How Businesspeople Become Criminals, Extortionists and Killers.

From Boardrooms to Blood: How Businesspeople Become Criminals, Extortionists and Killers

Many successful entrepreneurs don’t start as criminals, they slide into it.

Economic pressure, fierce competition, and the need for “protection” push owners into the grey zone: first paying gangs, then hiring them, then running them. Extortion becomes the perfect bridge, it feels like business, just with threats instead of contracts.

Construction, transport, nightclubs, and waste management are classic entry points and sometimes lead you to opening security company. You pay “fees” to operate. Soon you collect them from others. One bad debt, one betrayal, and violence follows. Some never pull the trigger themselves, they just give the order and call it “protecting the investment.”

One ex-boss (speaking anonymously) explains how it happened:

“I had a legitimate panel-beating and towing company. Tender wars got dirty. Rivals smashed my windows, stole cars off my lot. Police did nothing. So I paid a local crew R5 000 a month for ‘security.’

Six months later I was the one setting the price. I loaned money at 50% interest, took keys as collateral, and if someone fell behind, my guys fetched the car, or broke legs. It made more in a week than the workshop made in a month.

First time someone died, it was ‘an accident’ during collection. Second time, I ordered it. By then I wasn’t a businessman who knew criminals, I was the criminal, and the business was just a front.” He eventually served 12 years.

The pattern repeats worldwide: the same skills that build companies, negotiation, risk calculation, networking , scale perfectly into organized crime. Greed supplies the motive, fear supplies the muscle, and one small compromise opens the door you can never close again.

The lesson is brutal but simple: once you accept that threats work better than contracts, the boardroom and the back alley become the same room.