Protection Racket

The practice in which businesses and/or individuals in an area periodically pay money to an organized crime syndicate in return for freedom from harassment. In other words, when the money is paid, the syndicate will protect businesses from acts of violence from other groups (or from the syndicate itself).

References in periodicals archive ?

It's a political version of the protection racket - do what we want, or else."

Clegg slams Tory 'protection racket'

The PRI's monopoly facilitated the protection racket because the party's hierarchical control extended across all the sub-national political units that composed Mexico's federal system.

Drugs, violence, and state-sponsored protection rackets in Mexico and Colombia/ Drogas, violencia y redes extorsivas con apoyo del Estado en Mexico y Colombia

10 story she wrote for the weekly under the headline "Protection racket: Public housing security grant is a cash cow for cops."

City Council subpoenas local reporter

What's happening is not like the classic protection racket, where you pay and don't get beaten up.

The greatest show on earth: Ringling Brothers' Ken Feld takes a stand against cause-driven activists. Would you? (Crisis Management)

There's a difference between "protection" and a protection racket.

A mystery of misogyny. (Flip Side)

Hardline conservative elites, opposed to economic or political reform, established a literal "protection racket" in which military elites legitimized their power and political role by manipulating fear among reformers through the use of violence.

The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador

Johor police have crippled an extortion gang that specialises in running a protection racket at construction areas and factories in the Kluang district.

Johor extortion syndicate crippled following arrest of six gang members

Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada on Wednesday ordered an investigation into reports that 'unscrupulous' individuals were using his name to run a protection racket and collecting fees from vegetable dealers and vendors in the Divisoria market.

Market racket name-drops Erap; probe on

A PROTECTION racket boss tried to extort PS10,000 from a hairdresser after hiring hooded thugs to beat him up at his salon and at a Birmingham karaoke bar.

Blackmailer demanded PS10k from hairdresser; protection racket boss jailed

CYBER criminals are taking over the computer systems of Birmingham businesses, making them pay every month for access in an online protection racket.

City firms being held to ransom by hackers; Businesses forced to pay cyber-gangs who infiltrate computer databases, say police EXCLUSIVE

(Pharisees gave alms, so maybe were better than average; tax collectors worked for the Ros mans and ran something rather like a protection racket).

thought for the day

Yesterday we revealed how banks and credit card companies fleeced people in a loan protection racket.