History Main / MonsterProtectionRacket

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "Crime and Punishment", the neighbourhood watch in a remote village faces having its funding cut as crime has dropped 70%. The organizer of the watch bullies one of her subordinates into staging a series of burglaries so the watch can justify its continued existence.

* ''Fanfic/RosarioVampireBrightestDarkness Acts V and VI'': Discussed; the HDA believe that Tsukune and co. deliberately awakened Alucard and set him loose just so they could kill him and make themselves look like heroes. [[AvertedTrope They didn't]]; [[StrawNihilist Hokuto]] set him loose to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy the world]], and Tsukune's group legitimately saved everyone.
* ''Fanfic/WitnessGoodNeighbors'': The crux of the plot. Minami hires gangs to rough up innocent people and then forces them to buy his security on pain of total destruction.

* ''Literature/TheDragonBusiness'': Sir Dalbry, his squire Cullin, and a thug named Reeger pose as dragon slayers, bribe witnesses to fake sightings, and make fake dragon parts to show off after their supposed victories over the beasts. However, it eventually turns out that dragons and other monsters are actually real, leading to the racket having a not-entirely-willing FakeRealTurn.

* In ''VideoGame/DominionOfDarkness'', player can cause demon invasion and later defeat it, making him saviour in the eyes of the survivors.

* A variant in ''Webcomic/{{Darken}}'', where the dragon menacing a village [[http://darkencomic.com/?webcomic_post=20040401 turns out]] to be an illusion created by a [[HonestJohnsDealership shopkeeper]] to boost sales of (bogus) anti-dragon {{Protective Charm}}s.

* In ''Series/{{Noob}}'', Tenshirock makes a living in real life by hacking his town's businesses by night and working as a computer security expert by day.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' has this with a fake superhero called Major Man. It turns out he is setting up disasters, crimes, and even monster attacks so he can pretend to save the day and it will look as if the Girls aren't needed anymore. The girls beat him at his own game by calling a favor from a monster to attack him, forcing him to admit his crimes and that he couldn't handle a ''real'' emergency.
** In a later episode, the Girls use a similar technique, hiring Mojo Jojo to rampage through the city so they can "stop" him for a reward of candy from the Mayor. This ends when Mojo steals the candy just to mess with them, at which point the candy-addicted girls give him an extra-brutal beating.

* ''WesternAnimation/The13GhostsOfScoobyDoo'' plays with this in the Pied Piper way. The gang try to infiltrate Befuddled Manor as exterminators. When Scrappy asks how do they know they have pests there, Flim Flam releases several rats into the building. This is made somewhat funnier when the Hall is populated with many monsters who themselves give an off screen scream when the rats are released.

ProtectionRacket is when a group of criminals extort stores in-exchange for protection, under the threat that they will thrash their establishment if they don't pay up (the difference being that it is done by crooks and are not schemers).

* ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'': This is a somewhat recurring tactic of Paperinik's villains, with them inventing a fake superhero that, by foiling them, would be able to replace Paperinik before they can perform their main heist. The two most notable instances were the one time the ''Beagle Boys'' pulled it off (it ended with their hero successfully replacing Paperinik for a job at escorting Scrooge's money... And Paperinik waiting for him to drop his weapons before locking them in the armoured truck) and Pap-Man, who arrested ''hundreds'' of criminals before, upon succeeding, breaking them out and ''sacked the whole city'' (Paperinik knocked him out as soon as he dropped his weapons to take on a disguise, and ''arrested everyone''. He also gave some of the loot to charity).

* In "Monsters" of ''Manga/Wanted1998'', the villains uses a magical horn to summon a giant dragon to raze the cities so that they can pillage them. [[spoiler:Ryuuma manages to slay the dragon with one slash.]]

* Some malware will pretend to be an anti-malware program and alert the user that the computer is infected with tons of viruses. Then they'll charge money to make the "viruses" go away while providing no actual protection to the computer. They can usually be detected by being massively more obnoxious than any legitimate defensive program.

* ''Series/{{The Boys|2019}}'': It's bad enough that in this world superheroes are debased and corrupt corporate sellouts, but then it turns out that [[spoiler:their leader had been secretly creating supervillains all around the globe to coerce the governments into running to his team for protection.]]