A front company like AIr America, or Brewster Jennings and Associates has to have had some legitimate business, to build their cover if anything. How much of their time would be spent on that. Presumably the minimum necessary, but quantify it. 5%. 10%, A quarter? Would they hire dedicated staff to take care of the “cover business”. Or would Valerie Wilson actually have to attend meetings and close business deals related to her cover?
I presume that a government front would be more elaborate than a criminal enterprise.
Real organisations which occasionally provide cover do not count,
Examples which are publicly available would be great.
I’m afraid I can’t find a cite from a quick search, perhaps someone else can with these clues.
15 years ago or so, there was an article about deep-cover CIA agents in South America reprimanded (and recalled if I remember correctly) for doing too well in their cover businesses. They had set up companies in S. America (Peru, Chile area) as covers. They spent so much time and effort on them that a) they made a lot of $, and b) didn’t have time for CIA activities. Eventually they were called in by HQ and told to stop being such good businessmen. The article played up that aspect of the story.
Sorry I can’t find a cite, but I do remember the article/story.
I’m not quite sure how you quantify it. Money earned? Obviously, the front isn’t going to make more money than the - I don’t know what to call it, shadow business? - or the front would no longer be a front. Time spent? Staff hired?
I worked, completely unknowingly, at a front for about 2 years. We ran it like a business, and I was an innocent assistant manager with keys and schedule making and counting the register and the combination to the safe and all the rest. The only weird thing from the start was that I was told that if anyone came in looking for Mr. Co-Owner, I should tell them I didn’t know where he was, even when he was in his office. Still, that’s not very weird - lots of business owners don’t really want anything to do with running their business. Mr. Co-Owner never spoke to me, not once, we were never even introduced. His office in an end of the building no one else really went into. The other co-owner, Mr. Boss, was the one I dealt with on a pretty regular basis, and he seemed like any other owner/manager. Apparently Mr. Co-Owner was a bookie or something, and that money was the real reason for being there.
But as far as the front business went, my only real clue, after many many months, was that Mr. Boss never really seemed all that concerned when business was slow. I mean, really slow. We’d have days when we made under $200, and he’d shrug and mumble something about the economy being rough and we’ll make it up on the weekend. Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn’t. But knowing now what I know of rent and overhead, there’s no way we covered even basic expenses every month from the drawers I counted.
I, and most of the employees (we had a staff of about a dozen part timers), spent 100% of our time and energy on the front, because we didn’t know it was a front. Mr. Boss spent 90% of his time on the front, with only occasional visits to Mr. Co-Owner’s office. Mr. Co-Owner spent 100% of his time doing whatever shady things he was doing, and never got involved in the front business at all.
I went into a bodega that I hadn’t entered before that had a pitiful selection. I think I bought something just because I felt sorry for the place. They did have two guys working the counter although I was the only customer in the store. About a week later the cops raided them. Hard to measure how much was devoted to the legit business but they did sell me some Twinkies.
There are a gazillion stores like this all over the place, and I always wonder whether they are real or fronts. All sorts of stores that have almost no business at all. And then, when I see your how much commercial rent is, on the order of dozens or hundreds of dollars per month per square foot, I can’t imagine how they could possibly be pulling enough in to cover even the rent let alone the salaries.
I used to observe this in Los Angeles, where there were many, small, Mom & Pop restaurants, usually oriental. Those of us who worked nearby patronized them for weekday lunches; the food was good, the service was good, but they never seemed to have enough business to keep them in business. Maybe this was why.
Building on WhyNot’s post, I’d guess that the most successful front business is one that is an actual business. The only point of contact with the illegal business is the need to keep fake books inflating the receipts of the legal business. There’s a bakery in my neighborhood that sells really good pastries, on a desirable commercial block, at insanely low prices. It’s never empty and it can’t possibly stay in business with those prices on sales alone.
On the other end of the scale, I had experience with two fronts in the late 80s when I lived in New York. Once I needed to get a pair of shoes re-soled and I went into a place I’d noticed in the neighborhood, on Amsterdam and like 90th. Inside were a filthy glass case with a couple pairs of ancient shoes in it. A group of older guys, black and white, were standing around the case, smoking cigarettes. They were going through piles of little slips of paper. They all looked at me. I held up my shoes. One shook his head. I walked out. It was a bookie operation.
The other one was a Rasta store on Saint Mark’s. There was a front room with a few reggae records, T-shirts, and tams–not enough to pay the rent. Everyone knew you could buy weed out of the place, though I never had–I didn’t smoke it. A friend came to visit and wanted to get some, so we walked in and asked. The Rastas acted shocked, then ushered us into a back room. There a guy was sitting at a card table, sorting a pile of marijuana the size of, say, a small backpack stuffed full. He told us they didn’t sell marijuana, why did we think that? I pointed at the pile and asked what that was. He just insisted that they didn’t sell marijuana.
I frequent a restaurant just like that, elderly mom and pop, literally; hardly anybody in the place, ever, no matter what time of day or night I walk in. They did close their Beaches location about 10 years ago. Best fried rice in town tho. The owner even bemoaned his lack of business to me the other day…
I wonder what happens to employees of fronts like WhyNot: if the front is exposed, do the employees performing legitimate labor face prosecution, or does the State take over operations and continue employment?
If you knew they were simply a cover to hide money laundering - absolutely you could be charged - as a coconspirator to whatever they are doing. From knowing - you have lesser categories of culpability - but there are concepts such as “willful blindness” and such which would still allow the state to go after you.
And the state wouldn’t take over operations - except in very rare cases like a bank - or something where the state/Feds have some other duty under existing law. Certainly they wouldn’t take over an unprofitable business - why would they care? If the business could exist on its own without the criminal part - I don’t see why it couldn’t continue to exist (assuming the Feds/state didn’t try to seize it or something).
I’m pretty sure we would have closed down. This wasn’t a government front, and the State wouldn’t have been much interesting in keeping our private business running. I would likely have been questioned by investigators, found to be essentially ignorant except for my own suspicions with no evidence. Being of little use to them as a witness, they’d likely have patted me on the head and sent me home to the unemployment line.
But when my suspicions grew too great for me to ignore and were then confirmed by another employee who knew a little more than me, I quit. My own conscience was eating at me. I appreciated their trying to keep me ignorant and my hands clean, but I still couldn’t hang. I didn’t turn them in, because A) I didn’t, and still don’t, really know what was going on and B) that place was always crawling with cops. Always, a ton of them moonlighting in Security, and they were in and out of Mr. Co-Owner’s office all the time. If they didn’t know what was happening, I’ll eat my hat. No way I was getting involved in something that ran that deep. I just walked away.
Decades ago, when I was 17 years old, I worked at a drive-in theater which was bought by organized crime to launder money. We did the same work as before; however, some strange things happened such as the number of tickets sold greatly exceeded the number of people actually there. That’s how I stumbled upon what was going on. They also change distributors for things like candy and popcorn and were paying a lot more for it than before. I assumed that these distributors were also part of the money laundering.
How much of a front does it have to be to qualify as a front? Al Capone claimed the business at 2220 S Wacker was ‘Al Brown’s Used Furniture,’ but didn’t do any business - it was always closed.
I’ve read that there are more carpet stores in the US than food stores. Now, how often do you need food vs how often you need new carpeting? Some of them MUST be fronts.
There’s a drug store near where I grew up that I’m sure is a front of some sort. It’s a little, inconspicuous place in a strip mall, hardly ever has any customers, but has been there for at least 30 years now. They must be selling weed, or selling perscription drugs to anyone who scrawls “Joe Schmoe needs the good stuff” on a scrap of paper, or something, because there’s no possible way they do enough legitimate business to survive.
I suspect a lot of small churches are fronts. I figure the paper must be a piece of cake; since a church relies on donations, you don’t have to worry about making sure your supplies and utilities correlate with sales. Plus it’s tax free (in the U.S., at least).
