Back in the early 2000s, when malls were still frequented, there was a tea shop down a dark wing that was rarely visited. I was on a tea bender and visited often, it was always empty. The man who ran the shop was very friendly. He was so friendly that he never failed to overstuff the tea I bought, give me a free hot tea, my choice, even the very expensive tea, on the spot, and heavily discount the tea I did pay for. I recommended him to friends and family, who reported the same experience. Empty shop, free and discounted tea, very friendly.
After a while, he opened up a little. He was from Iran. He had to leave very quickly, but he missed his home country. When asked why he left, he would dodge the question. People I sent to visit also reported his question dodging. He hesitated to say much about Iran beyond its ancient (and very cool) history.
I do not think he was laundering money, but he wasn’t there to make money. My guess is that he was whisked away by the US Government/CIA and given a new home in a quiet town where he could finally relax and just sell tea.
A few times, his older son was in the shop and was always visibly frustrated or bored, and he expressed a strong desire to “go home” back to Iran. The tea shop man tried to hide the seriousness in his tone when asking his son to be quiet. On occasion, his wife was there. She was friendly enough when speaking to you but always had a wary look on her face when you walked into the shop, looking right at your face for the first few seconds. I know that look personally. She was looking for danger in a face.
Even after the mall’s soul died and the anchor stores left, the little friendly tea shop in the dark, empty wing stayed.
That family was not there to make money selling tea. Very, very good tea, might I add. Such a friendly man. I hope they found peace.
To be fair, he might not have been hiding from anyone specifically, it could’ve just been they had escaped from a war zone and didn’t want to talk about it.
Yeah, that’s probably more likely.
I hope they found peace.
Well yes, except obviously not now that you’ve told on them and assasins find them.
But up to this point, prolly, yeah.
That’s lovely. I’m my experience, tea people are special people.
until deprived of tea.
then they’re special monsters.
Every mattress store you’ve ever seen is likely a front for some shady shit.
You think the money is under the mattress?
Came to say this
There used to be a coffee shop in my town. Every day they had a two-part secret phrase that would let you get drugs, but it sounded like an order. I think I activated it one time. “Can I please get a double-double with whip cream?” “Sure. How’s your dog Mittens?” “I have no dog?!” Later, the coffee shop shut down because they got caught drug trafficking. They would double cup the coffee orders that had the drugs, and put the drugs in between the paper cups.
That’s a fun way to do it.
I remember reading a story about something like that at KFC. And the code phrase was you wanted an extra biscut or something.
This was an entire episode of Castle (the guy from Firefly) except it was a Pizza shop.
I’ve never seen Castle, but I was pretty sure you were referring to Nathan “the guy from Firefly” Fillion. Ouch.
Captain Hammer?
Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck
The uh… The rookie…
Nah they make good steak and shrimp and they don’t bother me so Ima leave them alone. There are much bigger criminals to worry about in this country than shady local businesses.
My town has a population of about 2,000 people. There are five dedicated car washes within a 10-mile radius of my house, with two more under construction.
I honestly do not understand car washes and how they are supposed to turn a profit.
With drug money, duh.
Haven’t you seen Breaking Bad?
The drug trade is a trillion dollar industry. Got to wash them somewhere. Where better than at a washer?
Yup. Really easy to stuff some cash in the till and declare it as income with a car wash. Actually clean 100 cars a day? Buy enough cleaning supplies for 130 cars. Report on your records that you sold 130 washes. Dump the excess chemicals down the drain or just use them abundantly during washes. Sure, if you claim to wash a thousand cars when you only washed 100, then that could get you caught quickly. But if you’re not greedy, you could keep such a setup going for a very long time.
Biggest cost is the startup and then employees, with an occasional big maintenance repair. Buying cleaning products in bulk? The cost will make you feel cheated for what you pay for a quart to a gallon.
I get that, i used to service a small-ish car wash, and the amout of times something broke or didn’t work or the cost of osmosis filters alone was staggering to me. Always thinking about how many people would have to wash a car to just get that money back.
It’s way more than one shop. Meh, shop there anyway if you like anything they sell. Chances are your government is blowing ridiculous money on bullshit anyway. Pay cash too when you can. And do everything you can to resist digital spending tracking.
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 :)
Whoa, this is like…real-time archaeology of my own brain. I know for sure I’ve read this tweet before (when I was writing it, I was about to write “New Jersey” but that didn’t sound right so I left the state off entirely). I bet I probably have also heard the Italian grandma story, and mixed them both in my head because what are the odds that there are three such stories? (including the one I posted originally about the mafia front that went legit because the pizza biz was better).
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.
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.
Start with small crimes like violating hygiene regulations!
Only one? All vape shops are money laundering fronts, until proven otherwise.
Used to be a Pizza place in my home town that had $1 large pizza on Wednesday no limit, they were the worst pizza in town, but they were packed every week. It went on for years then they got shut down turns out they were using the increase in foot traffic to cover people coming in to buy drugs.
Sometimes it’s just a passion project by crazy people. My town has a shack on a busy non-walkable intersection without even parking spaces that sells only angel figurines. Let me be clear, this isn’t general angel knickknacks, this isn’t specific saints, it’s angel figurines ONLY. You will find no bless this house signs. No Christmas tree toppers or ornaments. Not a single holiday decoration, religious or otherwise. You won’t even find Jesus on the cross.
Angel. Figurines. Only. I always assumed it was a front for something until my mom helped with some taxes for them. No, it’s just one crazy couple who are obsessed with the sanctity of the angel figurine. They feel very strongly about it and asking if they do garden angels now that spring’s coming up and you’d love to patronage them is apparently offensive enough for them to take their taxes elsewhere lol.
There’s a mobile phone repair shop next to where we live. Everything in the window is faded from the sun. In 6 years of living here I have not seen it open or someone inside even once.
One of our customers operates out of two leased “office” trailers next to an old pole barn in the middle of a corn field.
From there, they “operate” 17 different companies, all demanding separate billing from us.
There’s no WAY it’s legit. They have more “official” registered companies than they have office employees.
Edited because mobile sucks
Could it be a landlord situation? It’s pretty cheap to open an LLC. Sometimes landlords will open many of them, an LLC for every rental property they own. It protects them from liability. If something goes really wrong and a tenant sues them for big $$$, the most they risk losing is the single rental house the tenant is renting.
Ironically that’s one of the things they don’t claim to be involved in.
To list some of the things they claim to do
Construction
Hydro excavating
“Tribal Economic Development”
Native American health insurance
“Health” supplements (think: “vitality” pills)
Renewable Energy projects
Manufacturing
Finance
Industrial development (though never actually heard of a won bid)
(all of these entities are “owned” by a Native American- which I’ve alwas suspected is for tax benefit purposes)eh. you know what? let em.
The feds (and white men) have fucked them around for 400 years. Let 'em grift everything they can.
Won’t somebody please think of the landlords?
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.
At the end of my street growing up was a used car dealership with the same 4 cars scattered out front my entire time through elementary, middle and high school. They didn’t even bother airing up the tires…
