Where I am in AUS, it seems to be crane rental. I guess pretty easy just to invoice out a days rental and sit around doing nothing.
Nice try FBI.
Every mattress store
Seniors Pizza in Calgary, AB. Always a massive line outside, even during winter.
That sounds like a legit place then
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.
Had a similar one as well in a former neighbourhood I used to live. Turns out the guy is one of the biggest online sellers and keeps the shop for some legal reasons/for customers to come and see an object in real life/to keep him entertained while in reality he had tremendous trade volumes online.
The fact is that the store owner is a massive boomer, I need to write him via sms because he doesn’t have WhatsApp (ubiquitous in Italy and all of Europe) and only owns a dumb phone, as an online seller myself, I think a smartphone is a must these days. He doesn’t have a site, he thinks eBay is the devil (and as an ebay seller, that’s true, but for other reasons) so I don’t think he’s an online seller, he’s just not the type
Yeah, in that case he is very likely just living off inheritance or something. I know exactly what you mean, though - initially I thought the guy I described above is “your” type of guy. I know more than enough of these idiots but most now have a smartphone to read telegram channels it seems.
And the guy I mean still is a huge boomer and asshole, nevertheless. Both online and offline reviews are horrible.
BTW: Salutami il mio amore segreto, l’Italia. Ancora poche settimane e finalmente potrò tornare a trovarvi.
Beh, se passi a Roma non passare da “la lucerna” o passaci, se è il tuo tipo di negozio
(è il negozio di cui parlo nel post, se non si fosse capito) buona fortuna nella tua visita!
It’s possible the store owner also owns the store location maybe. Massively reduces throughput necessary. Could also be a fence?
It’s possible, there are 2 possibilities.
Either he only operates the store for fun, and barely breaks even. (and may be possible, he seems really interested in what he does)
But even then, he may operate the store for fun and launder money for some mafia
Or it’s shady stuff period.
In the end, innocent until guilty.
Edit2: and maybe he’s just rich from his family and just does what he likes.
Interesting person to meet, probably risky
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.
It’s gone now but for a long time we had a 24hr fruit shop.
Our small, rural town had a bar change hands a couple times over the past few years. One day several murdered out Mercs, one an AMG, start parking in front of it. Not to stereotype, but they were greased up, wearing tracksuits and gold chains, guys from the Balkans are driving those cars and operating the bar. Never went in while they were around, but within a year, one of those guys got caught by DEA trying to move some serious weight of cocaine and meth.
The bar shut down pretty quickly after that.
There are several! It’s kind of a problem in my city but none of the civilians care because somehow they have the best food
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.
At least one of the three lamp stores within two miles of each other here. mf i’ve never seen anyone walk into a lmap store in my life, have you?
Pretty to drive past at night though
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.
Oh you mean the barber district!
Hey weird. Me too. None of them know how to cut hair either. Are we neighbors?
Also a dozen empty hotels that have no vacancy.
Sounds like Plymouth. I think i counted 15 Turkish barbers
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.
When I was in Seattle there is this pizza place in a suburban neighborhood that only open for 3 hours 4 days a week from 2:00 to 5:00. All of the workers were the same ones every day and they all three looked no nonsense but friendly enough when you ordered .
The pizza was really good and the calzones were fantastic, so I would go there often, but I almost never saw another customer in the place even though they had at least twenty tables with four chairs at each table set up in two giant dining rooms.
And they were in and out of the way spot with a very small sign. And I think at the most I ever saw one table taken up when I went there and that was only once.
And I never waited in line.
It just seemed like a really odd disposition for a pizza place that obviously needed to pay for a pretty high overhead considering how much space it took up.
Just as a counterpoint. I don’t know what americna nightlife is. But, in the UK, if there was a pizza/takeout place that inly opened after 12 until 5, it would be a great business idea. Chances are, there’ll be a fuck ton of drunk people using it.
American nightlife is pretty dead compared to UK/Europe, But this was actually 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Odd hours.
American nightlife is pretty dead compared to UK/Europe
Not in a college town! I’ve seen entire restaurants sustained primarily drunks trying to sober up a bit and get some food in their bellies at bar time before stumbling home
Oh yeah, that definitely is weirder. It’s like outside of busy hours. And before tea/dinner.
There was this pizza store nearby that had insanely cheap pizza. It costed less than half of their competitors. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. The price made me think it wasn’t a legitimate business.
Yeah I didn’t even say this but the price of like a full-size calzone like a huge one I think was $5 base and I was like what the heck is going on here
I’ve often thought about what I would do if I won the lottery, and this is it- I’d start a few businesses, not really caring if they are profitable, but just to have access to the stuff I want at a known place and time. Sure you could just own the equipment to make really good pizza anytime, but leaving it dormant most of the time would seem like a waste. Rather make it into a business, even if it doesn’t cover the cost, it would at least reduce it somewhat…
I guess if you like serving people that would be fun, since you know if any customer was rude, you could just tell them to get the f*** out.
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.
