They sell “gift baskets” and the website still says “order now to get your basket in time for the 2021 holiday season”.
They've got a big banner out front that says "RUG DEALER".
Dude, that’s just hair club for men.
I used to live round the corner from a strange little place that sold cassette tapes (what we used for music and sometimes even data before CDs, for those too young to know). Everyone was convinced it was a front but it turned out it was a world famous tape supplier. Just happened to be based in my quiet little back street.
The newsagents next door to my last place have to have been a front though. Shelves were half bare, only ever stocked with stuff that doesn't go off. Always two or three guys hanging out in the back room, looking slightly surprised if you wanted to buy something. Cash only, no cards (not that unusual round here but they usually have a minimum purchase rather than just no card machine at all these days).
They were absolute sweethearts. Took loads of deliveries for us, always really nice about it. And that's more evidence that it's a front. Proper criminals are the best neighbours anyone could ask for because the last thing they want is complaints bringing the police to their door.
I used to get my hair cut buy these two dudes that owned a little barber shop and every once in a while some shady looking guy would come in and they'd stop mid haircut and go into the back for however long they were gone for. Eventually, the random dude would leave and I'd get my haircut finished. I was working as a cook so I'd show up on line a Tuesday at 11am. Place would be dead otherwise. I grew up around there and I'd been going for a long time so they weren't worried about me.
One thing that was crazy about this place is the only magazines were like guns and ammo type magazines. In Canada. Highly unusual. This was back when a barber shop was still likely to have a few "gentlemen's magazines" lying around. Not them, just guns. :)
Super sus, but you make it sound like such a cool place. What happened to it? Vice squad raid? :(
Mattress stores that stay open 24/7, pretty sure you send them a mattress full of cash and they deliver you a mattress full of coke
Chicago has a weirdly high number of mattress chain stores. There's a stretch near me that has 3 of them in the span of 4 blocks. They've all been there for awhile and there's rarely ever anyone in them. No way these are legit businesses considering how often people buy mattresses.
Oh yeah, I wandered in. I was with a group of people that didn't really know each other. We were supposed to see a niche movie at the movie theater. It was a one time showing special event. It was a group of people that my wife met online that is into this franchise. Anyway, the company that made the movie forgot to send the movie to the movie theater. Or rather, they sent it to the wrong movie theater. They were going to show the movie the next day instead, and gave us all refunds and free movie vouchers. But the group was already all there, so we decided to walk to a local coffee shop nearby. It wasn't a coffee shop. It was a casino. Casinos are not legal where I live. We walked in, awkwardly looked around and walked out and went to Starbucks.
Unrelated, but their toilet was on the patio outside. Very weird experience all around.
That story is a roller coaster.
It's likely also a front. I wouldn't get in one of those carts
But wait, can you start at the beginning? How did you meet your wife?
In the casino's patio bathroom.
Oh theres a bunch of those around here. Its not really a casino per say, but they have a ton of state sanctioned lottery games that look like video slot machines.
Where I live they legalized marijuana, but didn't issue licenses for legal dispensaries for almost two years. Nearly every corner store and head shop is a front . There's even a pizza shop near by with weed for sale openly.
Pizza and weed sounds like a good business model, tbh
To be fair, when I slung pies in a college town back when, one of the night guys was a local shroom dealer and would take orders for "custom" pizzas. We didn't do delivery, so little bundles of fun went out the window inside the pizza boxes (tucked in with the parm & chili flake packets) on the regular.
Funny story, when they first legalized it in Colorado but before issuing licenses, I was there for a weekend and there was a guy selling "I❤️CO" bumper stickers, but where the heart is a weed leaf, for 50 bucks a piece that come with a complementary eighth. He delivered like a pizza guy.
That happened a lot in NY too, I think we called them sticker shops
Which state? Asking for a friend.
Town of 20k people, we had a wool shop... just sold wool only. Always thought it was a front, years later found out they won the lotto(2mil) blew it all keeping the wool shop open almost 10 years with zero customers lol
I knew a guy in my town who worked a shitty job at the Oasis factory making the green foam that florists stick flowers into, just so he could keep a tiny book store he owned open. As an adult, I now wonder if he also sold weed on the side.
Aww, that's touching. I hope his store made him so happy that he didn't care about his foam drudgery
You do have to admire that sort of commitment though.
Are you in Switzerland? Another commenter was mentioning a wool shop with no customers that seemed like a front, lol.
Like wool clothing or raw wool? I love wool clothing, but who has a use for raw wool?
Tax write off, get thee behind me, capital gains tax!
There is a Psychic and Tarot card place in my town that I never see anyone going in or out of but always has at least two or three high end sports cars in the parking lot. Something is paying for those cars and it ain’t palm reading.
That's a bit of a stretch. The most likely explanation is that they clearly foresaw the lotto numbers.
A lot of car washes popping up near me with a monthly fee unlimited washes program that I'm positive is just a better version of what Walter did in Breaking Bad. Scan your app's QR code and away you go, meanwhile someone behind the scenes rings it up as a cash sale and throws $15 into the till.
Could be, but it's also an outstanding business model for a carwash. It evens out the cash flow when the weather is bad, and often doesn't add up for the customer. I had a subscription for 5 years with the first one in San Francisco. I finally dropped it when the price hit $50 a month and it was still too packed to get a scrub whenever I wanted. The washes were $25 each, so I had to go every other week just to break even.
tl;dr I was wrong.
I used to go to a restaurant that I was sure was a front.
Years ago I was walking home from the gym and I got peckish. I was in one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan so I didn't think twice about just walking into the first place I saw.
The second I walked in I decided it was a big mistake. This place looked fancy. Nice place settings, real wood furniture, etc. I was dressed like a bum and probably smelled bad.
But the head waiter came out and treated me like royalty. Fresh baked bread, a sauteed flounder that he filleted right at the table and all around baller service at a very reasonable price. I was the only person there but it was early so I didn't think much of it. I figured that if their food and service was this good when they thought I was a bum this is the place for me. I dropped a 100% tip and decided I'd go once a week and if I ever found a date I'd impress the hell out of her when we roll into a nice restaurant and the head waiter greets me by my first name and treats me like a big shot (aside: the first and only girl I brought there didn't like their vegetarian options but ended up marrying me anyway).
Ever time we went the place was practically empty. This was one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan but they were still paying Manhattan rent. The food was always top notch and did I mention how awesome the service was? Mooci, the waiter once came back from vacation and insisted that I try some of the moonshine from his Sicilian Mother. Constant freebies too.
We decided there's no way they could be turning a profit and assumed it was a mob front. Some older NYers may remember when the story broke that SPQR was a mob front, so it seemed pretty likely.
Well a few years ago we went back after moving out of state. The restaurant was under new management and everything sucked. Crappy place settings, shitty generic food and I didn't recognize anyone there. It turns out they weren't a mob front. They were just great cooks that sucked at running a business and ran out of money :(
I mean, Sicilian and living in NY, I would suspect it was a front too.
An appliance store in my area. There are always crazy nice cars out front. Cars I don't even recognize. The store is super crappy looking and run down. Went in one time when we were looking for fridges. Everything was so expensive. Very old models out fridges out on the floor. No customers. Very weird.
Sounds like one of the car dealerships around here. Lots of expensive luxury cars. All white. I never see anyone there. The place is way too expensive for the shitty neighborhood its in.
Stores that sell very expensive items would only need to make 2 or 3 sales a month to stay a float. For example, if you sell super cars, you just need to sell around seven cars a year and still make profit.
There is a wool shop that never has any customers, in the center of town, so not cheap real estate, and I saw someone go in there after looking in the windows, and got yelled at to get out.
It's in Switzerland, so shady financial stuff isn't exactly rare.
Not defending this particular wool shop but often those sorts of specialty shops also have an online side. Weird that they would throw customers out though
Eh, it also depends on where you live. I don't know what it's like over there, but we have an addiction crisis where I live. People steal many odd things, sometimes because they like them, sometimes to sell them, and other times because they hatch a crazy plan that they give up on halfway through.
We definitely have certain people that are regularly kicked out of stores due to prior misbehaviour. (Assult, theft, biohazard stuff, etc.) Sometimes there's only so much that you can deal with from the same person, you know? It can get to the point where you just ban someone.
I'm not saying all cash-only bars are laundering money, but I am saying that the owner is probably at the very least not declaring all of their profits.
It's usually just not declaring profits in my experience, it's brutally addictive to slap 30% ish profit on top of everything.
My boss at a pizza place had 2 registers he would use for various reasons but it all boiled down to one being reported to the IRS and the other not.
I know a liqour store that has a small bar inside thats cash only, I got friendly enough with a manger that basically admitted the locals that hung out there were mostly blue collar and came in after work where they got payed cash. Meanwhile the retail liqour customers largely were card users. So the owner made the bar cash so he could report less. Makes sense why its the cheapest bar around by a large margin.
We have a fireworks shop. They just sell fireworks, and are open all year round. In the UK we have like 4 days a year when it's acceptable to set them off.
They even have a number in the window for you to ring outside of regular opening hours.
It might as well just be called Mike's Heroin and Weed Shop.
There's a few in Bradford, but then again we're pretty much guaranteed a display at around 11pm every night.
There are none that I know with 100% certainty, but there are a few types of businesses that are generally known to be fronts where I come from (and I suspect in many cities), and there are a few specific ones I'm confident are fronts.
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Massage parlors are commonly fronts for prostitution all over the world, or offer "extra" services. This is so common that many of them have prominent signs explicitly saying they do NOT.
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I swear, there must be more video stores than there are working VCRs in my city. And they seem to have kept mostly the same stock of VHS tapes for the past 30 years. They are rumored to be fronts for, again, prostitution.
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I have strong suspicions about psychic readers. There are a ton of them, and many are open at odd hours of the night in places that are not busy enough to get any legitimate foot traffic.
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Gyms are all fronts for...gyms. I mean, the gym business is corrupt enough that I feel like that counts.
Helsinki is, for some reason, full of massage parlours.
There's a neighbourhood called Kallio that was formerly rather cheap but has become much more expensive and gentrified, and the massage parlours remain. I have no idea how they can afford their rent, as I've never seen anyone going into or coming out of one of those venues.
Obviously they provide "extra services", but I don't think that can be enough to sustain them. I suspect money laundering from drug sales etc.
If you are in NYC, usually, from my understanding they are fronta for multi-family kinda squat houses. That’s why the curtains are so close to the front door and you almost never see anyone in there…actually, in all my time I’ve never seen anyone in one of those places. But they’re all set up the same. Pull back those curtains and it’s like a huge illegal house
You're talking about psychic readers in NYC? I've definitely seen some foot traffic in the places downtown.
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There is a pizza place. We once went in to order food. There was no food, no menu, no drinks. We stood there and asked for a menu. They looked at us like we were nuts. We turned around and left.
To be fair, after COVID some of the diners started to only do delivery. So maybe it was that (most likely not, though)
Tiny takeaway with a rich owner, hires on the spot, cash in hand payments, no contracts and most regular deliveries are to houses that stink of weed. Pretty sure that one would be a front (but it’s a front that does good food)
Mattress Firm.
...I've said to much...
Like who the fuck needs to buy mattresses so often that theres gotta be a Mattress Firm on every corner.
And whats with the name? Its so weird...
Right, who buys that many mattresses that there needs to be three large mattress shops in the one area and than another actual house shop like Harvey Norman furniture right near by too
Are you Italian? Because there's a famous mattress firm that does ads all the time on TV, and they've been doing it for 30+ years.
There was a satirical magazine many years ago where people could vote for "the best things list", and one of the item on the list was always "let's chase away the Mafia from town of the mattress firm"
Nice try FBI.
There's a cafe near me that's open 24/7. I've been in there a couple of times and the coffee is horrible, the last time I visited the guy behind the counter didn't know how to turn on the espresso machine and had to call his boss.
But I'm 100% certain all those people turning up at 1am are just getting a caffeine hit before heading to the clubs
I have 2 places like that near me. Both aren't 24/7 but no one knows anything about how the stores are run. One is a cafe and the other is a gelato shop.
You would think the gelato shop would be busy during the summer but there are always 3-4 guys chain smoking in front of the shop. It is so bad they had to put a walled off section in front of the shop to keep the smoke from going to the neighboring stores. So pretty sure it is a front for something
Rome, Italy. rent for a small store is 800/mo where this store is, and an average salary is about 1200/mo. This antique/junk store sells like 2 things a day(with average price being 5€) always takes unfavorable exchanges and generally isn't great business-wise, yet it's been here for 15 years, in a district where most - more reasonable - businesses fail within 2 years.
It doesn't take credits cards, only cash. There's a flight simulator controller from the 80s that didn't sell for a decade.
Maybe I'm just paranoid.
Edit: i still love that store, I'm addicted to collecting old junk (self promotion time: I founded a coin collecting community over at lemmy.ml,its called numismatics) and I go to that store every month or so, it helped me to get rid of some old vynil records from my grandfather in exchange for some cash (obv without receipt) but still, I think it either evades taxes (taking that from granted) or it's something bigger, like a front for a mafia or something else.
Had a similar one as well in a former neighbourhood I used to live. Turns out the guy is one of the biggest online sellers and keeps the shop for some legal reasons/for customers to come and see an object in real life/to keep him entertained while in reality he had tremendous trade volumes online.
The fact is that the store owner is a massive boomer, I need to write him via sms because he doesn't have WhatsApp (ubiquitous in Italy and all of Europe) and only owns a dumb phone, as an online seller myself, I think a smartphone is a must these days. He doesn't have a site, he thinks eBay is the devil (and as an ebay seller, that's true, but for other reasons) so I don't think he's an online seller, he's just not the type
There was (maybe still is) a cake shop in Southgate, North London. About a minute from my old flat.
The cakes in the window display rarely changed, if ever.
The guy running it looked like if you imagine the toughest prisoner at a prison, only wearing an apron.
About 50/50 whether the glass would be smashed whenever you walked past.
It was often "open" and had people coming in and out of it at 2-3am when I came back from nights out.
And there was a drive-by shooting right in that area while I lived there, that I always assumed was related. 😅
I feel like half of London could be listed here. Everyone knows about the American candy shops around Oxford St. I live in South London and every other shop is a vape shop or mobile phone accessory/repair shop. Not saying they are all fronts but they feel like it.
That's a movie idea right there, starring Vinnie Jones and Matt Berry
Nice try, detective
There was an asian food place in my local mall back when I worked there as a teen. My old boss casually mentioned that it was a human trafficking front. They'd have women from their native country marry for a visa, have them come to US, employ them work at the store, then.. I have no idea.. I sincerely hope it was for visas and not more nefarious purposes..
There was also a gambling ring going on in the tailor shop of the same mall. But that was whatever.
There's a legitimate pizza place around me that's been around for ~50 years. My mom went to school with the owners children and when she was in high school their dad had a small stint in jail for tax evasion and unregistered and hot guns. Apparently he was importing a lot of guns from Italy and one day a shipment got caught. About 10 years ago, my mom became friends with someone who was hired to do their taxes. She didn't give any details, but she told us the numbers really didn't add up and she had to drop them as a client their first year due to ethical reasons.
The thing is the pizza is really good and kind of an institution in my town. I wouldn't say it is strictly a front, but money does move through it. The family also owns a lot of small strip malls in the tri county area and some historical properties as well.
Oh and one of the sons married one of their 2nd/3rd cousins from Italy in the 90s. The rumor was it was just to help her get citizenship but they are still married to this day and it's kinda weird.
Might be a sham marriage but a Catholics gotta Catholic
Funny part is the tax lady who refused to do their taxes was a confirmation sponsor of one of his grandkids.
I had a similar pizza place in a city I lived in. The best pizza in town. Always busy. They actually provided medical insurance for all employees. This was 20 years ago. They got busted for selling drugs out of the back of the kitchen. They closed down immediately. Was actually a bummer because the pizza was so good.
Art galleries.
A front for tax evasion?
Think of the art pieces as placeholders. It tells the system that you spent a million on art, instead of telling the system that you spent a million on illegal things.
There's a microwave repair store in my city.
There's always one person there when I dive by but never any customers. There's a neon open/closed sign that changes daily so someone is there.
No clue what exactly is going on there.
I mean, you can try to have them repair your microwave
They may do a lot of commercial or mail in repairs.
I've never had a microwave repaired, so I'm assuming they charge enough per customer to only need to do about one repair a week. Sounds like hard, honest work is going on in there to me.
Surely at that point just have people phone up when they need a microwave repaired though rather than sitting in a shop all day doing nothing
It’s not a front anymore because it doesn’t exist, but my massage therapist had a baby and was going to be out for a while. So I went looking around town for a hold over until she got back, and found a “spa” that was across from the entrance to the local Navy base that advertised “Pretty Asian massage therapists” and had a picture of a young lady in a bikini on the front page of their website. It didn’t help matters that all of the reviews were from men.
Now I’m not going to speculate on what was going on, as far as I know it could have been a regular spa that happened to have attractive women working there. I wouldn’t know, that’s not something I want to mess with.
I feel like that maybe stretches the definition of front. You're obviously supposed to know what their real business is.
I don't think I've ever seen a message parlour outside of a hotel that doesn't look like trafficking is involved
What was that saying? Loose lips sink ships?
A place I thought was a front did actually turn out to be one. A Boba shop that made worse quality Boba than others in the same chain turned out to be a front for the trade of stolen car parts and electronics (laptops, phones, cameras, etc). They had $100k of stolen stuff hiding in the back of the store and were shipping it to China and Hong Kong for sale. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/S-F-boba-shop-was-a-front-for-an-international-17162814.php
One i suspected appeared to be owned by the Italian mafia.
I found a really niche state patrol office to pay a fix-it ticket. It was on the third story of an off site parking garage for a mall type thing. With only two "visitor" spaces. There were like 4 cops in this tiny office just yucking it up when I walked in. They all did the "oh look busy now!" dance when I surprised them. I think this was one of those "put him on desk duty so he'll still get a paycheck while he gets cleared" type places. Nice enough for cops, but they had that shitty kid just got away with something vibe, bigtime.
I live in Italy, pick one at random, that's it
I can't prove it, but there's a florist in my town, definitely still in business, that I have not seen a non-company-branded car in front of in actual years. Morning, noon, and night, never any customers. Never any movement from inside. The only time I ever saw the lights on was in the dead of night. The building is half-claimed by ivy.
If it weren't for the upkept greenhouse and the sign out front occasionally changing, you'd never know it wasn't totally abandoned, but it's still operating. Mob activity is the only way to explain it.
A lot of flower shops operate mostly off delivery. Probably just the local place with the 1-800-flowers (or whoever the big flower company is these days) contract.
Yea there is a tiny flower stand in the parking lot of a mall near me. I went there thinking I could get a cheaper price for flowers for my wedding. Turns out this was just a small store front to meet with clients. They actually own a warehouse where they do most of their business for companies/hotels.
They were nice and still gave me a good price if I agreed to using left over flowers. I had no idea what the flowers were going to look like until I picked them up for my weeding but it was cheap and worth it.
There's a road near my house that has over ten barber shops on it. The road is about half a mile long. I'm not sure of the percentage, but they can't all be legit.
Hey weird. Me too. None of them know how to cut hair either. Are we neighbors?
Also a dozen empty hotels that have no vacancy.
Oh you mean the barber district!
Sounds like Plymouth. I think i counted 15 Turkish barbers
There's a "cash converters" style store in my town (like a pawn shop, but they don't do loans or deal in jewelry). Once, years ago I saw a game controller (Logitech wheel) that I was after in the window . I tried to buy it, and was told it was "reserved" It's still there, along with everything else. They don't seem to have any stock turnover at all, and they're still open.
After talking with coworkers, it's generally assumed to be a money laundering front.
In Barcelona there are a lot of many small cafes, bars, restaurants (located generally in zones where the terrain is very expensive) that got purchased by Chinese families.
Generally these were frequented for coffee, drink + tapas, lunch meal. But after the ownership change they end up frequented mainly for the same stuff but not for the food because it's generally not good.
To me these are front for something else. They always become much worse for eating. Never better. Like there is no intention of improving it. But they still do it smartly because they keep some customers just for the beer and coffee mainly after work.
That sounds like a Chinese spy centre. Do they offer lunchtime karaoke? Better acoustics in small rooms.
So I was about to write about a very weird hat shop on the ground floor of an exclusive apartment building in the most hip neighbourhood in my city. They have like 15 hats on display, no customers ever, three bored workers scrolling through their phones all day. But I went to their website, which they do have and it seems most of their business is actually distributing Stetson products and other premium leather goods in this part of Europe, so I guess they can very well afford having one brick-and-mortar display store.
A handful of restaurants which definitely can't afford the amount of people working there and the interior. They always operate the same way: the food doesn't taste good, expensive interior and (many) more personnel than customers.
Unless they all have a philanthropist millionaire as a sponsor, I suspect they launder money. Apparently this is quite common in Germany because hard cash is still common here. Even large sums of money.
A lot of food places, particularly eat-in restaurants, are just perpetually struggling. Half the staff are on minimal pay, or the owner's friends and family helping out. They struggle and lose money for a few years before finally folding. A regular who has no idea about the industry buys the place and keeps much of it the same because they always loved it. The process repeats.
There's no way my small suburb needs 15 pizzerias and 7 sushi restaurants. Somethings up.
Same here. I'll add expensive prices (there's one not far with simple salads at 20€),and a rude staff, especially the boss.
Where I live in Ireland, multiple towns near me have new nail salons setup for manicures, pedicures etc. Thing is though, almost all of them have big signs up saying "cash only". A lot of the time its not busy or they have no customers yet new ones open up every month. Its almost certainly a front. The cash only thing is likely so that its easier to avoid tax or launder money. The government was looking to make cash only businesses illegal and must be able to take card payments too, but that legislation is probably a few years out yet.
Saul Goodman sold me on nail salons as a front.
Theres a video rental place down the way from me in Vancouver, BC. First, Vancouver is expensive as hell. Our average 1 bdrm is roughly 3k a month. This guy has a prime location, in Vancouver, on a busy street, with a video rental store. Who rents movies these days? Maybe some, but surely not enough to keep him afloat. It's not an adult video store either.
I live in Vegas.
Where do I even begin????
When I lived in Daytona a shop opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whippers - $1 plastic whisks. They had two display trees in the front windows, one with black whisks and one with white whisks. They were never open and there was a hand-written sign on the door that said "Closed. If you want a Super-Whipper, they have some at the nail salon next door." The store was in a strip mall less than 200 ft. from three dollar stores and a Publix, all of which sold plastic whisks.
Pretty sure it was a front lol.
"Super-Whippers - for all your affordable Dominatrix needs!"
Local roofer is a front for his coke buisness.
The roofing contractor with the lowest score in my town is known for doing a bad job. It's also known that he is the largest coke dealer in the city.
Ooh, smart - he would be expected to drive to a lot of houses to do appraisals.
Not so smart when he quotes for the same roof every week, mind.
There's this old bookstore that has always looked sketchy. It's in a district that's had a lot of development over the past like 20 years, but that place remains. I tried checking it out once when I was younger, at least 18 if not 21. There was one car in the lot when I got there and I started to walk inside. As I was approaching, a guy stepped out and said something to the effect of, "what are you looking for?" And I answered that I wanted to browse the books. He responded, "there's nothing for you here." So I said, "okay" and I left. Haven't been back since, haven't been around there in a bit but it's probably still there.
Could be one of those shops that sell rare books, like first editions. Probably didn't want some kid getting their (figuratively) sticky hands all over them.
Hey, maybe if you go back you might find the Necronomicon or something in there and kick off some movie plot.
Not sure if this counts since most of them have recently closed down, but for a while there was a large number of American candy stores popping up all over town. Many cash only, same products and same branding across many different stores. Hardly anyone was ever shopping there, and yet they could somehow always afford to pay rent for prime locations. Eventually, several journalists picked up on the topic and found evidence many of them were fronts for money laundering and were tied to organised crime. Not sure if it was directly connected to that increased awareness, but shortly after more of these articles were published, most of the local stores closed.
Have a furniture store in the small downtown area of my town. The entire building looks cigarette stained. They have brown tint on their windows, and peering inside, all the furniture looks crazy old and probably not something you'd want to buy.
On top of that, they're open "by appointment only" and that's just about the only sign they have other than the name of the business. Never seen anyone go in/out. It's in a major location too, "Main street", there's no way it's a real thing.
I have a shop near where I live in the middle of a suburb that only sells fans (the wind blowing kind) and they are a DHL pickup point, everytime I am there there is nobody there. The fans are stacked in boxes up to the ceiling and the quantity of them never changes, been that way for over a year now.
There is also always a shady ass person behind the counter, and often a few shady persons in the "back" of the store.
Since they only sell fans they should've called their store OnlyFans come to think about it .
Mattress Firm
Every mattress store
We had a restaurant on the corner that was open 20 hours a week. They closed a few years ago. I miss their fries.
There is this wig shop in a very popular and pricey area in my town. It's been there since my mom was a child.
The wigs exposed are old fashioned, ugly, never change and we've never seen the shop open. Its super weird. I'm convinced it has to be a cover for something.
Wigs are a very specialized industry. I had a friend whos husband immigrated to Canada via Express entry being a wig maker specializing in natural, hair based wigs, that's how high in demand the profession is. The guy was supplying multiple province's patients with wigs.
I'd imagine that such a business would not have to stay open for long hours during the day or even multiple days per week due to most orders actually coming in through phone from healthcare providers or those affected.
Where I live, we have a helium balloon party store nearby. It's open two hours a day from 10:00-noon, except on Saturday it's 10:00-13:00. The guy's business is booming, you can see people lining up for their orders and picking them up during that window. The store is so specialized but affordable compared to their big box competitors like party city etc, it's hard to beat.
That's a good take and I hadn't thought about it that way, thanks! Although the suspicion has been ingrained into our family for so many years that it will be difficult to remove.
There's this building near my old place. It's old, it's somewhat tall, with a great big hall inside, looks like. LOTS of religious paraphernalia and icons about. It's a little creepy.
No one ever comes or goes during the week; only on weekends. And then it's a steady stream. I don't know how they can afford the space they're taking up, but they seem to. I worried it could be a front for gambling or child-trafficking, but they call themselves a church. Definitely seems sus. It's been on Reddit, actually, a few times.
Just kidding, it's the famous Knox Presbyterian with the sayings everyone sends everyone.
Matress stores.
Never see anyone in them, never see anyone in the parking lot, and every time i've ever gone in there was one person working there who acted surprised as hell someone came in.
and yet they are always expanding and building more locations
That actually was a kind of scam:
There are more matress stores than just MatressFirm doing it.
For decades there was a funeral parlor down the street from my house. Right in the middle of a busy residential neighborhood in the city. There's only on-street parking and they had two spots in front of their building reserved for funerals. Only no one ever parked there. No cars, limos, hearses, anything. A neon open sign turned on every day over their door but no one ever came or went.
My parents had a tenant who was an elderly gentleman with few relatives. When he died, my mom called the parlor to arrange the funeral but no one answered. She left a message on their machine but no one ever called back. We weren't fully surprised because we'd been calling it a front for years, but mom was unconvinced until then.
The building got fully renovated a few years ago and we actually saw a funeral taking place, so they've upped their game.
Here in Brazil, I guess the Subway franchise. Almost no one inside the shops for years and lack of real promotional campaigns give the sensation that it is a big money washing scheme.
It's a public secret that "Winkel 137" (EN: "Shop 137") in Rotterdam is a front for illegal activity, most likely drugs. It's never open during normal hours, the shelves are barely stocked, and no one ever really enters the place. It's been there for as long as I can remember though.
If you look at the place in Google maps you can even see some weird ducts coming out of the wall on the above floor, presumably to clear out some of the vapors coming from the shop.
One of the google reviews after I translated it seems to hint at something:
"I have been living across the street from this store for 3 years now. I only see dark people inside"
Another said
"What a dark store"
Anyway it's odd that a 7+ year old store with a 2.9 on google has survived this long.
Every single Mattress Firm
I live in the middle of nowhere bumfuct Egypt. Randomly a Mattress Firm popped up in my town. Been there over a year now.
Immediate ??? was to be had.
I have NEVER seen a SINGLE VEHICLE in the parking lot. Not even staff inside. Wtf is this??
Then again there is a pretty heavy cartel family that moved here and bought the sheriff a hummer a while ago so. But they already have a couple well known washing stations for their cash so who knows?
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/676543180
A nice npr segment where they talked about mattress store because there are a bafflingly large number of them.
There are a ton of gambling places where you never see anyone walking in. It's a public secret these are money laundering operations from some well connected crime syndicate.
When I was in Seattle there is this pizza place in a suburban neighborhood that only open for 3 hours 4 days a week from 2:00 to 5:00. All of the workers were the same ones every day and they all three looked no nonsense but friendly enough when you ordered .
The pizza was really good and the calzones were fantastic, so I would go there often, but I almost never saw another customer in the place even though they had at least twenty tables with four chairs at each table set up in two giant dining rooms.
And they were in and out of the way spot with a very small sign. And I think at the most I ever saw one table taken up when I went there and that was only once.
And I never waited in line.
It just seemed like a really odd disposition for a pizza place that obviously needed to pay for a pretty high overhead considering how much space it took up.
Just as a counterpoint. I don't know what americna nightlife is. But, in the UK, if there was a pizza/takeout place that inly opened after 12 until 5, it would be a great business idea. Chances are, there'll be a fuck ton of drunk people using it.
There was this pizza store nearby that had insanely cheap pizza. It costed less than half of their competitors. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. The price made me think it wasn't a legitimate business.
I used to live in a town with no less than three scuba shops.
It was not on the water.
Slightly related: I just assume any business that operates on a cash-only basis is commiting tax fraud.
Tbf if I ran a business I would probably go cash only because payment processors have become somewhat predatory.
Thats fair. The working class has to work outside the law to make it but corporations are able to brutally fuck us in a legal manner.
https://lbry.tv/@rossmanngroup:a/stripe-adds-more-fees-to-the-small:5
Youre part of the problem
In the city I grew up in, there’s a Chinese restaurant near my home that never gets packed, not even on busy weekends. I’ve also never seen more than 2 customers at a time eating there. And yet, it’s outlasted every single restaurant in the vicinity for 3 decades. That, and there’s always an expensive car or two parked in front.
My barber used to have basicallyno customers, his family members as the employees (shite) and one day went ahead and got cctv cameras installed and had a backroom that was well protected. Later the shop and the people mysteriously disappeared suddenly.
Oh I understood on first read that people mysteriously disappeared there a la Sweeny Todd lol
Lmaooo no no I meant the owner and workers just up and left out of nowhere.
This tiny hidden pizzaria place that is always closed for private meetings. Called Pizzaria Mafiosi. Hidding in plain sight.
I love it, straight out of a cartoon show.
Shady as shit no-tell motel, overpriced as hell for where it's located. Pulls in maybe 5 guests a week, but the owners flashing about in a shiny new car.
Ask any Australian about Red Rooster. franchise chain that can be found all over the place, yet no restaurant ever seems to have customers either in store or the drivethrough, at least not in the volumes you would expect they require to stay open. Its a real enigma, but their chicken is S-tier
The red rooter crunchy fried chicken is epic
Used to love the cheesy nugs too, not sure if they still have them
oh yes and the reds hot sauce version is epic!
they are always so depressing looking...
There's a neighborhood restaurant near me that is unreasonably bad. You can't tell the staff apart from people who are just hanging around - and you do need to figure it out cause no one is coming to take your order. They're dirty, disinterested and rude. Food is typically some piece of meat and fries which is served swimming in sauce, and often it's way overdone or cold / raw. They're often missing ingredients. You just get the feeling overall that they're truly not interested in having customers.
This one time at oh fuck it just read this shit.
Hartford Police made a major drug bust at a business called Hot Mama's posing as a restaurant on Franklin Avenue shortly before 7 p.m.
Red Rooster. It's a national chain restaurant here in AU with outlets in every major city, you never see anyone in there and nobody knows anyone who eats there, but they never seem to have any trouble staying open.
Used to go to a night club that must have been up to something. The prices, both membership and drinks were so low it is either fake booze or another income. The drinks seemed fine.
This was how many famous jazz stars were able to become famous. They played in clubs owned by the Mafia as fronts and then the clubs became popular because the shows were genuinely good.
The Mafia actually engaged in some level of patronage with black jazz performers who otherwise never would've been able to be professional musicians. For example, Al Capone's gang once kidnapped a musician, Fats Waller, to play for his multi-day birthday party, and paid him extremely generously for the performance
Yup. Currently here in NZ, and there are a few almost-always-empty eateries that even survived COVID. Very sus overall haha.
Do you guys have ghost kitchens over there? Because there are several dead-seeming restaurants in my neighborhood that are actually just ten different restaurants on door dash and never appear to have actual customers because they just have delivery people running in and out.
I don't think so, no. And the places I'm thinking of have been here for many years before Doordash was even a thing.
Yes. It looks super dingy, and I've never seen anyone go in there.
But the main clincher is they had PS5's right up the height of their rarity. Super suspicious.
But it worked so I guess that's the main thing. I was half expecting him to ask if I wanted any drugs or a "new friend", but no.
There’s a medical supply store in my town I went in one time because my mom needed a crutch and everything was covered in dust. I went online and a bunch of people were saying that it’s just a front to commit insurance fraud.
The old pizza place used to be owned by a big drug dealer and you could rig up, order a special topping o. The top and you could get weed over the counter.
Then my local chicken fast food restaurant did the same but you got to go through the drive Thu.
They had to close it down and deep clean because they were selling everything lol.
¿Was the chicken place called Los Dos Hermanos?
Lol nah I wish, just some semi crap aussie chicken shop.
I miss when that place was good, nothing beats buying weed and munches from the same place.
There are several! It's kind of a problem in my city but none of the civilians care because somehow they have the best food
There's an arcade in the center of town beneath an expensive (yet shitty) apartment complex. The arcade windows are covered but there is a sign that says "Opening Soon". It's been two years and nothing has changed externally. At first I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, but the property is expensive to rent and after 2 year I have my doubts.
What I don't understand though is if you were using the place as a front, wouldn't an arcade be a great place to launder money while your at it?
Probably less complicated to be not actually running a business. Who is checking anyway?
IRS only cares if you don't pay taxes.
I mean I live in Berlin...
Long John Silvers, of course.
We have a Mexican store here (one of several), but people come from ~90 miles to come to THIS one. None of the others in town, just this one. There’s a ton of others between here and there but this one is special. It’s not fake documents because I know other places that have those.
Not sure what they’re doing but they’re always busy and a ton of out of town/out of state people come and go.
Yep, we have really expensive fashion boutiques on the promenade where I live. Nobody seems to enter and shop there. Ever. There's usually a shopkeeper, female, who sits there all day, adjusting the clothes.
A lot of investment bankers’ wives open up fashion boutiques that see little to no business, it’s a write off for taxes. Not technically a front in the strictest terms.
... and once every three years or so it turns into a solarium or something for a couple of months and then reverts back to a boutique. At least that's how it works here.
We have those too, but it's too central and high-profile for them to be fronts. I've just assumed that because they're so obscenely expensive (which they are) they don't need to sell much volume to turn a profit.
It's a shame though, because it's a really nice area, and there used to be a bunch of shops there that were reasonably priced, so us mortals could shop there. It was bustling, now it's crickets and rich people.
Not my town, but there is a junk shop in main railway station, (sells clothing, shit like t-shirts with weed prints, pipes, random little trinkets). I can only assume rent is very expensive in such a central location, and I really can't think of any way how that place is profitable. I only visited once as a teen since they sold us weed pipes even though I was underage. -There is a actual tobacco shop nearby, with much better selection. -There is never any customers -None of the products sold are very valuable, so they would have to sell lot of them to make profit -If you really wanted to buy cringe t-shirt, there is many shops for that around as well, all of which are well known compared to this one
Many business have gone under during the years in that location, replaced with others, but somehow this one place has been there over 10 years.
There's a car repair shop that is basically just a private garage, no sign, no ads, but on the regular, you see brand new, expensive cars with license plates from far away being "fixed" there. Always only takes an hour tops.
There is also a known drug dealing hot spot on the car park across the road of the car shop.
There is a person who sells bags on my high street. He has some cheap chiness watches up front, and actually uses the shop to sell fake watches (which is illegal, duh). I am 100% sure of it because I was going to buy one (but then I decided I would be too ashamed to wear a fake watch).
Also potentially a "tech" shop. Everything was so expensive, I've never seen people enter or leave, and when I asked about a device, they didn't evsn know the spscs for it. How the hell are you selling a computer if you don't know the specs for it? And why would a 32GB USB cost £12? Seems a bit much.
There's a restaurant in my hometown of Lexington, KY called ""Frank and Dino's." It's owned by Carlo Baccarezza who has ties John Gotti, who was Italian mafia. He's a horrible person and has been sued by former employees of the restaurant for discrimination.
He opened this place just before the pandemic. It's supposed to be a fine-ish dining establishment with authentic Italian. The prices are high, but the food is terrible. It might be passable for someone who doesn't know authentic Italian. In any case, the restaurant sits empty most of the day, and it doesn't make sense to me why you would open a place like this and just allow it to have a terrible reputation that's mostly empty day in and day out.
Nice try, FBI.
At one point in Toronto I counted 10, yes ten, perfume shops on Yonge St from bloor to Dundas. I swear one of the shelves in one of them would have to be a secret door.
In the town I live in one of the worst kept secrets is a small hundred year old mixed use 2 or 3 story building. The Laundromat at the bottom with a handful of old washing machines and dryers is always locked and never actually open. Former tenants have publicly stated it's purely a front because the landlord doesn't want to bother with a commercial tenant but because of the zoning it needs a commercial space on the ground level so they maintain a fake laundromat
wat, that has got to be costing them a ton in opportunity cost?
Not really. Hundred year old building, the owner probably owns it free and clear, and they have tenants in the residential units. Getting the commercial space up to code for a modern business would likely be prohibitively expensive, so they keep a fake laundromat there.
We live across a back alley from a hookah bar that was called "A Buck R 2 Lounge". There's a shed in the back where all sorts of ATVs and dirt bikes meet up to terrorize the neighborhood/city, it sounds like we live in the middle of a motocross course. They recently painted the building black with purple trim (as hideous as it sounds) and put a new sign up proclaiming the establishment is now called "Rico's Rush". I wish someone would just burn the place down already, starting with the shed...
I have a vacuum repair shop in an old warehouse building a couple blocks from me. It has almost no signage except a neon "open" sign sand a small "vacuum repair" sign on the door. I have never seen anyone walking in there
It's possible that their clients are mostly other businesses and they pick them up by a van or whatever instead of folks dropping them off at the store.
I need a dust filter for a Hoover Max extract pressure pro model 60. Can you help me with that?
It's been many years since I was there but there's a ski shop in Gainesville Florida.
Mattress firm
I'm seeing a pattern here.
Pretty much every small business in my village to be honest... I have never in my life seen any customer in there, and yet they have been open for years.
Lots of massage parlors I'm sure are front for sexytime places.
Every psychic in NYC
Sun bed/Tanning salons always got my suspicions!
There was a ton of self storage places popping up around town by some company that with green branding (I dont remember their name). They bought up all this property that would have been better suited for retail space (one near me was specifically blocked by locals for being an eyesore, unless they met some demands), built huge multi floor storage complexes, and then immediately sold it off. Most of em got bought by Public Storage and repainted orange.
Like what? That had to have been a front for some money laundering or some shit. Like they clearly had no intention of running those places after constructing them.
I read somewhere that Self Storage is absolutely booming right now. People buy cheap crap, find they have more cheap crap than they can realistically keep, then look for effectively someone else's garage to store it in. From the business side you literally just have to build some storage units, collect payments and keep it clean enough for people to want to store their shit there
Yeah it's just weird they went through the trouble off buying land all over town, building the facilities, running it for a year then selling it off
I'm convinced that calzones aren't real, and any place claiming to sell them is a front.
Calzón is a kind of underwear in Spanish. I mean, im pretty sure people need those.
Absolutely. Calzones are pointless. They're just pizza that's harder to eat. No one likes them.
Go anywhere north of PA and all you'll see is Pizza/Sub/Calzone combo shops!
I live fairly close to a place notoriously filled with drug dealing gangs. One summer 3 pet fish stores and 4 barber shops opened and within a couple of month they were all closed.
There is a carpet store and restaurant near my house, and in the three years I've lived here I can't recall seeing anyone buy anything or even visit either store a single time.
Once my partner and I actually walked over to check it out and the carpet store was closed and all of the windows were covered. It was like 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, so I can't imagine why it would be closed.
There's supposedly a lot of Russian gang activity in my area, so I'm assuming it's just a front for them but I've never really confirmed it.
Carpets are also good for rolling up bodies
Ja
DeLorean Motor Company’s Midwest sales office used to be just down the street from me, up until a few months ago. Never saw anyone in it, but I think I did see a DeLorean outside it once.
It's gone now but for a long time we had a 24hr fruit shop.
How Oxford Street is being reclaimed from American candy shops
Westminster Council has been cracking down on US sweet shops after many were discovered to be fronts for illegitimate businesses. In November 2022 one third of the stores had been shut down and by March 2023 the Met Police had seized £1 million worth of goods from the shops.
The solution is pretty sweet (pun intended):
A new initiative by Westminster Council called Meanwhile On: Oxford Street will allow up-and-coming businesses to open in the sites of closed-down candy shops without paying rent, while also having their business rates cut by 70 percent. The free rent will last for the first six months of the stores opening. It comes as part of a scheme to regenerate central London’s waning high street.
There's a bar here that is a money wash for an outlaw biker gang. Everyone knows it. It's the worst kept secret in this town.
There's one that's a limo service that's shady af
There's a rim sale and limo rental place across the street from me that I'm sure is a front. The only people I ever see there are the owners and they always just have a few limos parked in front.
That's kind of the same place as the one in my home town. Shady as fuck. 😆
Almost any cash only retail business in 2023 is highly suspect outside of some outlier situations like rural markets
I don’t even know where to start with this one…
There’s the “car wash and bistro”… yeah, they’re definitely serving more than just food in there
There’s the “carnival sweets and treats” that’s got no street sign or sign of any kind, for that matter, tucked in next to a coin laundry. It’s just some lady making funnel cakes, deep fried Oreos and other “carnival food”. As an added bonus, they have free arcade machines out front for you to play while you wait… yeah, I’m sure they bought those with all the money they’re raking in from fried dough…
I’ve got more but these are the two top fronts in my area for sure.
Not my town, but the town I used to live in had a store that appeared to only sell very old lampshades from the 1970s and I never saw a single customer go in there but it was always open. I'm 100% sure it was a front for the local crime syndicate.
Car Washes. Over the past two years they’ve popped up everywhere and they all seem to be under different names.
There’s a macaron shop near my work that has no business (!) being that large, downtown. It has a very fancy shopfront and website, I’ve called to pretend to order one time and it was quite expensive.
I’ve never even seen cars/vans/bikes/whatever taking away their order there (it’s delivery only).
It’s super weird, macarons are not even that popular around here, theres another better known macaron place that is tiny compared to this one
Years ago I lived in a small town on the edge of a new town in the UK and there was a shop that was rarely open but was piled high with used car radios.
There is a solar tanning parlor of sorts in a street close to us. I might just live in a bubble where noone would ever go to one of those parlors, but it seems to be open pretty late, and it feels like there are often some unsavoury people going in/coming out. It's become a running joke that it's a front, to be honest don't have a clue but I wouldn't surprise me.
Classic answer of a mattress store. We have a very busy interesting in town, and they are on all 4 corners. Prime real estate, never a car in the lot.
Our small, rural town had a bar change hands a couple times over the past few years. One day several murdered out Mercs, one an AMG, start parking in front of it. Not to stereotype, but they were greased up, wearing tracksuits and gold chains, guys from the Balkans are driving those cars and operating the bar. Never went in while they were around, but within a year, one of those guys got caught by DEA trying to move some serious weight of cocaine and meth.
The bar shut down pretty quickly after that.
All my landlord's business associates are in the paradise papers. And half of his LinkedIn contacts are russian, so ...
Turkish barbers, I'm just curious as to why there are so many. My town has like 5/6 places to cut your hair, at least. Mostly Turkish places.
There is a Turkish barber not far from me. I went once because it's closer than my usual place and looked alright. I went in and there were zero customers, completely empty except two blokes with several phones each. Refused to cut my hair because they were 'busy'.
I've paid more attention now when I got past there and I have never seen a customer.
None of the ones I’m on about make it that obvious…
Absolutely - our local smoke shop in my towns plaza.
There used to be one I just couldn't understand. It was one of those stores you commonly see on the road side with many products related to our local culture. They could theoretically make a ton of money selling that stuff to tourists if the store was next to a gas station or something, but it was deep inside the town in a very low traffic street, with no advertisement. Non-tourists would have a need for their products once every few years at most and it could be found on regular stores as well. There was just no way that store could be profitable.
But then they started selling rotisserie chicken and I became their regular. A couple years later they shut down.
Growing up, I would drive by a restaurant that was called the good view restaurant, it had a single small rectangular window at ceiling height on one side only and maybe three parking spaces that were always empty.
There was a woman's beauty supply store across the street from a place I used to work. Never anyone there except once a month there would be a steady stream of very expensive cars all driven by men....maybe they were buying for their wives.
They could be business owners coming in to get supplies. I know tons of people who work in the industry and "men with expensive cars" describes many of them. One runs her own beauty supply shop and mostly sells to other businesses so it doesn't appear she gets the foot traffic of a typical retail store even though she's selling high volume.
There's a store in my little town that sells gift bags, ballons and teddy bears. Never seen anybody in there, never seen the window display change. Keep in mind this isn't a party store. They only seem to sell those three things. Lord knows what they REALLY sell. Maybe "teddy bears" is slang for some new drug I don't know about.
When I lived in Burlington Vermont, the owner of the skate shop "ridin' high" got in trouble because he was selling drugs out of the skate shop.
Classic.
There's an Indian restaurant near me that has been there for years. I've never once seen more than 2 people in there and rarely any ubereats. I once went in to buy samosas and they seemed surprised. It's not a cheap neighborhood so I'm certain the place is a front more than anything.
We have a scrapbooking store in town that never seems to have business, if it's not a front it's a way to keep the family from getting inheritance
There is a thrift store in town with a carpet store attached, which is giant but 1/4th full. When we walked in the owner looked surprised we came to look at the thrift section. It was crap, and looked all untouched for a long long time
There's a beauty supply place where the inside of the store is just rows and rows of generic amazon junk. The thing is .. that place gets extreeeemely high amounts of traffic and people even leave their engines running while visiting this place. It's just so suspicious seeing as the place is just a junk-shop for amazon teir beauty supplies
Di solito viaggio in Polesine, dove vivono i miei parenti. Ma grazie per l'avvertimento.
De rien
There was a chicken restaurant that had a hand painted sign which was poorly done. There were bars on the windows and the windows had ads for cigarettes and prepaid cellphones. It eventually got shut down due to distributing drug paraphernalia.
Where I am in AUS, it seems to be crane rental. I guess pretty easy just to invoice out a days rental and sit around doing nothing.
There was once, but the gang and I set a trap, caught the monster, and now it's just a pawn shop.
My poor Rust Belt town, the downtown is slowly turning into a tourist trap. There was a very chichi high end retail children's store that has now been rebranded......using a non profit foundation's name...all owned by the same people. No one goes in or out, no one seems to work there. No one ever makes deliveries there of any kind, although they purport to be part of a non profit dedicated to sending care packages to comfort children in cancer hospitals. None of the clothing or toys ever change or get moved around, they're not even making an effort.
Several. But everyone knows they're most likely being used for money laundering. There's no way those strip clubs are profitable on their own.
There's a furniture store that is never open that I go by a lot which I find odd, but I don't know if it's shady. We literally do have Mafia in my city though.
You just reminded me of one store near my workplace, it sells tableware and rather pretty so I asked them what's their schedule and they just said that they don't know ¯_(ツ)_/¯ how are you even a business if you don't know when do you start and finish your work
That's really strange. Like why have a store? This place is office furniture so maybe it's just occasionally used as a showroom but I go by several times a week and have never seen it open.
Seniors Pizza in Calgary, AB. Always a massive line outside, even during winter.
That sounds like a legit place then
There was this business that was letting at 24:00 receipts on our tables that weren’t ours. And the girl was searching always what table didn’t have a receipt so she would give one randomly.
Either our “IRS” tax evasion works over night, or that store just makes blank receipts for drugs or other illegal acts. It was weird anyway, and self service. Wtf. Self service in the middle of the town in a beer bar pub like is just weird. Why did they have the waitress giving fake receipts then. Everything was so sketchy.
There are a couple of popular restaurants that are cash only. They even have an ATM inside if you forget
Not wanting to pay 3% of all your sales to visa/Mastercard doesn’t make you a “front”
I used to work on a military base. There were three different Chinese restaurants within a mile and a half of the front gate. All run by folks of East Asian descent, with barely more than a dozen sentences of English between them. Also, in one of them, I'm pretty certain I saw a satellite phone.
Maybe they were all just folks looking to make a better life in the States. But, I'm willing to bet that at least one of those folks was phoning home with over heard secrets.
