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Comment by Sholmesy | Hacker News Reader

I live in Soho, and have watched these places pop up & shut down on Oxford St constantly for the last 5 years.

One factor is that in recent times these commercial rents have begun offering incredibly low rates for the first year, that then get increased in subsequent years. This makes it perfect for these low cost setups to move in, and move out constantly.

I do think that there is an aspect of money laundering going on. I've literally never seen anyone in one of these stores, so yeah.

Side Note: I got a weekly newsletter from Westminster council the other day, bragging about a raid they had done on some of those tourist trap places, and found £X amount of CBD products that weren't approved, non-sanctioned vapes/batteries etc. They also deported some undocumented people working there... These places are not the same as the candy places, but they are definately adjacent/similar setup.

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How much would it cost to keep a place like this running for a month? Rent + wages, assuming it needs just 1 full time staffer. Their stock doesn't go bad very fast at least, so if they do pack it in they can sell most of it on to someone else.

That said, money laundering is pretty much everywhere; there's so many shops that don't really seem to get any business. Over here there's tons of phone shops, they sell phones, subscriptions (the provider is often plastered all over), phone cases and repairs, but I don't believe they get much traffic at all.

Why do you think it money laundering? What’s the exact mechanism?

Well, the usual scheme is you just report inflated sales, no?

I read a little further in the article and they mentioned that. Is it really that easy? I was hoping there was SOMETHING else besides just .. simple lying.

I had the same confusion before. I had frequently heard of money laundering and how casinos were frequently associated with it and thought it was something sophisticated. Unless I'm mistaken, it really is as simple as having a significant amounts of cash exchange hands under plausible pretenses and lying about it. For casinos, you can buy chips, cash them out, and the money is u traceable (or something like that)

> Why do you think it money laundering? What’s the exact mechanism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsUHDJ0BFM

Replace "nail salon" with "candy" and you're there. Candy is a great product for this because it's high-margin, and very low value.

Thank you! I think I was overthinking it a bit - looking for a deep, nefarious scheme when they're simply saying they sold 300 boxes of candy when they only sold 50, or whatever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_...

It could be a similar to the technique used by trinket stores that was exposed by Private Eye.

> I do think that there is an aspect of money laundering going on.

Definitely yes, a similar thing happened across the pond in Amsterdam: https://www-groene-nl.translate.goog/artikel/ze-zijn-hier-zo... (Dutch article, used Google Translate)

Seems like every commenter here is aware of the money laundering hypothesis, except me... could somebody drop a link or anything to explain to the outsider what kind of money laundering is happening so profitably in those shops? Thank you!

Sorry, that's just conjecture on my part.

Sister commenter posted this about Amsterdam: https://www-groene-nl.translate.goog/artikel/ze-zijn-hier-zo...

Here's one from google about Scotland: https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/13308928.crooks-using-sw...

Here's one from PrivateEye (England): https://external-preview.redd.it/nI7Pl0eLeF1y4l6ow_QARxTZ09b...

Bubble tea shops are nice fronts for money laundering too.

I've actually seen people in those though, which doesn't invalidate it from money laundering, just makes it a less obvious one!

Perhaps women's clothing shops and pet shops are for money laundering too, since they have no direct relevance to my life.

Women's clothing, especially boutiques, are probably not a bad choice for money laundering if you could somehow pass knockoff stuff as genuine luxury articles, and have your dirty money come in as the delta between knockoff and genuine wholesale. Pet shops? I dunno.

I knew a pet shop in the US in the 90’s whose primary business was moving large quantities of weed around (bagged in the bottom of barrels of fish), so yeah, not impossible.

High end clothing boutiques aren’t cash businesses though, so they’re generally not good for money laundering.

Probably not - but there are "Sample sales" that pop up in abandoned store fronts that are certainly 100% cash, and I'm sure shady shit goes down in those. I'm too fat for any of those clothes, so I just judge from outside.

When you have 3 bubble tea shops within 100m in a town of 15000 where the basic wage for retail is basically $4000 (Switzerland) and a rent of $2000 + $50k without counting the cost to re-arrange the shop, with at least 2 staffs and no clients any times I walk by, I have no doubt about the purpose of these shops.

Selling takeaway sugar and caffeine with a high markup and a quiet shopfront isn't a new business model. Locating them near each other is just game theory. All of this is exactly the same as Starbucks.

Bubble tea started being sold in the West to appeal to Asian immigrants. So just because you don't use it doesn't mean nobody else does.

The bubble tea shop near me seems legitimate, you get loads of teenagers and Chinese students in there, they are really friendly and their products are good and high quality.

Where I am it's barbers, there are so many of them. I started going to one in lockdown as I had a big beard for the 1st time ever and it's nice to get someone else to trim it. He's a single guy from Iraq (even though it says Turkish barber outside). Very articulate and friendly. Unless he's from a wealthy family I can't see how he could get the money to come over and set up a fancy shop, pretty sure he's come over as an asylum seeker. I'm guessing he has been offered cheap rent for a short time, but he's still had a big outlay to set up the shop. He seems to do ok, but many of these barbers are empty most of the time.

Barber shops can have reliable clientele who come back once a month, high demand because everyone needs them, and a viable business model if the rent is not high - labor is $20 an hour, 3 clients an hour get $60 revenue, the difference can pay for rent and operating cost. $10k-$20k revenue per month is not too hard to do. (Of course that doesn't pay rents in super prime locations, so the cuts in Manhattan cost $50 instead of $20, but the principle is the same.)

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