#NoMasExtorsiones: Mexico City Citizens' Council Builds App to Fight Extortion Mexico News Daily
go to original February 18, 2015

Aplicación #NoMasExtorsiones (Consejo Ciudadano)

Extortion by telephone has been a popular and lucrative activity for several years, but at least one initiative — a number you can call to report extortion attempts and relay the extortionist’s phone and bank account numbers — has been useful in combating the crime.

Now’s there’s another: an Android application that taps into a database of numbers known to have been used by criminals. Once installed, the free app sounds an alert if an incoming call is from one of those numbers. Press a button, and information regarding the call is automatically relayed to a central monitoring system.

Both are projects of the Mexico City Citizens’ Council, a non-profit group whose focus is public security. It launched the first program in December 2007: after receiving a call, extortion victims are invited to dial 5533-5533 to report the number that was used.

Those calls from victims have enabled it to create a database of at least 65,000 phone numbers and 7,829 bank accounts used in the extortion attempts.

Most of the calls come from organized crime operating within prisons and using stolen cell phones. The most common use the story that a son or daughter has been kidnapped and a ransom is demanded, threats supposedly originating with a gang such as Los Zetas or the Familia Michoacana, or phony games or raffles.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily

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