Ground Truth | Kidnap and extortion in 2026 — rising risks, evolving tactics

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Source: Control Risks’ analysis of global kidnap and extortion incident data, combined with frontline crisis response experience.

The origins of modern kidnap response 00:00 – 02:25 

Caspar Leighton: Hello and welcome to Ground Truth from Control Risks. The podcast that brings you the best insights on what we're doing to help organisations with strategic intelligence and security, wherever they are in the world.  

I'm excited about this episode as we're focusing on a subject where Control Risks can absolutely claim the accolade of being the world leader. It's the business that the firm started out in more than 50 years ago, and the sector that our founders created. I'm talking about kidnap for ransom and extortive crime. Control Risks has been at the forefront of bringing about the successful resolution of cases of kidnap and extorted crime for more than half a century.  

Now, I'd like you to indulge me, if you will, as I give you a potted version of our origin story. It's pretty unique. I want to take you back to South America in the mid 1970s. International companies faced a growing threat from criminal and paramilitary organisations kidnapping their employees to raise funds by demanding large ransoms for their release. Control Risks was founded to help negotiate the safe release of victims and lower ransom payments as much as possible. Two of our founders, Arish Turle and Simon Adams-Dale, were working on one of our earliest cases in Colombia. They'd arranged a successful handover. The victim was released and the ransom paid, and pretty soon they found themselves in jail in the La Modelo prison in Bogotá. 71 days later, they were bailed and eventually declared innocent of any crime. But they hadn't wasted their time in prison. They took the opportunity to write Control Risks first standard operational procedures. It was the foundational document of how to negotiate kidnaps. To this day, that document is the bedrock of how we operate.  

And since then, Control Risks has resolved more than 5000 cases covering every region of the world, including 147 countries. We've just produced a report on the trends and latest developments in kidnap and extortion crime around the world. To discuss this report, I'm joined by Michael Barty, who is Director of Special Risks Analysis of Control Risks, and also by Mark Rossin, who is Director of Response Operations, who's joining us down the line from North Carolina in the US.  

Inside crisis response: intelligence, data and on-the-ground operations 02:56 – 03:40 

Caspar: Michael, tell us about your role. 

Michael Barty: Yeah, so Special Risks Analysis is the analytical unit within the confidential crisis response team. So, our primary purpose is that whenever a responsive consultant is deployed on an active kidnap, extortion or threat case, we will provide that consultant and by that extension, the clients or the family with actionable intelligence around kidnap and threat trends in the area where the incident has taken place. All of this is based on our proprietary, in-house database. It is very much the foundation of everything that we do and as far as we are aware anyway, it is the largest commercially available database of extortive crime incidents on the planet.  

Caspar: Great. And, Mark, tell us about your role. 

Mark Rossin: Yeah, so I am one of four directors that sit in response and do the operational management piece of supporting clients. So as one of the managers I would take the initial calls from the client and provide that immediate advice and guidance to the current situation that they are facing and help them come to a resolution or to determine what further support they may need and in that assigning one of those consultants, as Michael mentioned, to support their matter. And then while that case is ongoing, I will continue to manage that case to resolution. I also manage the behavioural threat assessment team that sits here in the US. 

Kidnap vs extortion: understanding the threat landscape 03:40 – 04:42 

Caspar: Michael, before we get to the meat of the report, I think it might be useful for some of our audience to have a quick terminology explainer. So, kidnap is the detention of someone and the fact they are held in a remote location, an unknown location, and a ransom demand is made. What about extortive crime? What sort of stuff does that cover? 

Michael: So, extortion will typically involve a threat actor, either directly or indirectly issuing a threat to a target, with an expectation that a particular demand is met. Now, the nature of the threats can vary. In a lot of cases, it's threats of harm. In some it can be threats of reputational damage. The individual may claim to hold compromising information on an individual or a company, and often the nature of the demand can vary as well. Commonly it is fundamentally for money, but equally the demands may be contractual. It may be behavioural. We see a lot of variation depending on the geography where these incidents take place.  

Kidnappings are up 60%—why? 04:42 – 06:32  

Caspar: So, getting to the report, I think one of the figures that jumps out from it is when you compare cases of kidnap from 2020 to 2025, we've clocked a 60% rise in kidnap. What's going on there? 

Michael: There’s a few factors coalescing to drive this trend and it’s something that we’ve seen fairly consistently over the past five or six years. The world is becoming more complicated. A lot of civil conflicts have opened up in the past half decade, which themselves have created conditions for kidnap for ransom to escalate quite significantly. 

Equally, the proliferation of transnational organised crime has enabled smaller gangs to carry out kidnapping both to generate revenue for themselves, but also to consolidate control over territory drug and trafficking routes and in a lot of cases, to enforce extortion demands. So, if a company doesn't pay when that extortion is issued, they will often use kidnapping of staff as a means of effectively intimidating the organisation and from their perspective, trying to kind of get them to be compliant. 

On top of that, you have a number of technological changes. So, kidnapers and extortion threat actors have leveraged, you know, remote communication and various developments over the past few years to both increase the number of targets they pursue, but also, increase the credibility of their threats as well. So, it is becoming an increasingly complicated picture. 

And the biggest change from our perspective is that it's not just affecting clients in high-risk locations that have historically dealt with these issues. Now, increasingly, organisations in lower risk environments that had potentially been quite benign over the past few decades, are now having to contend with extortive crime as a threat as well on a fairly rapidly increasing basis. 

From grievances to threats: what’s changed? 06:31 – 08:51 

Caspar: Great, I’d like to come back to that. But before I do that, Mark, as well as kidnap, the report also looks at threat, which is where organisations are facing acts as motivated by grievances of various sorts rather than financial gain. And, you know, there's another kind of standout headline from this report, which is that between 2020 and 25 cases of threat that we responded to went up by 566%. That seems like an astonishing rise. What's been going on there? 

Mark: Yeah, thank you, absolutely. Since 2020, as we all faced the Covid and what came along with Covid was being socially isolated, there was a lot of financial fears, health fears here in the US and in other countries, the political polarization, as well as some social unrest on events again globally, not just here in the US. And you saw the lashing out by individuals because of these fears and built-up grievances that culminated into threats online and online incivility of all these natures. And then we see in 2024, with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, where there became ... more awareness, more vocal about collective grievances around health and wealth and the barriers for making threats was lowered throughout this number of years. And that's where we're seeing the increase in number of threats. 

Caspar: That’s fascinating. I think it's pretty clear that this whole behavioural threat domain is, probably worth a podcast in its own right. And I think I can commit right here, right now that we'll be doing that later in the year. So I'm sure we'll be speaking to you again, Mark, on that. As well, of course, later in this podcast. We've touched on two standouts, numbers from this report. Michael, the drivers of the rising kidnaps. They look quite different on the face of it. I guess there's the socio-economic disparities, but you can get, rising levels of poverty, rising levels of wealth. I guess there’s motive and there's kind of a sense of reward in terms of the wealth there is on display. But what about geopolitics? What's the link between geopolitics and kidnap? 

How conflict and geopolitical shifts reshape kidnap risk 08:51 – 10:14 

Michael: So, I think naturally a lot of clients will look at big geopolitical shifts and focus on elements outside of the extorted crime components. From our perspective, one of the most consistent things that we've seen is that any big geopolitical shift, any major change in the security environment of a given country can often then effectively yield a change in the extortive and kidnap threat as well. So, I mentioned earlier that we've seen a few sort of civil conflicts open up across different countries. 

And what we often see in those cases, and Ethiopia and Sudan are two very prominent examples of this, is that initially armed groups will use kidnapping as a means of kind of asserting control over territory. So, if they spot an individual that they think might be working with a rival group or spying on them, they'll, for the first few months of the conflict, kidnap them to interrogate them. They might use certain skills they have if the individual happens to have, you know, mechanical or skills in medicine as well.  

But as these conflicts drag on, and as the sources of funds for these groups start to dry up, we increasingly see them move into kidnap for ransom just to sustain their wider operations. So, they all at that point fairly substantially expand their targeting to local communities, to commercial operators, to NGOs, all with the view of trying to effectively obtain money from another target in order to kind of keep their wider operation going. 

How technology is bringing risk into new markets 10:14 – 13:41 

Caspar: And that's something you referred to. Your earlier answer was about the rise in cases of kidnapping in parts of the world that we generally regard as safe and not prone to that sort of threat. What's happening there? 

Michael: So, one of the things that we've fairly consistently seen, and this probably has been the most prevalent over the past couple of years, has been that in lower risk environments, whenever you've had a particular sector or a particular group of individuals that have large sums of income that can be moved relatively easily, gangs and other groups will try and take the opportunity to obtain that through extorted means. 

So, the increased spate in kidnaps affecting the cryptocurrency world, for example, is a fairly prominent case of this. A lot of these individuals have quite widely publicised wealth. It's very easy to force them once you've abducted them, to move that wealth to another wallet or another location. And once that wealth is gone, it's very hard for them to recover it. So, we've seen a range of different types of groups attempt to carry this out with varying degrees of capability, but it is just indicative of the fact. And we'll touch on the kind of the extortion elements as well of the fact that organisations are having to think about this in locations where previously it just wasn't a consideration 5 or 10 years ago. 

Caspar: Interesting. Mark, maybe you could expand a bit on how the rapid development of technology and AI has changed the operating context for kidnappers, extorters, threat actors. 

Michael: Yeah. So again, I kind of equate it ergo back to that 2020 time period where everyone was kind of really isolated. Even the kidnappers and the extortionists were isolated, and the development or the leaning on and using the use of technology to further those aspects of their crime. 

You know, especially in the kidnap world, we have seen the use of WhatsApp and other communication platforms to use, rather than calling someone or actually taking someone from an extortion standpoint, using voice notes or video to be more anonymous and more secure in their location. So, the use of WhatsApp and then from threats and threats of violence really going and posting threats on forums, which really kind of the form, the forms out there have really doubled or tripled, and people voicing their concerns and able to voice and vent their threats online and get others to agree and further those grievances and those threats out there. 

And Michael said targeting the crypto investors really... the ease or the more ease to identify those who has those wallets and who may be investing in crypto and the ability to get someone to move that the technology is out there. And then to, you know, what we've seen over just in the last year with AI, the AI coming in and being exploited for criminal elements from an extortion standpoint to AI generated videos and images of individuals to extort those victims for those images, as well as disguising voices and creating images and voices through AI. 

How technology is improving detection, intelligence and response 13:41 – 15:09 

Caspar: And so, Mark, I think it's clear that technology and AI are being exploited by threat actors and the kidnappers and so on, but surely, it's also something that's available for those on the other side of the fence who are trying to counter this threat and resolve these cases as well. Right? 

Mark: Yes, absolutely. And again, not going into all of those techniques and that. But just like the kidnappers and extortionists are able to use technology and develop it, law enforcement and others who support and resolving those issues have techniques and have developed the use of technology to combat that and to help resolve those incidents in a much faster fashion.  

Caspar: And of course, Michael, technology has really helped us in the way we have been able to get access to information about kidnaps and stuff happening around the world and in turn, supply that to our clients. So, I was just looking at our Seerist threat intelligence platform earlier, and our updates from the last couple of months from places as far spread as Nigeria, Colombia, Yemen, Pakistan, Haiti, that's been a real boost for the way we've been able to help clients tackle this problem, right? 

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our team has been very proactive about keeping an eye on and highlighting sort of major trends in kidnap and extortion as they've come up. And our ability to do that effectively and really get that sort of Ground Truth element has been hugely boosted by the technological solutions that we've incorporated into how we operate. 

The myth of the typical kidnap victim 15:09 – 16:25 

Caspar: Now. I'd like to touch on one probably fairly common misconception about kidnap although I think probably sitting here in London and in North Carolina, most folks might assume the main targets of kidnap around the world, business executives travelling around, expats and so on. But that's never really been the case, has it Michael? 

Michael: No. Generally speaking, I mean, if you look at our statistics, the sort of percentage share of foreign national victims will usually sit somewhere between 3 and 5% of the global total. And as far as we're concerned, even that is probably a higher figure than it would be in practice. There's quite a lot of media bias in favour of reporting abductions of foreigners inherently, because it grabs headlines. We'd probably assess the actual number to be around about 1%. And even within that context, the vast majority of those individuals are going to be long term expatriates who've been in the country for a long time. They become visible to kidnap groups. A lot of them tend to be small business owners as well and generally speaking, when you're looking at the overall numbers, tourists, travelling executives really account for an extremely small proportion of overall victims. And in a lot of those cases, it's a case of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The geography of kidnap risk 16:25 –17:47 

Caspar: And another thing the report picks up is the phenomenon of mass kidnapping. And I think that the news story seems to come out of Nigeria for the main part of that story. But where are the most dangerous parts of the world? What regions of the world are we seeing the biggest rises in this overall 60% rise? 

Michael: As you mentioned, Nigeria tends to account for a fairly substantial proportion of mass kidnaps globally, largely because of the proliferation of bandit groups up in the northwest and north central regions who've really adopted this tactic to effectively issue collective ransom demands to communities when they abduct dozens of people at the same time. 

Elsewhere, we tend to see it quite frequently in, again, areas with localised civil conflicts. Usually, it predominantly tends to be in places where, as you'd expect, the sort of per capita wealth tends to be a little lower than certain other locations.  

In terms of the kind of regions affected by the general kidnap increase. There's probably not a single one that hasn't been touched by this. But certainly sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas are the two regions which historically have always seen the highest number, but are themselves also seeing the greatest increase with Africa's share of the overall sort of total of reported kidnap incidents fairly consistently increasing almost every year over the past 5 or 6 years. 

How to reduce kidnap and extortion exposure 17:47 – 19:55 

Caspar: So, listening to that, there seem to be a huge range of possible motivations and threat actors and potential victims for kidnap, extortion, threat. In general terms, Mark, what can organisations, businesses do to counter this risk? 

Mark: Yes. You know, from an organisational standpoint, understanding the risk associated with the country that you are operating in is kind of first and foremost in getting those risk assessments. And then kind of moving into training your team on what to do if an employee is kidnaped or extorted or received a threat. What are those? Do you have a crisis management team or behavioural threat assessment team in your company that's been trained to manage those types of incidents? And if you don't, then having an experienced or knowledgeable support mechanism or provider that you can call if you need that type of support or add-on support for one of these parallels. 

Caspar: And so, Michael, at the individual level, what can people do if they're travelling or working abroad? To reduce the likelihood of them being a target? 

Michael: Yes. I mean, as Mark mentioned, I think it's always critical to maintain an understanding of the security environment where you are or where you're travelling to. And we'd always advise obtaining relatively tailored advice on that front. But as a sort of general set of rules, certainly most kidnapers do operate opportunistically and do tend to be motivated by sort of visible indicators of wealth. So that could be vehicles, clothing, consumer gadgets, whatever may be relevant. 

So, avoiding any overt display of wealth is a fairly common piece of advice. Varying routines also tends to be quite a big thing, if anything, because a lot of groups that maybe engage in more pre-planned operations will base that around an individual's sort of daily habits. So, if they can identify what time of day they go to the gym, they might use that to set up an ambush or whatever may be relevant. 

But certainly you're keeping a relatively low profile and just varying up your travel plans tends to be the sort of two fundamental points that we'd give before we get into the more sort of tailored advice. 

The risks to watch in the year ahead 19:55 - end 

Caspar: Right. Okay. I mean, we covered a lot of ground in this podcast. We talked to current trends and compared how the situation has changed since 2020. As two experts with your ears to the ground, what are the things that organisations should be watching, you know, in the next six months, in the next year or so. Where do you see the kind of the changes like to be occurring? 

Michael: So, I think in high-risk environments we are going to see kidnap continue to sort of exacerbate and rise in frequency. Gangs do increasingly diversify their tactics to target new sectors, new groups and effectively expand their pool of potential victims equally in lower risk environments. You know, yes, kidnap is still fairly rare, but certainly organisations are having to keep a closer eye out for extortion, particularly in the kind of arena of threats of reputational damage. 

Certainly, we're seeing groups and also just opportunistic individuals use tech tools available to them to, you know, fake or effectively manufacture claimed evidence of wrongdoing or compromising information to then increase the credibility of their extortion threat. So, the picture is going to get more opaque, and it's going to certainly be a bigger issue for a wider range of sectors, especially when we're looking at the next sort of 1 or 2 years. 

Caspar: Mark, what sort of things are you covering in your briefings? 

Mark: Yes. I think, what Michael has said. I think from just a global picture, the social and political unrest that we're seeing and across the globe where individuals are lashing out and voicing, making their, their grievances, whether their are perceived or real grievances or collective grievances, kind of lashing out and making those threats, wanting some kind of recourse for their personal grievance or their collective grievance. 

And I think we're seeing that continuing to evolve, as well as expand, really, as Michael touched on the technology piece. So, I equated to that technology piece more of the social isolation combined with social political unrest and the lowering of the standard or the bar for throwing out veiled or direct threats out there and how do you manage those threats. 

Caspar: Well, that's, quite a complicated picture we've got there across the world of kidnapping, extortion, and threat. That's really about all we've got time for on this edition of The Ground Truth. But I'd like to thank my guests. Mike Rossin over in North Carolina, who's the Director of Response Operations for Control Risks, and also Michael Barty, who is Director of Special Risks Analysis. 

Thank you very much, both for joining the podcast. And thank you for joining us. On the ground truth from Control Risks. I've been your host, Caspar leighton, do watch out for the next episode about a month from now. Bye for now.