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
Hell yeah, now that's how you make good use of an unexpected influx of cash
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?
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.
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.
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.
Mattress stores have a way of popping up next to each other. If you see a mattress store, there's almost always another one across the street.
There are mattress places in my town in locations that have to cost a significant sum to rent that are "by appointment only."
I never see anyone go in or out, and I've not known a single person who would schedule an appointment just to buy a forking mattress.
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.
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
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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.
It's possible the store owner also owns the store location maybe. Massively reduces throughput necessary. Could also be a fence?
It's possible, there are 2 possibilities.
Either he only operates the store for fun, and barely breaks even. (and may be possible, he seems really interested in what he does)
But even then, he may operate the store for fun and launder money for some mafia
Or it's shady stuff period.
In the end, innocent until guilty.
Edit2: and maybe he's just rich from his family and just does what he likes.
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.
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:
https://www.businessinsider.com/mattress-firm-blames-aggressive-expansion-on-own-executives-brokers-2018-9
In a friend's neighborhood there's some kind of place that packs matresses into trucks everyday, and the whole area in general has a ton of matresses lying next to dumpsters as well as quite a lot of matress stores.
Something must definitely be going on there
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.
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.
Not declaring all your profit is actually the opposite of laundering money, so it's going to be one or the other, never both
Galaxy brain: Opening a front to launder your main business's undeclared profits.
There's a well known 24 hour florist in Melbourne.
Come on now, who needs flowers at 3am?
Slightly related: I just assume any business that operates on a cash-only basis is commiting tax fraud.
https://lbry.tv/@rossmanngroup:a/stripe-adds-more-fees-to-the-small:5
Youre part of the problem
OP said cash only.
Like actively refusing card options. Because if you loose a potential customer you may did not have to pay the card transaction fee but also lost their revenue.If you have credit cards as an option everyone will choose it because convencience, cash only is the only way
Someones confidently wrong.
It is convenient. But sometimes I prefer cold hard cash.
Reason: Better spending habits than with the abstract spending of electronic cash.The thing is that the video I linked is from someone who likes to vote with his money, people like that will only accept cash
There are good reasons
P.S its "confidently incorrect" not "confidently wrong"
There's a small bar in a town near me that has really good food. Their prices are insanely low but you pay for every single thing you add, so a plain hamburger might be $7 but each topping you add 50¢ or whatever. Basically they know their customers and manage to offer both cheap and premium food.
Anyways point is, they have two different prices listed on their bills, one for cash payment and a slightly higher one for a card payment, so that's how they walk that line
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.
