this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 51 minutes ago

There's a mobile phone repair shop next to where we live. Everything in the window is faded from the sun. In 6 years of living here I have not seen it open or someone inside even once.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 32 minutes ago (1 children)

Theres a pizza store near me that always sells the weirdest pizzas, they have beans on pizza and just about everything else. Nobody ever goes in and ive never seen any deliveries leave.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 minutes ago

Baked Beans on a pizza is great. It's like fancy beans on toast

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

At the end of my street growing up was a used car dealership with the same 4 cars scattered out front my entire time through elementary, middle and high school. They didn't even bother airing up the tires...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

Once lived in a small town with not one, but TWO Hollywood Videos. In like the late 20-teens. Just napkin math numbers, you'd need every household in the town to rent a video twice a week to support both of those just maintaining their leases... Over a decade into the age of streaming dominance.

There was no way they weren't doing something shady on the side.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago

Sometimes it's just a passion project by crazy people. My town has a shack on a busy non-walkable intersection without even parking spaces that sells only angel figurines. Let me be clear, this isn't general angel knickknacks, this isn't specific saints, it's angel figurines ONLY. You will find no bless this house signs. No Christmas tree toppers or ornaments. Not a single holiday decoration, religious or otherwise. You won't even find Jesus on the cross.

Angel. Figurines. Only. I always assumed it was a front for something until my mom helped with some taxes for them. No, it's just one crazy couple who are obsessed with the sanctity of the angel figurine. They feel very strongly about it and asking if they do garden angels now that spring's coming up and you'd love to patronage them is apparently offensive enough for them to take their taxes elsewhere lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Years ago, I was in the mall in Dearborn, MI. It has most of the stuff you'd find in any other American shopping mall. There's the Gap, American Eagle, and Spencer's Gifts. It's mostly full of teenagers doing things that teenagers do in a mall.

Then there's a random antique shop full of Edwardian furniture. I didn't see anyone in there besides a sales guy or two, and it seemed completely out of place. Dearborn is also fairly close to the Canadian border. I swear it's gotta be a money laundering front.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago

It's one of the three mattress stores within 2 blocks of each other, but I'm not sure which one.

Hint: it's all of them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

In Switzerland it's either "Barber Shops" or "Döner Shops" their card reading terminals are for some reason always broken and you have to pay cash!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Their card terminal is broken because they can then lie on the taxes on how much they made. They can't do that with a card transaction.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 minutes ago (1 children)

Yes that's literally what money laundering is

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

No it isn't, it's tax evasion. Businesses do it to get more money from lying on their taxes, not taking "dirty" illegal money and making it legal

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago

Not quite money laundering, but for a time thwre was shapp called the 'Happy Herb Shop'. In the centre of town. Maijuana is still lillegal in AUS

Was too young to get in when it was open, and closed down when I was old enough to go in. :(

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 hours ago

Growing up west of Orlando, there was this store in the mall that sold like glass figures and porcelain stuff. Never once did I ever see a customer in there. Multiple stores came and went but that one, there since the mall’s opening, remained. When I worked for EB Games at the same mall, we’d always pass it when we dropped off our money and my manager would say it was a front. Everyone I knew called it the Crack Store.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

There was a dog grooming salon in Nottingham with curtains over the windows. Other than the woman who ran the place, no one (or dog) ever went in or came out that we saw.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 hours ago

As a kid there was a pizzeria everyone at school said was a money laundering operation, no one knew of anyone who bought pizza there and it was always open... thinking about it now, the town had about 10 000 people living in it, and there was 6 pizzerias and that particular one was in a very odd place and no signage and i have never seen a menu form them anywhere

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago

The country town my sister lives in had their post office shut down because they were using it as a distribution warehouse for their meth business and most probably money laundering but 100% was running a meth empire from the local post office.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Those fucking candy shops in London. You know the ones. Also, I used to manage a car wash/detail shop in Florida, and Breaking Bad nailed it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

American Candy shops in Denmark too. It's hilarious. I still go to them when I visit my bestie though haha. Love those mixed bags.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Yep, the ones in London are American candy shops too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Yea, we had one out here in the SW near me but it didn't last and by far wasn't the shadiest shop in that area though lmao. I went there for Gatorade and some nostalgia treats. They didn't have a lot of scoop bins though and it was a bit out of the way.

For some reason (probably just from good memories), the sweets with the isles of scoops are distinctively a Scandinavian thing to my brain.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If you used to manage, weren't you directly involved in the layering of dirty money?

Please do an AMA!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

His name is Bogdan

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

oh yea that tiny indian restaurant with no customers and 10 waiters

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Beauty salons. Too many of them. Who is even visiting them?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

I suppose the smell of acetone would probably put off police dogs, they're probably drug related enterprises

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

This is true in my home town. I know one that dealt heroin a few years ago. I think they used the nail salon to launder.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I found a money laundering deli

It's amazing, they love having customers as it improves their cover so everything is dirt cheap and really high quality.

Sometimes people come in and the guy behind the register politely shuffles us out with an armful of free cold cuts and a wink

None of you will ever hear about this place from my lips

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You think anyone does crime to support their dream of being a shop keeper with good deals?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

We need to cook JackbyDev

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

"La casa de las carcasas". All Spaniards know it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

At some point in my city there were two shops open in the same street, 100m from each other. Now there's just one open, but it's insane seeing six employees inside with such a low volume of customers.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago

They expanded, they also have shops in Italy now. In big shopping malls, where the rents are insane.

There's no way they can afford the rents just by selling stupid phone covers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 hours ago

In my country, it’s the casinos. They naturally receive cash predominantly, and can easily launder millions. Everything else is small potatoes.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

My town has like 20+ different barbershops within a couple blocks from each other. They only do the most basic mens haircuts, rarely have any customers, cheap, and cash-only. The business usually lasts for a little over a year, and then suddenly they get some new signage... and another barbershop is reborn! All using similar stock image logos as well.

I went to one a couple years back and I had to basically buzzcut myself to be presentable again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

That might genuinely just be bad business practices though

I have a friend who is a process server, they've told me countless stories of going to serve legal papers to a business but the business name had changed and wasn't the same as on the paperwork so they couldn't serve the papers

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

I have long held the belief that all these mattress stores are all a front for something.

There's a shopping center nearby that has three of them. THREE MATTRESS STORES WITHIN THROWING DISTANCE OF EACH OTHER.

Mattresses are like a once every 10 years purchase. How the fuck is there enough foot traffic to support 3 of them mother fuckers that close together?

When I worked across the street from them I never saw any of them having big sales or anything. Nobody I knew anyone that worked at any of them. They never seemed busy. Never saw trucks bringing in stock.

It doesn't add up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

A person I am close with once worked at one of those mattress stores. They get maybe 1-4 sales a day, but they have stupid high margins and pay their workers poverty wages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 minutes ago

Yeah I can rationalize how one storeight stay open in an area, but 3 of them? With the rent in that shopping center there was no goddamn way they were paying employees and keeping the lights on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I think it's the same thing with sofa/couch shops. I have four of them at a walking distance near my place. I've never seen anybody going in.

Also, an Italian company which I won't name is always advertising on all national TV channels. All the time. TV ads prices are insane, how can they afford them?

In the 70s, the police made a famous mafia family "split" and move from the South of Italy to some North cities, in a futile attempt to stop their mafia activities. A branch of this family opened a mattress factory, which is now famous all over Italy. This is not speculation, it's history. I won't name this mattress factory, but if you can read Italian you can Google "mafia Budrio" to learn more.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago

I know this great money laundering scheme in town. You take filthy money and they turn it into clean tamales. Abuelita has the slickest game in the county

[–] [email protected] 21 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

😎 current U.S. presidential administration 😎

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 hours ago

That one is easy to prove.

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