Is there a business in your town, which you are 100% sure is a front?

They sell “gift baskets” and the website still says “order now to get your basket in time for the 2021 holiday season”.

They've got a big banner out front that says "RUG DEALER".

I used to live round the corner from a strange little place that sold cassette tapes (what we used for music and sometimes even data before CDs, for those too young to know). Everyone was convinced it was a front but it turned out it was a world famous tape supplier. Just happened to be based in my quiet little back street.

The newsagents next door to my last place have to have been a front though. Shelves were half bare, only ever stocked with stuff that doesn't go off. Always two or three guys hanging out in the back room, looking slightly surprised if you wanted to buy something. Cash only, no cards (not that unusual round here but they usually have a minimum purchase rather than just no card machine at all these days).

They were absolute sweethearts. Took loads of deliveries for us, always really nice about it. And that's more evidence that it's a front. Proper criminals are the best neighbours anyone could ask for because the last thing they want is complaints bringing the police to their door.

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

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.

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

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 :(

Where I live they legalized marijuana, but didn't issue licenses for legal dispensaries for almost two years. Nearly every corner store and head shop is a front . There's even a pizza shop near by with weed for sale openly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a wool shop that never has any customers, in the center of town, so not cheap real estate, and I saw someone go in there after looking in the windows, and got yelled at to get out.

It's in Switzerland, so shady financial stuff isn't exactly rare.

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 is a pizza place. We once went in to order food. There was no food, no menu, no drinks. We stood there and asked for a menu. They looked at us like we were nuts. We turned around and left.

Rome, Italy. rent for a small store is 800/mo where this store is, and an average salary is about 1200/mo. This antique/junk store sells like 2 things a day(with average price being 5€) always takes unfavorable exchanges and generally isn't great business-wise, yet it's been here for 15 years, in a district where most - more reasonable - businesses fail within 2 years.

It doesn't take credits cards, only cash. There's a flight simulator controller from the 80s that didn't sell for a decade.

Maybe I'm just paranoid.

Edit: i still love that store, I'm addicted to collecting old junk (self promotion time: I founded a coin collecting community over at lemmy.ml,its called numismatics) and I go to that store every month or so, it helped me to get rid of some old vynil records from my grandfather in exchange for some cash (obv without receipt) but still, I think it either evades taxes (taking that from granted) or it's something bigger, like a front for a mafia or something else.

Nice try FBI.

Tiny takeaway with a rich owner, hires on the spot, cash in hand payments, no contracts and most regular deliveries are to houses that stink of weed. Pretty sure that one would be a front (but it’s a front that does good food)

There's a HSBC branch, does that count?

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

Mattress Firm.

...I've said to much...

There was (maybe still is) a cake shop in Southgate, North London. About a minute from my old flat.

The cakes in the window display rarely changed, if ever.

The guy running it looked like if you imagine the toughest prisoner at a prison, only wearing an apron.

About 50/50 whether the glass would be smashed whenever you walked past.

It was often "open" and had people coming in and out of it at 2-3am when I came back from nights out.

And there was a drive-by shooting right in that area while I lived there, that I always assumed was related. 😅

There was an asian food place in my local mall back when I worked there as a teen. My old boss casually mentioned that it was a human trafficking front. They'd have women from their native country marry for a visa, have them come to US, employ them work at the store, then.. I have no idea.. I sincerely hope it was for visas and not more nefarious purposes..

There was also a gambling ring going on in the tailor shop of the same mall. But that was whatever.

Nice try, detective

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.

Any business with cheap products and little traffic. I live in a high rise with a view on a street with many little shops.

In my street there's a shop for wedding dresses 2-3k $ a pop. I understand it's not high traffic so whenever there is a car parked in front, usually for a couple of hours, it's probably a customer.

Then there is some convenience stores. All have heavy traffic, from the corporate one to the local mom&pops shop.

Then there is this small sushi joint. Open for 3 hours everyday. I've never seen any customers sitting inside or walk in. Can't find them on our local food delivery. Twice a week there's the same blue Mercedes parked in front.

Not difficult to spot which business is sus.

Sad thing is, the police pops into that sushi joint the same day that blue Mercedes was parked in front.

There's a legitimate pizza place around me that's been around for ~50 years. My mom went to school with the owners children and when she was in high school their dad had a small stint in jail for tax evasion and unregistered and hot guns. Apparently he was importing a lot of guns from Italy and one day a shipment got caught. About 10 years ago, my mom became friends with someone who was hired to do their taxes. She didn't give any details, but she told us the numbers really didn't add up and she had to drop them as a client their first year due to ethical reasons.

The thing is the pizza is really good and kind of an institution in my town. I wouldn't say it is strictly a front, but money does move through it. The family also owns a lot of small strip malls in the tri county area and some historical properties as well.

Oh and one of the sons married one of their 2nd/3rd cousins from Italy in the 90s. The rumor was it was just to help her get citizenship but they are still married to this day and it's kinda weird.

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.

Art galleries.

There's a road near my house that has over ten barber shops on it. The road is about half a mile long. I'm not sure of the percentage, but they can't all be legit.

A place I thought was a front did actually turn out to be one. A Boba shop that made worse quality Boba than others in the same chain turned out to be a front for the trade of stolen car parts and electronics (laptops, phones, cameras, etc). They had $100k of stolen stuff hiding in the back of the store and were shipping it to China and Hong Kong for sale. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/S-F-boba-shop-was-a-front-for-an-international-17162814.php

I can't prove it, but there's a florist in my town, definitely still in business, that I have not seen a non-company-branded car in front of in actual years. Morning, noon, and night, never any customers. Never any movement from inside. The only time I ever saw the lights on was in the dead of night. The building is half-claimed by ivy.

If it weren't for the upkept greenhouse and the sign out front occasionally changing, you'd never know it wasn't totally abandoned, but it's still operating. Mob activity is the only way to explain it.

Every mattress store

I found a really niche state patrol office to pay a fix-it ticket. It was on the third story of an off site parking garage for a mall type thing. With only two "visitor" spaces. There were like 4 cops in this tiny office just yucking it up when I walked in. They all did the "oh look busy now!" dance when I surprised them. I think this was one of those "put him on desk duty so he'll still get a paycheck while he gets cleared" type places. Nice enough for cops, but they had that shitty kid just got away with something vibe, bigtime.

There's a "cash converters" style store in my town (like a pawn shop, but they don't do loans or deal in jewelry). Once, years ago I saw a game controller (Logitech wheel) that I was after in the window . I tried to buy it, and was told it was "reserved" It's still there, along with everything else. They don't seem to have any stock turnover at all, and they're still open.

After talking with coworkers, it's generally assumed to be a money laundering front.

I live in Vegas.

Where do I even begin????

When I lived in Daytona a shop opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whippers - $1 plastic whisks. They had two display trees in the front windows, one with black whisks and one with white whisks. They were never open and there was a hand-written sign on the door that said "Closed. If you want a Super-Whipper, they have some at the nail salon next door." The store was in a strip mall less than 200 ft. from three dollar stores and a Publix, all of which sold plastic whisks.

Pretty sure it was a front lol.

I live in Italy, pick one at random, that's it

It’s not a front anymore because it doesn’t exist, but my massage therapist had a baby and was going to be out for a while. So I went looking around town for a hold over until she got back, and found a “spa” that was across from the entrance to the local Navy base that advertised “Pretty Asian massage therapists” and had a picture of a young lady in a bikini on the front page of their website. It didn’t help matters that all of the reviews were from men.

Now I’m not going to speculate on what was going on, as far as I know it could have been a regular spa that happened to have attractive women working there. I wouldn’t know, that’s not something I want to mess with.

A handful of restaurants which definitely can't afford the amount of people working there and the interior. They always operate the same way: the food doesn't taste good, expensive interior and (many) more personnel than customers.

Unless they all have a philanthropist millionaire as a sponsor, I suspect they launder money. Apparently this is quite common in Germany because hard cash is still common here. Even large sums of money.

Theres a video rental place down the way from me in Vancouver, BC. First, Vancouver is expensive as hell. Our average 1 bdrm is roughly 3k a month. This guy has a prime location, in Vancouver, on a busy street, with a video rental store. Who rents movies these days? Maybe some, but surely not enough to keep him afloat. It's not an adult video store either.

Local roofer is a front for his coke buisness.

The roofing contractor with the lowest score in my town is known for doing a bad job. It's also known that he is the largest coke dealer in the city.

There are a ton of gambling places where you never see anyone walking in. It's a public secret these are money laundering operations from some well connected crime syndicate.

Matress stores.

Never see anyone in them, never see anyone in the parking lot, and every time i've ever gone in there was one person working there who acted surprised as hell someone came in.

and yet they are always expanding and building more locations

There is this wig shop in a very popular and pricey area in my town. It's been there since my mom was a child.

The wigs exposed are old fashioned, ugly, never change and we've never seen the shop open. Its super weird. I'm convinced it has to be a cover for something.

Slightly related: I just assume any business that operates on a cash-only basis is commiting tax fraud.

Not sure if this counts since most of them have recently closed down, but for a while there was a large number of American candy stores popping up all over town. Many cash only, same products and same branding across many different stores. Hardly anyone was ever shopping there, and yet they could somehow always afford to pay rent for prime locations. Eventually, several journalists picked up on the topic and found evidence many of them were fronts for money laundering and were tied to organised crime. Not sure if it was directly connected to that increased awareness, but shortly after more of these articles were published, most of the local stores closed.

Have a furniture store in the small downtown area of my town. The entire building looks cigarette stained. They have brown tint on their windows, and peering inside, all the furniture looks crazy old and probably not something you'd want to buy.

On top of that, they're open "by appointment only" and that's just about the only sign they have other than the name of the business. Never seen anyone go in/out. It's in a major location too, "Main street", there's no way it's a real thing.

Shady as shit no-tell motel, overpriced as hell for where it's located. Pulls in maybe 5 guests a week, but the owners flashing about in a shiny new car.

Cellphone cases stores