal RPers also want to play, because otherwise in realistic terms a lot of these operations would be instantly shut down legally and harshly, but LEOs have to give them a chance.

 

Illegal organizations extorting people perhaps should show a bit more fear of actual investigation of their organizations. If someone gets scared and goes to the police, in realistic terms a lot of these organizations would be immediately shut down, considering that no matter the power they claim to have in their backstories, many only have a small handful of actual characters on the ground doing the actual work.

 

If extortion is rampant in Los Santos, then we can only hope that laws pass to tackle the crime according to the scale and damage it is doing to businesses, and that criminals are dissuaded from it further.

 

I mean, blame PD for this tbh. What we're supposed to RP fear of RICO laws that don't exist? Even worse, PD doesn't try for shit to collect information on criminal organizations and this is an IC fact, not just an OOC one. Regardless of the laws in place, they could still I don't know build case files on these factions and their associates, but we know IC they are barely even doing that. Countless times I've been arrested on multiple gang affiliated character, every time I make sure to give them tons of useful info through /me's in the way of gang tattoo's, etc. Only for maybe 1 out of every 10 of them even to acknowledge my /me's, and before anyone says "Oh well they're probably not in gang enforcement". Take a second, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that these tattoo's probably hold some meaning and to segregate my character for further questioning by gang enforcement officers. Are gang members just going to straight up say "Oh yeah these are my gang tattoo's, we hangout over on X street". Absolutely not, but at least we're volunteering that information up. The least PD can do is accept it and do something with it.

 

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see longform RICO investigations and I'm in no way arguing against them as some of the OC on this server is so fucking transparent with the crimes they are committing the only thing that's stopped them from getting taken down was the lack of IC RICO laws themselves.

 

Regardless of all that, I say blame PD because the biggest hurtle we need to get over is their unwillingness to even acknowledge the criminal groups operating in the city and further more they're unwillingness to go after these factions. They refused ICly to work with the DA's office to build cases against them, according to ex-SABI members they stonewalled them as well. They seemingly refuse to do anything until a criminal faction kills a cop and even then they'll just slap them with a gang injunction for a month or two, doing little to actually dismantle the gangs leadership. This is the actual problem. For a faction that complains so much about the gangs on this server, they seem to want to do everything in their power not to address them IC. I don't see this as "LEO's giving criminals a chance", I see it as LEO's and Legal RPers doing absolutely nothing then saying the problem needs admin intervention.

 

 

[Koko]

41 minutes ago, Henning said:

I mean, blame PD for this tbh. What we're supposed to RP fear of RICO laws that don't exist?

Oh, don't get me wrong, not trying to imply this isn't the case! I 100% agree. You fear the legal consequences that exist. You're operating under the rules of the game as established for you.

 

I don't know about the rest of what you mention as I have no direct experience in PD, but I always thought it was a faction culture thing, to essentially not investigate too deep until the Detective/Specialist levels to give illegals breathing space. I also think that we could see more pressure from cops to crime, as most of it seems (from an outsider's perspective) entirely reactive on their part.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Koko

[Guest]

Set up a corporate hierarchy that would make extorting your business very unrealistic. Damages are realistically paid by the insurance companies(I'd like that to be an actual IC entity some day as well), finances are in check for tax purposes and all the important decisions made through a chain of command that may or may not come down from the Board of Directors. So basically the extorters can't massacre the entire corporation. Try imagine someone from the street extorting Facebook - well they get extorted too but in a much higher level to where I rather not dwell. With bigger companies, criminals often use a tactic to sway mid level management into mutually beneficial agreements rather.

 

Of course, like mentioned above, all kinds of proper security measures help to deter the threat too as extortion is meant to be an easy money task and going through some bullshit to get is just not worth it for the criminals.

 

But about smaller businesses... I have no idea.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Guest

[Juicy]

You don’t 

[Ink]

The last time this topic was brought up, there were pages and pages of people agreeing that the situation of extortion on the server doesn't make sense. Personally, I'm glad to say that I've noticed extortion drop a lot in the community. We have some really excellent organized criminal factions like Conti for instance who eschew the dumb cliches and buck the trend of unrealistic extortion roleplay.

 

Fact: Extortion is retarded roleplay 9 times out of 10. 

Fact: Extortion is basically a loophole against rob limits and business robbing rules.

Fact: Extortion's consequences are not fairly distributed. The people RPing the business assume almost all risk for the roleplay while the extortionists see very little consequences even when caught--and they're the ones starting the RP.

Fact: Extortion is just play 2 win on part of the criminal factions who still engage in it.

 

Last time we had this conversation as a community, we had some RPers step up and say "#notallextortionRP" and claimed that their extortion RP was high quality and really awesome for everyone involved. TBH? I've never seen that. I've never heard anyone else who has seen that. Literally every single person I've ever spoken to on this community personally about extortion RP thinks it's stupid. Yes, even the criminal RPers who are not the targets of it.

 

Fact: You do not get extorted as a regular person running a regular business in a modern American city. This is not Juarez.

Fact: Business owners shouldn't be aware of a massive extortion pandemic plaguing the city in a heavy RP server set in a major American city.

 

In the real world, when extortion happens it's usually because of one of the following reasons:

 

1) The extortionists have dirt on you such that you can't just go to the police. They have leverage, if you snitch, you are ruining yourself.

2) You, the business owner, are already involved in criminal activity, or owe favors to criminals. See reason 1.

3) You, the business owner, have family back home that is known by the criminal organization who is extorting you, and their presence is stronger in that country. Sure, you might be able to snitch on them and get them in trouble here, but then they kill your family back home in a much more corrupt country.

 

Last time we had this thread, people came out of the woodwork posting news articles about extortion attempts in Los Angeles to be like "SEE IT HAPPENS IRL." The part they forgot to mention was that every single one of those articles ended with "and an arrest was made" or "and the guy will be facing 10+ years in prison."

 

Get this bullshit, weak-ass, uncreative, unoriginal, uninspired, waste of space, unproductive, scene-chewing, hijacking-ass RP out of this server. Most of the criminal factions that we have now have already stopped it and are seeking more interesting ways to do RP with legal businesses. The last few factions still doing extortion RP like this is the 1940s and they're some Don Corelone knockoff, or RPing like this is fucking Belgrade 15 years ago need to up their game, big time.

[TritonXVII]

4 hours ago, eTaylor said:

Do you own a business? If so, were you extorted? If you were could you detail what you did to curb it? And if you tried using the legal system/private security, and what the results were? I’m very curious where people actually get stuck.

Yes x2. You don't really have a choice. You can try getting security like g6 or your own guards, but then they'll just get arson permissions and burn your business for 14 days, you can say no and then they'll come over every time you open and cause trouble or you can try to fight them but then how exactly do you do that?

If you kill them, it's dming. If you beat them up, they'll come back in 2 hours with x10 people, if you go to the cops they'll say call us when they start causing trouble (which will def get you cked for ratting).

 

Extortion is a fucking cash grab honestly and I'm super surprised that IFM hasn't gotten in on it. Every random joe and their mother can make up a little illegal crew and start demanding money. If the owners refuse, it's a dm excuse, if they don't you get some nice cash every week or so. 

 

How I deal with it nowadays is I say "sorry boys the owner isn't around come back in an hour" or whatever.

 

imho, they should either add an extortion monetary limit (like 10k/week), or they should add an extorted business limit per faction (like 2 businesses), or they should leave it as is but make it CKable if you extort the wrong people and they decide to hunt you down.

 

Something needs to happen to get the wannabe Tony Montanas off their high horse.