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have you ever noticed how some shops and businesses around you stay in business despite the lack of customers if a business has a really complicated business structure where it's hard to see the real beneficiary has a prime real estate location but barely any customers they're primarily a cash business with irregular purchase patterns or they pretty much deal in intangibles well you might be looking at a front for money laundering and you may have walked past them already especially the last few on this list will make you question some things here are 15 of the most common money laundering businesses candy stores we know you've seen them how the hell do these candy stores afford to pay rent in Central London from multiple stories in a building just how much money is in candy well as it turns out a lot of dirty money not only do they find that these establishments were used for money laundering they had to put a hold on their assets which meant the police had to confiscate the candy and put it all into evidence claw machine and play areas same pattern here cash business Central locations irregular patterns not only is the claw rigged but so are the books since your winning prizes the accounting for these businesses are shady AF because they justify it as well this month the customer won X amount of iPhones and hundreds of hundred dollar bills the thing is you need a lot of them in a lot of places to justify the cash flow and some laser tag businesses have also had a history of money laundering as well laundromats the myth is tied to Al Capone who is said to have had laundromats to clean up his money and this is where the term money laundering comes from it used to be pretty common for Mobsters to buy laundromats and even set up shop in the back room car wash the most hated character in Breaking Bad knew what needed to be done so they bought A1A car wash in order to launder the money that they obtained legally supplies consistent clientele High cash volume and a lot of miscellaneous items up for sale at the above market rate the supplier says they sold 100 air fresheners this week that they purchased for one dollar a piece and sold for 15 bucks a pop if something is way overpriced but still shown on accounting sheets as being sold in high value well that's a massive red flag from money laundering nail and beauty salons every service business is pretty much the same and criminals have been using them as fronts for years it's hard to track down how many people come and go expensive appliances that are never around and more sunbed spots or massage parlors are also in line here restaurants are in constant flow of fresh produce if there are restaurants in your neighborhood that stay in business although they almost never have customers and the food is pretty bad well now you know why strip clubs this one's pretty obvious right and there are a lot of ties with even more criminality not to mention that some of these establishments operate illegally as brothels and are actually a part of a massive International chain of human trafficking psychic reading bet you didn't see this one coming but yep psychics are one of the most common ways that people launder money you can make up your hourly rate you can make up the number of customers you helped and nobody's gonna ask for a refund not only do they use this venture to launder money but even scam their customers by emotionally manipulating them the most common way is to say that the bad luck they've encountered recently in their lives is because of a curse that was put on them in exchange for thousands of dollars the psychic will be willing to break that curse for you cash only parking you pay by the hour and you pay by the day but if you look at the books at these places though you'll realize there are plenty of ghost cars that have been parked in and out without ever being there even if there are cameras at the entrance and exit they usually malfunction when these cars come and go churches bet you didn't see this one coming since churches are not obligated to file financial documents they're perfect for money laundering there's an estimate that at least one in five churches commits money laundering or other Financial misdemeanors there's even something called a Palermo convention that specifically looks at the issue and tries to minimize its damage to society most televangelists leverage the church to create an extreme wealth for themselves and then they justify it as a gift from God art galleries the Art Market is a perfect playground for money laundering let's say you've got a friend who paints on paper you pay them one hundred thousand dollars for a painting in reality he just gave them 10k of the money for taxes on the 100K then you bribe an appraisal for the value of the painting that you just bought at one million dollars then you donate the painting to a museum and get a one million dollar tax cut for less than 50k welcome to the world of art where intangible value is the name of the game flower shops have you noticed how there are 24-hour open flower shops it's not really something you pay attention to but what in the world does a flower shop sell at 1am these are usually used for the sale of drugs or illegal merchandise because flowers are such a perishable item it's easy for them to say they sold a million tulips on Mother's day without batting an eye if you think non-stop flower shops are crazy oh baby wait until the next one local cinemas Small Town Cinemas are still open today despite nobody really going to see movies in something less than a big Cinema like an IMAX these places are still open even after covid these run down spots can't even justify the cost of electricity but now and then if you check the books you'll see some cheap movies from the past drawing in massive crowds consistently at least you know at least on paper cash to crypto assets The nft Craze was insane crypto tumblers had been around for a while on the dark web where people throw in their crypto from unmentionable sources they get mixed in with all the questionable cryptos and then they get randomly redistributed crypto coins like Monero were the go-to's because they provided no source of transaction so how did the money launder work well some minor has 100 Bitcoins on a hardware wallet you give them three million dollars of dirty money in cash in exchange for the wallet you take the wallet fly to Dubai and buy yourself a villa on the palm with the crypto since they don't ask you the source of the funds you hold the Villa for a couple of years then you sell it for laundered cash without paying any taxes on the transaction fruits and grain fruit vendors water vendors and all the little stalls that people use to sell things to tourists that's why the service is so bad and why the products are so expensive from the production to the end point of sale every piece of the chain can be used to launder money who can actually check how many apples you collected this year not to mention they have a great distribution Network and use the routes to move money to other types of merchandise in hey Luxor these are just some examples to get your brain working now it's your turn what business in your city is clearly a front for money laundering let us know in the comments and since you're still watching here's an extra bonus banks are in this as well 1.3 million dollars in cocaine was ceased a couple of years ago on a cargo ship owned and operated by JPMorgan Chase and they're not the only ones okay HSBC provided money laundering Services of more than 881 million dollars to various drug cartels including Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte de Valle cartel in the case of HSBC they only had to pay a fine of 1.9 billion dollars and swear they'll change their ways and look we could keep going on this train for days all right many African countries are also opening to laundering terrorist organization money because of the high level of corruption looking around you kind of makes you wonder right we'll see you back here tomorrow Alexa take care thank you