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 :(
I mean, Sicilian and living in NY, I would suspect it was a front too.
All my landlord’s business associates are in the paradise papers. And half of his LinkedIn contacts are russian, so …
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.
Oh theres a bunch of those around here. Its not really a casino per say, but they have a ton of state sanctioned lottery games that look like video slot machines.
Have lots of those in Oregon. They are required to sell some food so they aren’t just straight up gaming establishments, but is a semi government-sanctioned way to bend gambling laws. “Lotto Delis” they’re sometimes called.
Yeah, that’s where I’m from. They all got that keno.
But wait, can you start at the beginning? How did you meet your wife?
In the casino’s patio bathroom.
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
You do have to admire that sort of commitment though.
Are you in Switzerland? Another commenter was mentioning a wool shop with no customers that seemed like a front, lol.
Like wool clothing or raw wool? I love wool clothing, but who has a use for raw wool?
People who make wool clothing!
I would have thought they meant finished yarn for knitters and crocheters (and likely accessories for knitting and crocheting.)
Hell yeah, now that’s how you make good use of an unexpected influx of cash
Tax write off, get thee behind me, capital gains tax!
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.
To be fair, after COVID some of the diners started to only do delivery. So maybe it was that (most likely not, though)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Gyms are all fronts for…gyms. I mean, the gym business is corrupt enough that I feel like that counts.
Helsinki is, for some reason, full of massage parlours.
There’s a neighbourhood called Kallio that was formerly rather cheap but has become much more expensive and gentrified, and the massage parlours remain. I have no idea how they can afford their rent, as I’ve never seen anyone going into or coming out of one of those venues.
Obviously they provide “extra services”, but I don’t think that can be enough to sustain them. I suspect money laundering from drug sales etc.
Please reassure me Roskapankki is still operating.
Some friends of mine saw them carry a dead rat out the back room and throw it out onto the street while they were waiting for me there.
Yeah, it’s still there, but I’ve not been in for ten years.
I see things haven’t changed ;)
If you are in NYC, usually, from my understanding they are fronta for multi-family kinda squat houses. That’s why the curtains are so close to the front door and you almost never see anyone in there…actually, in all my time I’ve never seen anyone in one of those places. But they’re all set up the same. Pull back those curtains and it’s like a huge illegal house
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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.
I used to get my hair cut buy these two dudes that owned a little barber shop and every once in a while some shady looking guy would come in and they’d stop mid haircut and go into the back for however long they were gone for. Eventually, the random dude would leave and I’d get my haircut finished. I was working as a cook so I’d show up on line a Tuesday at 11am. Place would be dead otherwise. I grew up around there and I’d been going for a long time so they weren’t worried about me.
One thing that was crazy about this place is the only magazines were like guns and ammo type magazines. In Canada. Highly unusual. This was back when a barber shop was still likely to have a few “gentlemen’s magazines” lying around. Not them, just guns. :)
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’s a car repair shop that is basically just a private garage, no sign, no ads, but on the regular, you see brand new, expensive cars with license plates from far away being “fixed” there. Always only takes an hour tops.
There is also a known drug dealing hot spot on the car park across the road of the car shop.
Every single Mattress Firm
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/676543180
A nice npr segment where they talked about mattress store because there are a bafflingly large number of them.
They sell “gift baskets” and the website still says “order now to get your basket in time for the 2021 holiday season”.
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
Chicago has a weirdly high number of mattress chain stores. There’s a stretch near me that has 3 of them in the span of 4 blocks. They’ve all been there for awhile and there’s rarely ever anyone in them. No way these are legit businesses considering how often people buy mattresses.
There are mattress places in my town in locations that have to cost a significant sum to rent that are “by appointment only.”
I never see anyone go in or out, and I’ve not known a single person who would schedule an appointment just to buy a forking mattress.
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.
These usually aren’t fronts per se. They do everything there. Tax prep, scams, consulting, private eyes. These psychic places are never JUST a psychic place that’s usually just what the sign says.
You know you’re screwed when you need a psychic to prepare your taxes.
In the town I live in one of the worst kept secrets is a small hundred year old mixed use 2 or 3 story building. The Laundromat at the bottom with a handful of old washing machines and dryers is always locked and never actually open. Former tenants have publicly stated it’s purely a front because the landlord doesn’t want to bother with a commercial tenant but because of the zoning it needs a commercial space on the ground level so they maintain a fake laundromat
This pizza place opened in an area that is flush with well established takeaway spots. We ordered from it once and it was BAD. The bases were frozen and the meat was clearly sandwich meat from a supermarket. Whenever we pass it by, it’s open but there are NEVER any customers.
The online reviews are bizarre, they’re either one star reviews with detailed explanations of how shitty the food is or 5 star reviews with no comments.
Yet somehow this place is STILL open despite being surrounded by superior competition and always being empty. There is absolutely no way it’s not a front for something.
