To think that (some) vaping shops and barbers are fronts ....

So, given this is a known (and common) problem, what can ordinary people do and what regulations could be introduced to stop them opening in the first place?

I don't want to support organised crime.

Dessert cafe's round here. Never any customers in them.

Yes agree. My town small has a couple of vape shops complete with blacked out windows and a pair of nail salons situated next to one another. Must admit I find it all dodgy as hell.

And tattoo parlours, nail bars, car washing...

Same years ago with ice cream vans

Money laundering, modern day slavery, immigration scams, identity theft, drug dealing....

Yes! We've been talking about 3 Turkish barbers that's popped up around here! 3! I never see any customers, but they're all still here 1 year later! I swear they're fronts for money laundering. One of them replaced an old barbers, who said the rent was too high to make enough profit. Crazy!

So many nail bars and barber shops. Known for people trafficking.
Businesses run at a loss - barbers with one or two customers a day - money from drug sales put through the till to launder it and make the business seem profitable.
Not every nail bars and barbers but a significant number.
I won’t go to the nail bars and don’t need a barber.

The whole point of money laundering is that taxes are paid so that money is traceable as "clean" and can be used to purchase things. HMRC won't care about investigating if they are receiving their taxes.

Banks check for money laundering and HMRC check for tax evasion. A bank is not going to bother a dodgy vape shop unless the amounts being deposited are completely out of the norm. HMRC won't send tax inspectors over if they are actually declaring earnings and paying tax on them.

It is the scale of it now. Our local towns have just become shady, criminal underworlds. Very, sad times.

My city centre is now riddled with these, no actual shops anymore because people shop online or go to the huge, very accessible shopping mall near the outskirts of the city.

My daughter went into the 'mobile phone repair and vape shop' , and was quoted an outrageous price for a simple screen issue. They had no intention of doing business with her.

However, it isn't just dodgy eastern Europeans. We have a couple of city centre pubs that are cash only, which makes no commercial sense, and a local ' cash is king ' chippy who are always posting on social media about how great cash is.

Both are owned by white British people, and couldn't be more obvious tax dodgers if they tried.

It's been widely talked about for years that these establishments are just fronts for 'other' activities.

I also think there is something dodgy going on with our local ice cream van company. They have around 8-10 vans which are out all hours and throughout the winter and sometimes you'll see 3-4 of their vans all in the same road!

What a pointless, twatty comment.

I thought this was common knowledge. 👀 I, and most people I know have known this for YEARS... That's why many of them only take cash. Some of them are heavily involved in money laundering.

Have you only just 'got' this @crockofshite ? Oh well, better late than never.

There are loads of barbers in a town near me but they are always busy cutting hair so plenty of customers to keep them busy

@crockofshite

The problem is that most will go "uninvestigated" as there is simply not the resource in the police or HMRC to carry out the investigations

See above . .

Barber shops, vape shops, American "candy" shops, takeaways that are hardly ever open, phone repair shops. The list goes on.

Precisely the opposite.

The reason they exist is to launder money. A "barber shop" can say they trade mostly in either cash, which is untraceable, or card payments, which are laundered using "money mules". The phrase Money Mules refers to the moving of "dirty money" through an account belonging to a someone (usually a gullible teenager) and then sending it back to the criminals via a card transaction at their "barber shop".

Say I make 2k selling drugs, I send £100 to 20 different teenagers, then get them to transfer £20 on to another five accounts owned by me. I'm a real entrepreneur you see, I own five "barber shops" in the arse end of Wales.

That's why in some towns you'll find half a dozen of these places within half a mile of each other. Dodgy as hell, but on paper their accounts suggest that they're a very profitable little business.

The HMRC are interested in collecting Tax, not catching criminals. As long as the books all add up, the HMRC isn't interested.

Yeah, there seems to have been a few stories on the news about stabbings in barbershops in recent years. I remember being in a nail shop and coming out to a crime scene and pool of blood - outside a barbershop.

Yes have you seen Breaking Bad series. It makes you understand how it happens.

I thought this about those herbal tea shops you see. Who goes in there?

There's been all sorts going on behind the scenes in some Turkish kebab shops in north London for decades.