The father of one of my friends owned a used car lot that never seemed to sell anything. They lived in the “rich” section of town but I could never figure out where the money came from. The rumor was that his dad made a trip twice a week to New York City, but never took anything or brought anything back (anything visible.)
I hate to accuse anyone of crimes, but one always wondered how they lived in the style that they lived.
I’ve decided that Scrapbooking stores are a front for selling drugs to housewives.
It is the only rational explanation I can come up with that justifies how they pay the rent.
There was a very small, narrow store front in town that was an Old Lady Needle Point and Granny craft store. For over ten years I never saw it open. I use to go out of my way to check it out to see if they were opened. Week days at noon, weekends. Nights? It was never opened. Ever.
I told my friends about it and they started to keep an look out for any sign of life.
None was ever found.
Then one day, about two years ago, a sign came up on the front of it Going out of Business.
Huh.
It is now a manicue place that is quite busy.
There’s several boutiques in my home town which are suspected of being drug-laundries. Ridiculously expensive stock, styles nobody in town wears, empty even during sales periods, but they’ve been there for years.
Many bars which aren’t suspected of drug dealing, which ones are good for which kind of drug is the kind of information even a 39yo non-bar-goer like me knows. My bar-going brother tested me on that kind of stuff a few months back as a joke and it turned out that my (half-guessed, half-based on historical data) answers were pretty much on the money.
An old classmate of mine which is involved with a political party that’s been known to do funny things involving Swiss bank accounts opened a yarn store about two years ago. She’s never there (all other yarn stores are owner operated), the girls at the counter don’t know the difference between self-attaching velcro and angora wool, yet the store remains.
There was a tiny little convenience store on the opposite side of the lake I used to live on. I would drive by it all the time and see nobody in there. It was owned by this middle-eastern looking guy (nationality unknown to me), who would literally spend his days just sitting there picking the scabs off of his legs. I went in there once. The shelves had only 1 or 2 items of things that you would find in a convenience store. Only one of one type of candy bar on the shelf there, 2 bags of Lays potato chips in another spot… practically bare shelves.
I found out later he got arrested for dealing drugs. The store is now shut down.
So most of these places are simply venues for illegal activities, and they try to maintain a façade as a legal business just as a disguise? Makes sense, I guess… but I don’t understand the money laundering part of it. If a criminal is trying to get rid of ill-gotten gains by operating a business at a continuous loss, how does that help? The money is still gone. Is it being traded for favours?
Near where I grew up is a tiny hole-in-the-wall drugstore. It’s about the size of a Chinese takeout place, the kind that doesn’t have any tables to eat at. In other words, really small. As far back as I can remember, this place has hardly ever had any business. Inside, there are a couple of shelves of snack food (chips, candy bars, ands such), a shelf of videos to rent, and a pharmacists’ counter at the back. This place must be involved in illegal activity. There’s no way they make enough money off those candy bars and 20-year-old videos to pay the rent. I figure this has to be the local source for drugs that the DEA would not approve of.
Near the University of Detroit was a store that I wondered about. There was no sign, and the windows displayed clothing that was pretty obviously aimed at African-American women. But they has no customers. In four years of driving past that store every day (I commuted) I saw exactly one person enter that store.
Unless the international crime syndicate itself is a front…
Speaking of “front” businesses; hod did the CIA conceal its activities in organizations like Air america? Of course, a privately held corporation doesn’t have to disclose numbers-but the IRS does want to know if you are making money!
My understanding is that it is supposed to make the actual source of income harder to pin down to drugs, as while the place may seem to operate at a loss to the casual observer, when it comes to tax time the place runs an immense profit. So they pay taxes on the “income” of the business, which really came from an ill-gotten source, and it “launders” the money by making it appear to be legit income.
ETA: and I also suspect the reason they don’t put in more effort into actually turning a legit profit is that if you had an actual profit, combined with laundered profit, it would appear to be so large an income on the tax statement that it might tip off tax authorities.
Okay, that makes sense. Than a catalogue business with a showroom just for show, so to speak, would be an ideal fit. Hence the high bidding, unpopular products, and unfriendly staff in the onstreet location.
Some of the La Shish restaurants in the Detroit area were shut down due to owner activity in terrorist networks.
Here’s the link
Our local newspapers won’t let us link to the stories anymore for free, you must be a subscriber, hence the link to a blog.
There’s a typewriter repair place in town that my friend and I figure is a front for something. How many typewriters can there be left, that a typewriter repair shop can stay open? Plus, when she took her typewriter in to have something fixed, they broke it worse.
There’s an odd strip mall by me that contains a gas station, a real estate place and a tobacco shop. It also has two other stores that are NEVER open. One is a locksmithing place, with a sign that says that it’s only open by appointment only. Huh? If you’re only available on-call to get people’s cars and houses unlocked, what’s the purpose of a store? And who’s going to make an appointment to buy a padlock? Then right next to this store is a carpet store…that’s only open by appointment only. You can’t really see shit through the windows, so who’s going to say, “Hey, we can’t even see their merchandise. I’m so intrigued that I MUST schedule a meeting with them just so I can see their wares.”
Okay then, question that is to be begged has to be:
If us amateur podunks can figure all of this out, why aren’t the cops closing these places left and right? Not worth the hassle and bother? Yes in a few cases mentioned here the proprietors did get sent to the hoosegow, but unless police departments are strapped for undercover cops I don’t see how they can stay in business for long.
There’s a computer store here in Vancouver that undersells everyone else by a substantial amount. They offer a discount for cash sales, which is a little whiffy, but what blows me away is that (as part of the ordering process) they require customers to provide photocopies of the front and back of their credit cards, along with copies of two pieces of ID.
Me, I keep things strictly cash with them. (Hey, the prices are good.)
I don’t get it – I know they must be up to no good. I mean, why else? But they’ve been operating out of the same storefront for almost twenty years. 
There’s a collectibles shop in a plaza across from the mall that doesn’t seem to actually sell any collectibles. First of all, they have crappy hours and they manage to close at 5 or 6 most days (after opening at noon or 1) and aren’t open Sunday at all.
Then their selection is ridiculous. They have one case of “Graded 10” sports cards (about 3 dozen or so). But the cards were stuff any knowledgable collector could get off of eBay for cheap. Nothing rare or exceedingly pricey. There were no other cards and no packs (the bread and butter of any card shop) of any kind.
They also had a few boxes of dime comics. If they sold them all they might bring in $100.
The last case had a bunch of used jewelery and gold. It was all cheap, ugly knockoff-looking.
Finally, on the wall were a bunch of video games that consisted mainly of last year’s sports titles being sold for brand new prices.
Yeah, something fishy was going on there. Plus, the three (!) guys working inside all looked like shady drug dealers.
This sounds like the place I purchased my first computer. Was it in Burnaby? I found out a few years later that they ripped me off on my RAM. (I asked for 256MB, they gave me 128MB. I was still a computer newbie and didn’t know how to check it.)
There was an aquarium shop in Vancouver that I always suspected was a front. Every time I went in there, the tanks were all empty. The workers (quite a few of them) would stand around and either ignore me or refuse to answer my questions.
There was a pizzaria near our house that had 5 tables. When you went in there were 4 tables full of guys drinking expresso. They had a small pickup but no delivery. biz. The owners had a Corvette, Jaguar , a limouzine and a Cadillac. The expreso guys looked like they stepped out of central casting for a mafia movie.
In Beautiful Downtown Boca, there’s a storefront (blocked windows) with tasteful signage proclaiming it to be ORIENTAL CELEBRITY MASSAGE, but never once have I seen Connie Chung coming out of it! 
Yeah, I’m thinking either an embassy/consulate, or some sort of intelligence gathering/reporting office. Of course, it could have been another front for the CIA or someone else. . .
Tripler
So yeah, it’s a front, but I’m gonna say not an economic one.