If someone offers you cash the same day with no paperwork, no credit check and no questions about your income, understand what you are agreeing to before you take it. According to the Organismo de Investigación Judicial, more than 95% of collection-extortion cases tied to informal loans end in aggression or violence against the borrower.

That is the part people do not see coming. The loan itself arrives easily and politely. The pressure starts later. José Rojas, an investigator with the OIJ’s Sección de Delitos Varios, explains why the trap is hard to recognize at the start. Lending money is not a crime in Costa Rica. The problem is that these arrangements sit entirely outside the formal financial system, so no one regulates the interest, supervises the collection, or holds a record of what you actually owe.

While you are paying on time, nothing looks wrong. There is usually no conflict at all. The moment you fall behind is when the arrangement shows what it is. Because there is no regulator setting a ceiling, the interest compounds at rates a bank could never charge, and the balance can outrun anything you are able to repay. Collectors then appear at your home or your workplace. The threats often extend to your family.

Timing matters too. A United Nations study of the practice in Costa Rica found the complaints follow a season, climbing from May through October and peaking at the end of that stretch. We are in the middle of that window now. The same study found the borrowers are no longer who most people assume. This is not confined to households in poverty or informal work. Salaried people take these loans, usually because a formal one was refused or took too long, and because an emergency would not wait.

Here is what to do if you are already in one. Do not keep paying to make it stop, because paying is what keeps the arrangement alive and the balance growing. Do not negotiate directly with the person collecting. Go to your nearest OIJ office and file a complaint, or call the confidential line at 800-8000-645, which does not require you to give your name.

Collection extortion is its own offense in Costa Rican law, with prison terms that increase when the threats are directed at an older adult, a minor, or someone in a vulnerable situation, and when more than one person is involved in making them. The reason the penalty rises in those cases is straightforward. Those are the borrowers least able to walk away.

The signals worth watching for are consistent. Cash offered before anyone asks what you earn. A repayment schedule described out loud rather than written down. A total that changes each time you ask what it is. A lender who wants your address, your workplace, and the names of your relatives before handing over anything.

If you need credit and the formal system has turned you down, a credit union or a caja de ahorro y crédito will move slower and lend less, but the terms will exist on paper and the debt will end when you finish paying it. That is the difference that matters, and it only becomes visible once something goes wrong.