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.
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.
Have lots of those in Oregon. They are required to sell some food so they aren’t just straight up gaming establishments, but is a semi government-sanctioned way to bend gambling laws. “Lotto Delis” they’re sometimes called.
Yeah, that’s where I’m from. They all got that keno.
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.
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.
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
You do have to admire that sort of commitment though.
Like wool clothing or raw wool? I love wool clothing, but who has a use for raw wool?
People who make wool clothing!
I would have thought they meant finished yarn for knitters and crocheters (and likely accessories for knitting and crocheting.)
Are you in Switzerland? Another commenter was mentioning a wool shop with no customers that seemed like a front, lol.
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.
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.
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) 16•2 years ago
These usually aren’t fronts per se. They do everything there. Tax prep, scams, consulting, private eyes. These psychic places are never JUST a psychic place that’s usually just what the sign says.
You know you’re screwed when you need a psychic to prepare your taxes.
An appliance store in my area. There are always crazy nice cars out front. Car brands 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 of 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 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Please reassure me Roskapankki is still operating.
Some friends of mine saw them carry a dead rat out the back room and throw it out onto the street while they were waiting for me there.
Yeah, it’s still there, but I’ve not been in for ten years.
I see things haven’t changed ;)
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
-
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 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
Nice try, detective
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.
Nice try FBI.
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.
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
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.