Money laundering fronts/shops/cafes...how is your high st..??

[bumblebee1000]

Just curious really.....our high street now has appx 9 cafes all have the same flashy design and interior, some have a shisha area out back. very very few customers, just the odd few, males chain smoking and glued to phones, never see any women inside or outside in smoking areas, often big expensive cars parked outside. Also have the 4 barber shops which are always empty and now have one of those american candy and vape shops, this shop sold my friend fake tobacco yesterday and offered him a load of duty free tobacco from Holland, he has reported this shop to trading standards and hmrc as threw away the tobacco. So how is your high street....is it similar ? Has anyone reported these places and seen any action. Personally find them depressing. we are in London.

A hairdresser I used to go to because she was so close, but no more because she wasn’t very good. I hardly ever see anyone in there, but she’s been going for around 20 years.

There's a lot of both in the Middle East?

But young observant Muslims don't normally want to hang out at pubs or nightclubs, so dessert places with a "clubby" vibe make a good alternative for evening get-togethers.

Outskirts of Manchester. Plenty of shops / food outlets with literally no customers. Restaurant / cafe units that barely trade & keep changing hands. Nail bars. Car washes. All linked to modern slavery & money laundering. Not enough police to deal with it. Victims rarely come forward & are prepared to give evidence so can't do much.

Btw if you getting your car washed & valeted for less than £15-20 is likely to have illegal workers & possibly trafficked workers.

We have a rug shop that never has any customers. The sales assistant always looks so bored. I'm sure it must be a front for money laundering.

Sudden rash of mini marts with garish signs and loads of Turkish not actually Turkish probably barbers. Shocking dereliction of duty on the part of councils, tax authorities and law enforcement. It's all in plain sight.

2 Turkish barbers opened recently next to the established barber shop and hairdresser in my village. I've seen guys getting a hot towel shave in the first one, the second one only opened a month or so ago and I've yet to see anyone in there. The cash only hand car wash gets very mixed reviews on the local Facebook page; some people think it's great, others say they've wrecked their alloy wheels, etc.

All cash in hand, all garish and/or flashy, all popping up, regularly closing down for refurbishment and re-opening

Nail bars

Several restaurants, all closed down for refurbishment, with no obvious work being done

Vape shops

Candy shops

Dessert shops

Cafés

Turkish barbers - many of whom have Eastern European staff

Regular hairdressers with a rapid turnover of overworked staff who can't control who their next clients

Phone repair shops - so, so many phone repair shops, with the same moribund stock of ludicrously tacky iPhone cases

Hydroponics

Vitamin, supplements and protein powder shops - like a bodybuilders Holland & Barratt

Luxury bathing shop - Bath bombs, scent diffusers and 'hand made' soaps - like Lush from Temu

Car washes, normally on pub car parks

General stores with no stock worth visiting the shop for

@WhateverMate obviously they're not drinking alcohol, it's haram
There's a whiff of xenophobia about this thread. Why is it just 'foreign' businesses which raise eyebrows? I know loads of hobby businesses run by bored wives of rich businessmen that also don't have many customers, are those also drug fronts?
We have Turkish barbers here, they do a good trade.

@MaryQueenofKnots there may well be English criminals behind these. Drugs defo. But you won't see them, Trafficking often has foreign middle men obviously. I work in a job along side the police / HMRC. Lots of the 'staff' are illegal workers. Cash only business is the giveaway of cash preferred

Someone told me the commercial strip of Leyton, other than the gentrified bits, is almost exclusively run by the Albanian Coke mob. Who knows if that’s true.

dessert stuff is a mix, there’s a v real trend for it, partly driven by insta, partly kids not drinking so much, partly yes a more inclusive customer base - loads of naice ones down whitechapel way that seem to do a good trade but maybe that’s led other folks to think it makes a good front for dodgy stuff.

my fave hand car wash is the one in whitechapel that’s refused to cede their land to a whacking great posh development next door. Would love to know the story there.

Very lovely looking beauticians/filler/Botox spots seem to be the trend out my way, in an area where not many folks would have the cash. Good idea as well as they’re naturally appointment only…

Haram? Why have you decided they're Muslim?

And yes, they very much are drinking alcohol and the police are often called due to fighting.

In my town I'd say the type of shops we have that are suspiciously high are very specific food cafes (donut cafe, ice cream cafe, waffle cafe, etc) and art galleries (5 in the same street selling really awful art, eg psychedelic prints of dogs). All of them are empty whenever I pass them.

Croatia brought in a law which said all tills had to be connected up via the internet to a special server which recorded every transaction. Apparently the income from cafes shot up by an average of 30% in a year...

None where I live now (rural) but the town I lived in before had several. It was sad to see. When we first moved there it had a vibrant main street. Good butcher, greengrocer etc. By the time we moved it was all empty nail bars, tanning shops, vape shops etc. A lighting shop that was obviously a money laundering front, was open for about two hours a week. A bathroom shop that I literally never saw a single person go into and was clearly out of place in a small town.

Loads at least 50% of the high street which is one road.

I'm North London

We have 3 new nail salons (the decent ones... there are 6!?! Already are generally full) These new ones have about 3 customers per week and have really fancy interiors and are run by Turkish women.
We now have 4 gold white Arab cafe places with harsh lighting... All empty.
Half the Barbour shops
Persian type sweets & ice-cream parlour thing.. empty apart from men with empty cups outside smoking 🤷‍♀️
3 X bubble tea shops THREE!!!! 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
3 X green lanes fruit and veg shops that have zero customers and watermelon outside all year round.

I'm glad others have asked about the correlation between Muslims and Desserts!

Edited as I have seen the PP's response!

@Ilovegoldies Do we live in the same place..

Insanely expensive looking art shop at the bottom of town, never seen anyone in there.

Well it would seem that way, the 7 cafes have albanian flags in window, flash cars outside, few men in them, shisha out back. The other 'italian' restaurant also albanian and just opened with same style of decor and all flash and glitzy but no customers....the smoothie bar has had about 10 refurbs in a year so never open...the other 2 cafes also just refurbed yet again....open for a week and the closes...again no customers and now the american candy shop that sold friend the fake tobacco, this opened last week. 20 metres in opposite direction is the middle class shopping street with cafes and hair salons and gift shops...the mafia has yet to move up there as its pedestrianised so cant park the big cars outside. nobody has actually seen them deal as they are far too sophisticated for that.

I live in an economically depressed town of 12,000 souls. There can't possibly be enough business for a dozen nail shops and two dozen hair/beauty salons.

We've also got a vast number of 'vintage' shops, but I think everyone knows they operate on the edges of the law.

These are legit but I am fascinated by the proliferation of skightly shit "upmarket" grocery shops in our not massively gentrified London suburb.

They all seem to be the same - some wooden crates of sad looking fruit and veg, a few bottles of craft beer and natural wine, a cloche in tne counter with pastries or massive sausage rolls and a coffee machine (obvs). They also sell - expensive spanish crisps, tinned fish, pasta, boxes of pricy biscuits.

People only seem to go in for a coffee nose the sparse shelves of goods and wander out.

Yes there's three near me as well. In theory the area demographics should support them but they don't seem to be doing well. Two are right next to each other which is weird.

I don’t think it’s necessary xenophobic to criticise such places.
It’s not an inherently immigrant thing to do to open ‘no cash’ car washes and American candy shops.

Plenty of immigrants have regular jobs or start genuine businesses.
Plenty of immigrants also dislike those dodgy looking establishments - be it because it puts them in a negative light by association or just because they want their local high street to be more appealing.
Fwiw, I love genuine Turkish/ Eastern European/ Asian food shops. There are a few in our town - they are well stocked, offer fresh produce and you always see actual customers in them.

In the case of the bored wife business owner in your example I would just assume the business is sponsored by her well paid husband, so there is no need for them to be a drug front.

There is a glossy looking beauticians near where I live that opened about a year ago. I walk past it at least two or three times a week during the daytime, and I have never seen a member of staff or a customer inside.

Anyone who works in the financial sector will know how KYC/AML procedures have been tightened up in recent years. Try paying in £10k at your bank - you'll be asked all kinds of questions. Yet as a PP pointed out, this is going on in plain sight and on every High Street, and the authorities appear utterly impotent in dealing with it.

Are they hamstrung by political correctness? Who knows, but if the police started smashing down the doors of these "businesses" there would be howls on MN about how the High Street is no longer "vibrant" (normally code for shithole) and the UK is soooo hostile to migrants blah blah blah. The idea that some foreign nationals come to the UK to commit crime is an alien concept to many MNetters.

It's not just the UK, mind. I was in Lanzarote recently and the small resort I was staying in must have had 50 shops - staffed exclusively by Vietnamese (?) - all stocked with the same fake bags, t-shirts.l and general tat. They were open all hours and save for the odd tourist buying a €1 fridge magnet they were completely empty of customers. What's it all about eh?