TRUJILLO, October 27, 2026 — Criminal gangs in Peru are constructing fortified underground cells to hold kidnapping victims while demanding multi-million-dollar payments, marking a deadly evolution in extortion tactics.
Inside the Underground Bunkers of Peru
It looked like any other house in a residential neighborhood in the city of Trujillo, on Peru’s northern coast: a three-story structure with iron railings and varnished wooden doors. But as ever, the detail that matters was hidden inside, where occupants had bricked up part of the basement entrance and built a bunker. The cell measured eight feet long and three feet wide, featuring a steel door with a digital lock. To fit through the entrance, you had to crawl inside, and with no natural light or ventilation, the kidnappers left two oxygen tanks to keep whoever was locked inside alive. It was the closest thing to a tomb.
Jenss Lara, a 31-year-old gold trader, spent almost 36 hours in that precise enclosure. His captivity, reconstructed through the statement he gave to Peru’s Attorney General’s Office, offers an inside look at the methods used by gangs that kidnap people to collect large ransoms. In the early hours of August 30, Lara was returning home in his pickup truck with four other people after a night out drinking in Trujillo. Men posing as police officers intercepted his vehicle, beat him into submission, handcuffed him, and covered his mouth and nose with duct tape before forcing him into another car.
At the bunker, the kidnappers shoved him down the basement steps and tore off his clothes until he was left in nothing but his underwear. When the duct tape began to choke him, one of the captors inserted a device into his nose so that he could breathe, while making small cuts on his chest to silence his pleas to loosen the handcuffs. Hours later, they held a phone to his ear and demanded $2 million, threatening to kill him if the sum was not paid immediately. For years, Trujillo, a city with a population of a million inhabitants, has been plagued by contract killings and extortion, where gangs like Los Pulpos have turned extorting protection money from merchants into a criminal enterprise.
Since 2024, the city has been under a state of emergency due to rising kidnapping rates and organized crime. Kidnapping itself is defined as the illegal relocation and confinement of a person against their will, accomplished by force, fear, fraud, or deception, and is distinguished from false imprisonment by the intentional movement of the victim to a different location. Kidnapping may be accompanied by bodily injury, which in some jurisdictions elevates the crime to aggravated kidnapping.
The Mechanics of Modern Ransom Demands
Under the hood, the motives behind these abductions vary widely depending on the perpetrator, though kidnapping for ransom remains a common goal. This method is primarily utilized by larger organizations, such as criminal gangs, terrorist organizations, or insurgent groups, typically done for financial incentive with sums varying depending on the victim or the method of kidnapping. Mexican gangs are estimated to have made up to $250 million in kidnappings from Central American migrants. According to a 2022 study by political scientist Danielle Gilbert, armed groups in Colombia engage in ransom kidnappings as a way to maintain local systems of taxation, punishing tax evasion and incentivizing inhabitants not to shirk. A 2024 study argued that insurgent groups are more likely to engage in kidnappings under two conditions: to generate support and reinstate bargaining capacity when organizations suffer military losses on the battlefield, and to enforce loyalties and display strength when facing violent competition from other non-state actors. Kidnapping has also been identified as one source by which terrorist organizations obtain funding for their operations.
Law enforcement and security protocols must contend with several distinct operational variations of the crime. Express kidnapping is a method used in some countries, mainly from Latin America, where a small ransom that a company or family can easily pay is demanded, or where the victim is taken to an ATM and forced to give the captor money immediately. Tiger kidnapping occurs when a person is kidnapped and the captor forces them to commit a crime such as robbery or murder, holding the hostage until demands are met; this term originates from the usually long preceding observation, like a tiger stalking prey, and is a method used by the Real Irish Republican Army and the Continuity Irish Republican Army. Virtual kidnapping is a unique form that has risen in recent years where no actual victim exists, involving scam calls rather than physical confinement.
The technical reality in Peru reflects a broader government response to surging criminality. Early in October, the president announced the creation of the Unified Command, bringing together elements of the Armed Forces and the National Police to combat organized crime following the presidential election this past June. Yet as physical security risks escalate for high-net-worth individuals and traders, the traditional boundaries between violent street crime and high-value digital asset targeting continue to blur.
Digital Asset Ransoms and the New Frontier of Extortion
As criminal networks in Peru evolve, the method of ransom collection has shifted beyond traditional cash handover to include digital assets. Victims and their families are increasingly pressured to transfer cryptocurrency or other digital tokens to secure release, a tactic that allows kidnappers to move funds across borders instantly and evade law enforcement tracking. According to reports from Peru’s Attorney General’s Office, the case of Jenss Lara, a gold trader held for nearly 36 hours in an underground bunker in Trujillo, involved demands for payment via transferable financial instruments, reflecting a broader regional trend where digital assets facilitate million-dollar ransoms without the need for physical delivery.
This shift has been driven by the anonymity and speed of blockchain technology, which criminal organizations exploit to convert kidnapped victims into liquid capital. In neighboring regions, Mexican gangs have long utilized similar methods to lake profits from kidnappings of migrants, with estimates suggesting hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit revenue generated through digital transfers. The Peruvian government’s newly established Unified Command, formed in October 2026 to combat organized crime, now faces the challenge of tracing these virtual payments while addressing the physical brutality of confinement. For high-value targets like traders and entrepreneurs, the risk now extends beyond physical captivity to the loss of assets through decentralized finance mechanisms that operate beyond the reach of traditional banking oversight.
Sources
- Kidnapping
- Bunkers, ransoms and threats of mutilation: Peru’s kidnapping surge
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Photo: Bernard Gagnon (CC BY-SA 3.0)
