Colombia’s National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Inpec) has confirmed that extortion rings are operating from behind bars at an alarming rate. In response to a records request filed by Congressman José Octavio Cardona León, the agency revealed that mobile phone companies have identified 14,097 extortion calls placed from prisons since January 2025, when a call-tracing system was launched with Gaula, the specialized police and military unit that fights extortion and kidnapping.
That figure comes from a pool of 73,670 records analyzed through mid-July 2026, and works out to roughly 25 extortion calls a day—about one every hour, around the clock, for a year and a half. Inpec itself admits the real scope is likely worse, since the numbers reflect only reported cases, not the full extent of the crime, and cellphone use is officially banned in Colombian prisons.
As a result, authorities have requested that carriers block 9,967 phone records tied to extortion, part of a broader push that includes 14,668 total block requests covering both device identifiers (IMEI numbers) and SIM cards. Physical crackdowns have also intensified: officials seized 47,339 phones in 2025 and another 25,166 so far in 2026, bringing the total to more than 72,000 devices confiscated from prisons in eighteen months.
Read the full investigation at El Tiempo for more details on how these extortion networks operate.
Source: Compañías de celulares identificaron 14.097 llamadas extorsivas en cárceles desde 2025: el revelador informe (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Marion Doss, BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse).