Decades ago I worked at a drive-in theater which organized crime bought to launder money. We’d sell, say, 100 tickets and the books would show 150 tickets. The money for the extra tickets would just appear. Also we paid a lot more for things like popcorn and candy but sold them for the same price as before. Seems that the company selling the candy was also part of the money laundering. We’d lose money so taxes weren’t as high.
Anyway the ‘regional managers’ would often watch movies and discuss business in their cars.
A couple years ago I was hanging around the Congress Theater in Chicago and noticed that around the corner was a little computer retail/repair shop. The place was basically empty except for one table on one wall that had three or four very old (mid-90s) desktop PC’s on it. The place was open and just had a few middle-eastern looking guys sitting and drinking around a folding table in the back of the “shop.” Whatever that place was, I don’t think you could really buy or repair a computer there.
There’s a pizza place on a popular bar/club/restaurant street near my house. It’s always empty, except for nights when there’s a band playing across the street. The one time I ate there, the pizza was nearly fossilized. The employees are major stoners, although that’s not at all unusual in the pizza business. My guess is that it’s a front for drug retailing.
Back in college, there was a run of the mill pizza place run by a sterotypical friendly older Italian guy with an accent that also sold pot, and probably other stuff as well. They delivered.
Pool supply stores strike me as being way too common for the relatively niche products they sell, especially considering that big box stores have the same stuff. Not necessarily nefarious, but how the hell do they make money?
Where do you live? If you live in a place where people use their pools year-round, it just might fly. People also purchase supplies for hot tubs in the pool maintenance department.
There was a place in Cincinnati near UC that we swore had to be a criminal front for something. I think it was called Acropolis Chili. We never saw anyone go in, we never met a single person who says they ate there, and someone would watch the parking lot and immediately call a tow truck if someone parked there (and didnt go into the restaurant, we presume).
One place I was working had a standing order for newspapers at a local newsstand. Once I was asked to pick them up. The store was almost empty of things to sell – a few newspapers and magazines and a rack of candy. I assumed it was a front for bookmakers (of which there were many in the city).
When I lived in SLC there was this little greek place that rarely had customers but at least once every few weeks you’d see these big black continentals with tinted windows and guys in dark suits milling about in the parking lot for long periods of time even in the 100 degree heat these big dudes in black suits just standing around by the cars. I always thought it was a front or at the very least a meeting place.
There was a used record store called the Electric Mindshaft on the first floor of an old building downtown, across the street from the mall. I went in from time to time to browse for things that were hard to find in the big chain music stores in the pre-internet days, but there were rarely any other customers in the store that I can remember. I always wondered how the grizzled old hippy that ran the place managed to stay in business and compete with the stores in the mall.
The place got busted back in '04–apparently the owner had a pretty impressive pot growing operation on the building’s upper floors, accessible only by ladder. The whole block of buildings is gone now, demolished and replaced by a parking garage and office space.
There’s a nice restaurant that does good business in my city that is known as the major recipient for out-of-state drugs by many people. They also seem to specialize in periodic accidental kitchen fires and subsequent remodeling. Why they don’t get busted is open to speculation.
Some new residents have opened a skate board shop downtown with a lot of young boys coming and going frequently. Several local kids have said they felt like nobody wanted to wait on them when they went in. No one in the shop looks remotely like a skateboarder. Will watch this one and see how long it lasts as it’s pretty obvious.
I know of at least one hotel and a truck stop where prostitution is regular.
Not exactly a front but for about a year the house across the street from me was occupied by college-aged men who ran a lot of short errands on bicycles. They must have also had a van somewhere because every now and then a large truck would pull up in front and unload items from the house. Once it was rolls and rolls of carpet. Another time it was many bicycles.
About once a month they would get a visit from the boss in a Cadillac who had his own driver. He’d be dressed to the nines and carrying a briefcase. He’d spend a short amount of time in the house and leave again until the next month.
Finally, I have a concern for an Asian buffet in town. None of the staff except the cashier seem able to speak English and if you attempt a conversation with them she comes over and says, “You talk to me” and shoos them away. They look abused and dreadfully unhappy. I keep thinking they have been promised a wonderful opportunity in America and are being held virtually captive. At any rate something is very wrong there.
Oh, and what’s the deal with those miles of empty condos south of Daytona Beach? Or have they finally filled them?
Southeastern Ohio used to be littered with doctor’s offices that would sell prescriptions for painkillers to anybody who could pay, but I’m not sure they were discreet enough to be called fronts.
It’s possible it’s a family business, and the cashier lady happens to be the only one that speaks English. But yeah, it could easily be economic slavery as well.
My guess: remnants of the Housing Market Bubble from a few years back. They’ve probably never had an owner, and have been seized for back taxes 2 or 3 times by now.
Every town has a doctor like that. :mad: It’s a huge problem in Florida, too.
There was an exotic animal store in the town where I used to live (population 40,000) that started off as a decent place, although it was in the mall and a lot of us wondered how it did enough business to stay open. After a while, the people who worked there got more and more slatternly-looking, and they were shut down when it was discovered that they were buying dogs from puppy mills, and knew it. The store was shut down, and the animals were confiscated and either adopted or taken to zoos.
Walked into a new one last week that had me scratching my head suspiciously…
A desserts bakery on the corner of a prime expensive-lease shopping & tourist area. The inside counter is plain and austere, a small display barely 3 feet long, with 2 sad looking cakes behind the glass. The cash register is an old mechanical “click click ca-chiiinnngg!” machine. Cash/check only. They do not have a coffee machine, not even drip.
It’s either the hipster singularity point of the area, or a crime syndicate front end. You decide.
When I was in college, my best friend worked as a bartender in a “front operation”. It’s pretty common anywhere there is a large organized crime community.
Dennis, his boss, actually offered my friend money to go out and open his own bar, but my friend (wisely) declined. The reason he declined is because that’s how you end up with a front operation. The do you a “favor” by loaning you money, with little trouble and little interest, so you can get your business off the ground. You can pay back the loan, but the “favor” is never paid back. You become a front, get busted out, or get shot in the face and left in a dumpster behind your restaurant (which is what happened to Dennis, my friend’s boss).
I was at an Extended Stay America in Baton Rouge talking to one of the assistants at the front desk. Another employee was talking to a woman, telling her that she was a day behind on her weekly rent.
The woman replied “I have some appointments today, so I can get you your money by this evening.”
About an hour or so later, I went into the elevator, followed by the same guest who was accompanied by a man who was not her father, brother, boyfriend, or priest.
“So what’s your name?”, he asked.
“You don’t need to know my name!”
My eyes having been opened, it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t the only one. Nor was management oblivious to the happenings - probably receiving kickbacks (or freebies) while they’re at it.
The summer before med school I answered an ad looking for ice cream truck drivers. When I got to the industrial hellhole of an office, the boss (a large man who dropped no fewer than three f-bombs per sentence and kept a huge slobbering Doberman under his desk) sent me to ride along with a guy named Bear.
As soon as the boss walked away, Bear leaned into me and asked, “You’re not a cop are you? FBI? DEA? 'Cause you have to tell me if you are, you know.” I told him I was familiar with entrapment and not a cop. Then I remembered something I had to do and ran like hell. In retrospect, I probably should have gone along just for the hell of it, though with my luck he’d have gotten busted that day.
In my town there’s a fruit stand that sells very little produce, though they do a decent turn with plants in the spring and Christmas trees in the fall. Their main source of income is buying and selling cartons of soda from people on food stamps. You’ll see people leaving the grocery store around the first of the month with multiple carts full of 12-packs, which the fruit stand will buy for $2 and sell for $3. It’s pretty much out in the open.