Money Laundering Businesses – You might walk past one and not even know it. Even the last ones on the list will make you question things.
Have you noticed how some shops and businesses around you stay in business despite the lack of customers? Well, if they check the following boxes, they might be a money laundering business.
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
You might be looking at a business that’s a front for money laundering.
So, without further ado, let’s jump right in and discover the 15 most common money laundering businesses.
Don’t worry if you don’t feel like reading, you can enjoy the video below or watch it on YouTube:
1
Business #1 – Candy Stores
We know you’ve seen them. How the hell can these candy stores afford to pay rent in central London for multiple stories in a building?
Just how much money is in candy?
??It turns out to be a lot of dirty money:
- Oxford Candy Shop investigation
- American Candy shops keep popping up on Oxford Street
- American-style sweet shops under investigation
Not only did they find that these establishments were used for money laundering, they had to put a hold on their assets.
That meant the police had to confiscate the candy and put it into evidence.
2
Claw machine and play areas
The same pattern is here. Cash business, central locations, irregular patterns.
Not only is the claw rigged, but so are the books.
Since you’re winning prizes, the accounting for these businesses is shady AF because they justify it as This month, the customers won X number 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.
Some laser-tag businesses have had a history of money laundering as well.
3
Laundromats
The myth is tied to Al Capone, who is said to have used laundromats to clean up his money.
This is actually 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 rooms.
4
Car wash
The most hated character in Breaking Bad knew what needed to be done, so they bought A1A Carwash in order to launder the money obtained illegally.
Supplies, consistent clientele, high cash volume, and a lot of miscellaneous items up for sale at above-market rates.
The supplier says they sold 100 air fresheners this week, which they purchased for 1 dollar a piece and sold for 15 bucks a pop.
If something is way overpriced but still shown on accounting sheets as being sold at a high value, it’s a massive red flag for money laundering.
5
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 how many people come in and go. Expensive appliances that are never around and more.
Sunbed spots or massage parlors are also in line here.
6
Restaurants
Restaurants are in constant demand for fresh produce, that’s what makes them ideal as a money laundering business.
If there are restaurants in your neighborhood that stay in business even though they almost never have customers or the food is quite bad, now you know why.
7
Strip-clubs
This one’s pretty obvious, and there are a lot of ties to even more criminality.
Not to mention that some of these establishments operate illegally as brothels and are part of a massive international chain of human trafficking.
So yes, it’s safe to say strip clubs are ideal for a money laundering business.
8
Psychic reading
I bet you didn’t see this one coming, but yep, psychics are one of the most common ways people launder money.
You can make up your hourly rate.
You can make up the number of customers you “helped“, and nobody’s going to ask for a refund.
Not only do they use the venue to launder money, they 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 would be willing to break the curse for you.
9
Cash only parking
You pay by the hour, and you pay by the day.
If you look at the books of these places, you’ll realize that 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 in and go out.
10
Churches
I bet you weren’t expecting this one this money laundering business.
Since churches are not obligated to file financial documents, they’re perfect for money laundering.
There’s an estimate that at least 1 in 5 churches commits money laundering or other financial misdemeanors.
There’s even something called the Palermo Convention that specifically looks at the issue and tries to minimize its damage to society.
Most television evangelists leverage the church to create extreme wealth for themselves and then justify it as a gift from God.
11
Art galleries
The art market is a perfect playground for money laundering.
Let’s say you have a friend who paints. On paper, You pay him 100,000 dollars for a painting. In reality, you just give him 10k plus the money for taxes on the 100k.
Then you bribe an appraiser to value the painting you just bought at 1 million dollars.
You then donate the painting to a museum and get a 1 million dollar tax cut for less than $50,000.
Welcome to the art world, where intangible value is the name of the game.
12
Flower shops
Have you noticed how there are 24h open flower shops?
It’s not really something you pay attention to, but what in the world does a flower shop sell at 1 a.m.?
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 a crazy money laundering business, wait for the next one!
13
Local cinemas
Small-town cinemas are still open today, despite the fact that nobody goes to see movies in anything less than a big cinema like an Imax.
These places are still open, even after COVID.
These run-down places can’t even justify the cost of electricity, but every now and then, if you check the books, you’ll see some cheap movie from the past drawing massive crowds consistently, at least on paper.
14
Cash to crypto to assets
The NFT craze was insane.
Crypto tumblers have been around for a while on the dark web, where people throw in their crypto from unmentionable sources, they get mixed in with all other questionable cryptos, and then they get randomly redistributed.
Cryptocurrencies like Monero were ideal because they provided no source of transactions.
So how did the money laundering business work in this case?
Some miners have 100 bitcoins in a hardware wallet.
You give him 3 million dollars of dirty money in cash in exchange for the wallet.
Then you take the wallet, fly to Dubai, and buy yourself a villa on the palm with the crypto since they don’t ask you for the source of funds.
You hold the villa for a couple of years and then you sell it for laundered cash without paying any taxes on the transaction.
15
Fruits and grains
Fruit vendors, water vendors, and all the little stalls people use to sell things to tourists.
That’s why the service is so bad and why the products are so expensive.
From production to the endpoint of the sale, every piece of the chain is usable for money laundering. Who can actually check how many apples you collected this year?
Not to mention that they have a great distribution network and use the routes to move money and other types of merchandise.
And since you’re still reading, here’s an extra bonus for you:
Bonus
Banks are in it as well
1.3 billion dollars in cocaine was seized a couple of years ago on a cargo ship owned and operated by JP Morgan Chase.
HSBC provided money-laundering services worth more than $881 million to various drug cartels, including Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Colombia’s Norte del 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.
Most African countries are open to laundering money from terrorist organizations because of the high level of corruption.
And we can keep going for days. If you’ve enjoyed this article, check this one out; you’re going to love it.
Now that you know what the most common money laundering businesses are, you’ll look around you with a different view of things. See you next time!
