It’s either “Just Socks” the store that sells mostly socks but also some other stuff and is always empty or the vacuum repair shop that hasn’t had a single car in the parking lot for the past twenty years
I keep thinking about the pizza store that was opened as a front for the mafia but did such good business that they quit doing the mafia thing and just sold pizzas full-time
There’s an Italian restaurant in Denver (Gaetano’s) that was opened in the 40s to give the mob wives something to keep them busy and to launder money. The mob is long gone, but the restaurant is still pretty popular.
It’s good stuff too!
Had an amazing Chinese restaurant near my old place, really excellent food but always completely deserted. They always seemed so surprised that when we called for takeout and whenever we collected it they’d chat about how busy they’d been, and how bus loads of tourists stop by, it just happens to be empty right now… Uhuh. Surrre. I live in this street, I don’t see busses of anyone. But the food was consistently excellent, so they must have actively not advertised because otherwise they’d been super popular.
A maybe-related but maybe-not story: I heard someone talk about walking into an out-of-the-way pizza place. Inside, there were no customers, but there was one employee and there seemed to be a few guys in suits just standing around talking to him. Everyone there was surprised to see anyone walking in, and even more surprised when he ordered a pizza. The pizza took ages to make, like over a half hour, but he did get a pizza; they handed it to him and hustled him out the door without even taking his money. I think they might’ve even locked the door behind him, I don’t remember.
The way the story goes, he took it home and ate it, and it was the absolute best pizza he’d ever had in his life. But every time he tried to go back after that, the place was closed.
I heard a very similar story, except it was one Italian grandma with a bunch of dudes in suits. She proceeded to serve him the single largest, most elaborate, and most delicious Italian dinner he had ever had. Apparently he could see into the kitchen, and she was making everything from scratch. He was there for like two hours, and she just kept bringing more plates out even though he hadn’t actually ordered anything. All because she was so excited to finally have someone to cook for. She even sat with him to chat, and was clearly happy to just have someone except the angry-looking dudes in suits to talk to. IIRC the suits didn’t even take payment before he was ushered out of the door.
He tried to go back like a week later, but the place was totally deserted.
Your story is so familiar, I wonder if maybe I misremembered that one.
Thought I’d read your exact post before even :)
Yeah, the one table i saw eating in was a group of young guys in smart suits looking very serious.
I miss the little mob money laundering pizza place that I went to as a kid. Absolutely amazing pizza. Never the same after the feds shut down the drug trafficking ring behind it all and deported the owner.
On the flip side, there’s a local pizza place where I currently live that’s fucking terrible. Some of the worst pizza I’ve ever had. It made me wonder how they could stay in business. Then I found out that name of the business happened to also be the name of the local mafia family.
Local places are always one or the other: either they’re the best thing you’ve ever eaten and you can’t wait to get back there and have it again, or they’re just the worst. I guess that applies to mafia fronts, too.
Sounds like the comic book origin story for Godfather’s Pizza.
The “Water and Donut Store” where they get mad if you ask for donuts, say it’s not the right time of day for donuts (all times of day/night are the wrong time, but there are always three or four stale, lonely donuts in the large glass donut cases) and have a station where you may, for a small fee, fill your water jugs with minimally filtered tap water. 🤨
say it’s not the right time of day for donuts
This feels like it’s taken right out of a video game.
We have a jewelry store in town that is by appointment only. During the day there’s always a high end car parked at the back of the store but you never see anyone in there. When my buddy was getting ready to propose he tried calling to get an appointment and it went straight to voicemail with a message that said private clients only and then beeped. He left a message but never heard back. I’ve never met anyone who has seen anyone go in or come out of that place.
Local Italian hotdog place that rarely open and when it does it for 1 hour only.
Reminds me of a story I once read about a couple being on holiday in Italy. They went in a local pizzeria and were the only ones in there, they got pretty shady looks from everyone, but still ordered a pizza. It was the best pizza they ever had. Also, for the whole time they were there, no customer came there and it was silent.
I’m interested in the by appointment only hot dog place. They are probably the greatest hotdogs ever.
No, that’s just a high end jeweler
I mean that’s a kind of money laundering all in itself tho
Not quite the same but I used to work at a local, family owned supermarket chain that is now out of business. I started at one of the busiest locations, but after I moved apartments I transferred to another location that was out in the 'burbs. At the first location I worked at, all our equipment was well maintained, stock was reasonable, stuff seemed normal.
At the suburban location, our equipment was all falling apart. The roof leaked. The other stores sent us their overstock and charged it to our departments. I was in the deli, and one day the contracted maintenance guy was there and I asked if he could take a look at one of the meat slicers. He said sorry, corporate told him not to do any work at this location that they hadn’t pre-approved.
My first hypothesis was that this location didn’t make any money, and that’s why they didn’t want to spend to fix it. One day I decided to ask the store manager about it—he was pretty chill and we talked sometimes, so I figured he wouldn’t mind. I said “Does this store actually make any money?” and he said “Well, let me put it this way: the numbers I report to corporate show that every department here, except floral, makes a profit every month. And then the numbers they put out in the quarterly reports show that we’ve never made a profit since we opened.”
“Where does the money go?” I asked.
“That’s above my pay grade,” he said.
I’m convinced someone was embezzling funds. A couple years after I left, the whole chain closed one day with no notice to the employees.
That’s just terrible management
Used to ship auto parts from a company called ‘Specialty Products Company’.
“what’d you guys sell”
“IDK… ‘Products?’…”
Still not convinced they aren’t a money launderer.
There’s all sorts of brands like that on RockAuto for auto parts. FAMOUS BRAND is one. They sell $7 brake pad sets, maybe it’s a brand that shouldn’t be famous.
I suppose there could be business in procurement of “specialty products”. These guys do all the shopping around or find someone to make that one odd part you need or figure where to get 50,000 packages of foobar and how to ship/store it while you continue on with your life.
There’s a psychic/tarot reader on the highway near me that’s been around as long as I can remember, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car parked out front.
No no that’s a failed cult. Quite different.
A failed cult would actually fail at some point, as in run out of money and lose the property.
These guys? Nope. I’m not sure a nuclear holocaust would uproot them at this point.
It’s pretty clever if it is a money laundering front actually because a “business” like that doesn’t really do anything that generates much paperwork and can claim it charged imaginary customers any amount it wants without having to justify it.
you mean the 12 car washes that all sprung up at the same exact time all within 5 miles of each other?
the same ones that have practically zero cars driving through them because they opened at the height of 2020 where nobody was driving anymore?
the same ones that somehow weathered a bust market for carwashes for 3 years?
the same ones that are owned by two guys with the same last name that look suspiciously like retired mafia?
you mean those places?
nah, they’re just a couple brothers that were really successful before the pandemic.
Carwashes are a decent choice of laundering business, but are also a business with remarkably low overhead. They are a popular choice of business for someone who wants to buy land and sit on it in a place they believe will become developed so they can sell it later. There is a large initial outlay for building the structure, but the actual machines and installation can cost less than buying a car. Upkeep is surprisingly simple and costs less than you probably think. The soaps and chemicals are dirt cheap and sold in 30-55gal quantities that last a month or more depending on traffic. The only real overhead if you aren’t getting customers is your mortgage and payroll, and you’d be paying a mortgage even if you just bought the land and did nothing with it. Not to mention touchless carwashes only require staff when there is a problem and any touch carwash can be run by a single person.
I found a money laundering deli
It’s amazing, they love having customers as it improves their cover so everything is dirt cheap and really high quality.
Sometimes people come in and the guy behind the register politely shuffles us out with an armful of free cold cuts and a wink
None of you will ever hear about this place from my lips
You think anyone does crime to support their dream of being a shop keeper with good deals?
We need to cook JackbyDev
Hope you meant
We need to cook, JackbyDev
I’d do it, but I think I’d be worse at being a criminal.
There is a super famous, incredibly mediocre destination BBQ restaurant in Central Texas that is famous for an all-you-can-eat family-style meal. For decades, they only accepted cash. Way, way longer than made sense. Like into the 2020s I think.
Their main menu item was all-you-can eat (hard to quantify number of sales), only members of the family that ran the place were allowed to count the take and the receipts at the end of each shift, and they only took cash.
I fully believe they were either laundering money or evading taxes by under-reporting. But then they opened a few satellite branches, including one at the airport, and started having to be more careful as they expanded.
There was a place here that only took cash despite being delivery and every other place here taking cards. They’ve started taking cards. They didn’t take cards because profit margins are low and card fees are high. I asked them because I was curious.
They might be the mafia though. It is NJ.
I have no idea how I went this long without knowing The Salt Lick did all you can eat family style meal, apparently it’s even at the top of the menu…
Although I’ll admit my favorite parts are the mustard BBQ sauce and the hammock garden, agreed that the BBQ is meh. And having known lots of country folks, evading taxes by only taking cash sounds about right.
There is an “unlicensed” car repair shop in my town. They always service upper-price class, new-looking cars with license plates from far away. Never actually seen anyone working on them, but the suit wearers that collect the cars always seem happy. Not fishy at all, no need to investigate.
I have long held the belief that all these mattress stores are all a front for something.
There’s a shopping center nearby that has three of them. THREE MATTRESS STORES WITHIN THROWING DISTANCE OF EACH OTHER.
Mattresses are like a once every 10 years purchase. How the fuck is there enough foot traffic to support 3 of them mother fuckers that close together?
When I worked across the street from them I never saw any of them having big sales or anything. Nobody I knew anyone that worked at any of them. They never seemed busy. Never saw trucks bringing in stock.
It doesn’t add up.
A person I am close with once worked at one of those mattress stores. They get maybe 1-4 sales a day, but they have stupid high margins and pay their workers poverty wages.
Yeah I can rationalize how one storeight stay open in an area, but 3 of them? With the rent in that shopping center there was no goddamn way they were paying employees and keeping the lights on.
I know a town with I think five or six large furniture (or general household item) stores basically next to each other. Big brands.
It is probably a combination of factors: The area is easy to reach by car, it’s easy to supply by truck, plenty of space for storage and people actively come there to shop furniture - yes you will be competing with five different stores, but since the customer base travels quite a bit anyway, you’d be stupid to set up shop in a different town. People will walk/drive 5 minutes to check a different store if they already came all this way, but they probably won’t head to a store two towns over just to compare prices.
I think it’s the same thing with sofa/couch shops. I have four of them at a walking distance near my place. I’ve never seen anybody going in.
Also, an Italian company which I won’t name is always advertising on all national TV channels. All the time. TV ads prices are insane, how can they afford them?
In the 70s, the police made a famous mafia family “split” and move from the South of Italy to some North cities, in a futile attempt to stop their mafia activities. A branch of this family opened a mattress factory, which is now famous all over Italy. This is not speculation, it’s history. I won’t name this mattress factory, but if you can read Italian you can Google “mafia Budrio” to learn more.
I have to imagine matrices are a high margin item because of how infrequently they are purchased, how they cost as much as some used cars, and how important in-person examination is. Perhaps there’s some kind of vendor lock in similar to car dealerships?
We have a local chain of antique shops, very high-end
Never see anyone come or go
We’re lousy with antique shops here, but there is this one that is only open two days a week, for a few hours. They just sell thrift store quality junk and discounted (new) disposable kitchenware. They start cleaning 30 minutes before “closing time” and don’t let you in the store.
There is a possibility that all of their real business is online and they just keep the storefront open with the crap stuff so they can claim to be a brick and mortar store.
Unless they’re a distributor or operating under a different name online I can’t seem to find anything
Their 3 separate ornate stores in a town with a population less than 20k do not direct anyone online
There’s multiple tiny Mexican restaurants in my town that I 100% know are run by the cartel. Like,I know the manager didn’t buy a $100k dodge Durango hellcat selling burritos and tacos in a farm town.
I don’t fucking care though, the tacos are good.
We were excited to learn of a new restaurant opening, an all-day breakfast and lunch place, like an upscale Denny’s with a liquor license.
Hmm. That sounds more ghetto than summer lazy patio time with friends should.
Anyway, they finished setting up 4 years ago. At most I see 2 cars in the lot on the way past and no one seems to ever be inside.
Either they’re laundering serious cash or they’re somehow bankrupting a restaurant in an area that needs an option other than pizza and subway.
…have you ever gone?
