American Candy Stores... What's the scam?

[YummySweeties]

I keep seeing these places on my high street, and in the news!

The news is implying that these stores are some kind of tax scam, but how? Surely their costs (running a high street shop) must be huge?

Yes @motogirl theres definitely something about business rates on empty buildings too.

We have lots of sweet and cake shops open near us (East London). You don't see anyone using them and rarely is anyone behind the counter.

If a shop is empty the landlord has to pay the business rates. Put a candy store in there and the landlord is no longer liable. The shop then goes bust before the rates are due, meaning nobody pays anything.

Have you not seen breaking bad and why Walter opened the car wash

They're a front for selling drugs / illegal weapons.
The owners sell the drugs / weapons for cash (not in the shop!), but put the transactions through the sweet shop till so it looks legit and they can bank the cash.
They used to all own tacky tourist souvenir shops but switched to selling sweets in lockdown so they could stay open when non-essential retail had to close but shops selling food could stay open.

It seems to be common knowledge that the one on our local high street is a front for laundering drug money.

There's a massive furniture/kitchen/bathroom store just off the M5 that I'm convinced has to be involved with ML.

There's NEVER any customers

God, who’d want to counterfeit American chocolate?

I stupidly bought some chocolate bars on Amazon once and was very ill after eating one. I really think they were counterfeit. It's scary hoe many counterfeit food products are out there - that worries me more than the money laundering tbh (which, don't get me wrong, is also very bad).

I was thinking the same while reading the puzzled posts 😀

I've thought for years that phone case shops must be for money laundering too

I got some sweets recently from the American candy store, I've not had any yet, should I bin them if there's questions over what they may contain?

Urban myth?

It’s very obvious the shops that are money laundering, I used to live somewhere where it was all vape shops, no one very very small “city” (because it had a cathedral) could have needed the number of vape shops.

I’m not sure counterfeit chocolate/candy/sweets has a big enough profit turner to be an actual thing though, and probably less effort to make drugs. Maybe false labels on food from outside the UK is a thing?

Money laundering. We have a few that the council turn a blind eye to, a sun bed shop, jewellers, bed shop, Chinese herbal remedies and a barbers. Never seen customers but they curiously survive where others don't.

How do they fake records of the stock they’ve bought (and supposedly sold)? It must be quite easy to find a hole in the supply chain? Or am I being naive?

Wow I'm so naive!

Vape shops probably similar, your local corner shop sells them for buttons yet somehow there's shops dedicated to selling them.

I guess my next question then is why American candy?

Wouldn't it be better to get the double dip and sell something actually profitable?

That means selling something, employing people etc. If you are funneling money why sell anything? These businesses also avoid paying creditors, rents etc. Close the shop, reopen somewhere else. Can close and 're open quicker than the authorities can keep up. At a higher level buying properties in e.g. London is another way of laundering money. Move funds from abroad into London. Later sell the property and the money is now clean.

No because they are laundering thousands and thousands of pounds. They don't care about building a business that they may have to disband in an instant.

With this they just have to buy a load of sweets and pile it up.

That's what I was wondering - surely audits would show up a discrepancy between stock bought/sold and turnover?

Wells?

Have you seen the prizes they charge in those American candy shops!

I think they don’t. They pay (say) 30p for a chocolate bar wholesale and put it on sale at £5 or £6. They then claim to have sold 10,000 chocolate bars (which they throw away). For an outlay of £3,000, they claim income of £60,000 in ‘clean’ money. The bank will accept the cash as they will accept cash takings from a shop.

If the chocolate bars are fake, they probably cost even less.

The money launderers will have to pay £12,000 tax on the money but that still leaves them £45,000 that they can use for normal life rather than ‘dirty’ cash which can’t be paid into banks / used for a mortgage etc.

Now repeat that in multiple shops on a weekly basis.