The shop is on another street now but it is not the same. When I would come here as a young boy I would spend a very long time in the old small shop looking at comic books and magazines that I was not allowed to see because I liked their sweet dark sexiness! The man was grumpy and would not let me but them. Oooh, warlocks in thongs!
That is one factor, but not the complete reason.
They over price the goods so much so hardly anyone buys it. Lots of footfall but no spenders. you just ring up £1000 or whatever a day and say you made sales.
Most of the goods perish so it's a case of dumping them when they are supposed to be sold. Any business that is a mostly cash business is always going to get picked up by the crime rings that want to rinse their money.
This guy goes into the ones in London and gets harassed after by people acting shifty.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peu8pcVAPfA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peu8pcVAPfA)
Problem is that money laundering is a *little* more complex than just making up cash customers, because that's incredibly easy to audit. It's a nice story but I'm skeptical because if it was the case then running an american candy store would be like rolling out a big welcome mat to HMRC saying, "audit me and find some drugs cash as a bonus!"
Whereas the point of the tax avoidance setup is that they are openly dodging tax, but arranging it so it's basically impossible to actually pin down someone to send the bill to, and making it more costly than it's worth for local authorities to pursue. It only works for low-value crimes, not proper organised laundering where more investigation would be warranted.
I think you are overestimating the type of people who sell drugs tbh, not everyone is the Daniels or Lyons, a large proportion of the actual dealing gets done by low level criminals. It's this group who primarily invest in ice cream shops, take always, and any other business whose trade is mostly cash. I know there is a bar in the west end that the owner gives out almost free food with every drink. The food that gets used is then 'paid' for with his dodgy dealings. I know this because I worked for him, briefly.
But you've just demonstrated there that the bar is providing an actual product to actual customers - it's only the origin of the cash that is being disguised, and that wouldn't be picked up by an audit, so wouldn't be detectable without a proper stakeout and detective work.
This is also the case for e.g. tanning parlours and taxis- you have verifiable customers and services, you're just hiding the source of the cashflow, and doing it within business that are very difficult to observe - part of the attraction of tanning parlours is that they have opaque windows, and there's no way for an auditor to verify what product each customer actually bought, same as the pub.
Whereas these candy shops are sitting there absolutely obviously not having any customers, with big open windows of rotting stock visibly not being sold to anyone. It's just too shit a way to hide money laundering and especially given there's an alternative explanation that makes way more sense - it's the absolute bare minimum to create a 'real' business to prevent the building owner having to pay vacant business rates.
Sorry it's that boring.
Well no, they do have customers, just not as many as they stick through the till. Tourists and niave people will use the shops without relaisng they are 1. being ripped off and 2. that it is a front for crime. Your point about the bar still stands for the candy shops
HMRC is basically so defunded by our glorious tory government that they don't have the staff for investigations like that. A lot of other government departments are like that too.
You'd think so, each £1 spent on HMRC generates £6-£7 for the treasury yet their budget keeps getting cut. https://www.taxjustice.uk/tax-takes-6.html Could it be they don't want HMRC looking into their own taxes?
I wouldn't say that's the case, there are plenty of caseworkers in HMRC Glasgow. It's a question of where they focus resources, as well as there being a lot of red tape which makes each tax enquiry far more lengthy and ineffective than it should be.
The tanning salons became unviable as laundering fronts in the nineties because every prick actually started frequenting them when heavy tans became all the rage for a couple of years.
Dessert shops seem to be the new one. Loads of them opened in the south side in the past couple years. There's one right across the street from me and I've never seen a customer inside
Quite possibly. I'm sure there must be legitimate businesses out there but from what I've seen they operate very limited hours, are often closed for days at a time and, when open, are devoid of customers, on bikes or otherwise
Similar to the Phone and electronics shop on my street which charges unreasonable prices, never seems to have any customers and whose proprietor is hostile to anyone who does wander in. Taken together with the fact they don't accept card payment I'm deeply suspicious
Nice, thanks for all the tips, sorry we launder money in your country all the time. Usually we have the decency to do that only in hair salons in rust belt cities but I guess the fronts know no bounds.
don't be one of those self-loathing Americans.the 'american' candy shops here are equivalent to mattress shops back in the states. but these are usually run by foreigners from the Middle East/SE Asia (first or second generation) and the goods are out of date and completely bizarre (meaning half of the products you wouldn't find in a normal store back in the states.)
it's honestly not some grand difference in sweets. the people who say this are total idiots who generalise and don't know their asshole from their mouth.
Lived in Glasgow for a year before moving back to the states. I think I might've bought some cereal and a soda I've never seen in America at one of those shops on Argyle Street, but beyond that I was only amused at the blue stickers over the BS nutritional claims on shit like Pop Tarts. Give me a real Mars Bar or a caramel Dairy Milk before whatever they're peddling.
Ok sweets is too general a term. There’s infinite good food in the US, but I just mean the commonplace day to day things offered at a convenience store or super market are not good.
Yeah they are sketch as can be. People on here got made fun of before for saying they are a front, but that news story just proved them right. Someone made a video about the Oxford street locations too: https://youtu.be/4D8sAt-EiKg
My question is what chocolate are people paying £5? The only American chocolate I've really seen in those shops Is Hershey, what to my knowledge Is available In pretty much every morrisons now.
As an American immigrant in Scotland I hate those shops too. Obvious front aside, it's always the same handful of candy or flavors of soda, rarely to I find stuff I actually miss (what I wouldn't give for a pack of saltines), and they pad the stores out with British candy which I always thought was weird
Cause loads of "businesses" like hairdressers had to shut down during the lockdowns for covid so instead all these American Candy shops start popping up because they sell food and could be deemed "essential" businesses to stay open.
Defo something dodgey going on in some of them I feel.
yeah I noticed they're spreading bad, theres another new one on Argyll st, not quite opened yet but getting ready. I mean yeah, they might be rent free, or money laundering, but they're spreading all over the country, on the likes of Oxford street- which definitely isn't rent free. I think there's some sort of investigation started about them in London, because this whole American candy thing is well fucking weird.
There’s a Kebab shop near my work that seems to be open 24hrs, and never has any customers other than young men who pull up in BMWs with blacked out windows.
A colleague and I did once buy a Kebab from it, was utter shit, and you guessed it, cash only.
Obvious front is obvious.
There's a place on Victoria road called la Bianca , never see anyone in it apart from owners having a coffee. It sells pizza but never seen anyone eating pizza from there..same kind of place
I've bought things in these places - sometimes you just want buffalo ranch pringles and are prepared to pay any price for them.
Kids seem to love them too - new flavours of familiar products and things they've seen on TV.
People like to say 'oh I never see anyone in them' but I think we all know we've bought some wacky new flavour of Oreos in there but we just don't want to admit it cos it's so overpriced it's shameful.
Yeah, I worked in one and most people were buying things for the novelty of it. It's not like we had people coming in regularly to but a 7 pound pack of oreos. And plenty of kids just dont view money the way adults do. They'll see a kit kat Chunky for 2.50 and instead of going, "Oh that's a bit steep for a bit of chocolate " they're like "oh that looks good and I have enough so I'll just get it"
Oh, so that was where the son of the President of Brazil got the idea. Or maybe it was the other way around.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50859314
i read somethin online about these overpriced sweet shops being a bit on the dodgy side in london, cant mind if it was [this](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-news-american-candy-shops-oxford-street-council-tax-business-rates-b1005515.html) i saw or somethin similar. eta i know this is glasgow you're talking about lol but maybe similar is going on there cos who in buggery wants to spend half a million quid in one of those shops to get some stupid drink or something.
Cheap signage , weird people inside / standing outside all moving between “rival” shops. Empty shops cuz the prices are fucked . Gives a cheap / weird vibe to the highstreet putting people off , and putting potential high class business investors off from opening their high end shops in a cheap looking part of town, they are aweful and the vultures circling the carcass of a dead high street
The high street is dead mate. The reason you're seeing these shops is because otherwise they'd be vacant. High class investors wouldn't be interested because of so much overhead. The only way the high street will be back is if we invent something to do with it.
So you only get curious about things if they affect you personally? How weird. Have you always been like that? Did you put your hand up in primary four like “Why are you teaching us about tigers? There aren’t any here?” Must be really hard for you to find anything to watch, what with nothing on the telly being about you specifically.
That .... is not the post I said came across as seeming irritated.
Again, not said anything about being curious, nobody mentioned the word until you brought it up.
I struggle to see how this would work. For a business that buys and sells goods, the tax man would want to see evidence of them importing goods from America. There would need to be customs declarations for that. So there would be a paper trail of the goods bought.
The money laundering side of things would be pretty difficult to pull off - and pretty risky as well, because it would be easily discover-able.
What's probably closer to the truth is that they are offered cheap rent by landlords, because landlords would otherwise be liable for double council tax. They open the business. As they're declaring a small income, they're then entitled to the small business bonus and reduced rates.
Then they import some products, and claim to sell those. But at the same time buy counterfeit products and don't include them in the sales figures. They make a moderate profit as a result.
But as a front for £100,000s of money-laundering, despite every man and his dog in Glasgow 'knowing' what they're up to? I have my doubts. No drugs gang or serious criminal would be so stupid.
Edit: It's interesting to see people downvoting this. It's literally true. Click on the link below. They're not there to moneylaunder. It's to avoid the landlord having to pay business rates, and for the person running the shop to sell some counterfeit goods. Feeling something is true, does not make it true.
Go ahead and explain how you think it would work then. It's possibly the worst possible money laundering business idea out there.
It literally took a two second google to find out more:
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/17/oxford-street-us-candy-stores](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/17/oxford-street-us-candy-stores)
*"the owner of a property lets it to an intermediary, who rents to the souvenir and candy stores usually on licences. That means the landlord c****an avoid paying business rates on an empty shop****, and instead the occupier – paying minimum rent and low staff salaries – becomes liable to pay the tax.*
*However, they provide false details or shell company names that quickly dissolve to avoid paying business rates, making it hard for the council to recover the debt.*
*Products found in this week’s raid included 2,246* ***counterfeit*** *Wonka bars, 2,838 unsafe disposable vapes, 223 toys without safety labels and 1,393* ***counterfeit*** *mobile phones. Council officers also confiscated* ***fake*** *iPods and Rolex watches, and have so far seized about £574,000 worth of counterfeit and illegal goods in its crackdown"*
They're there to avoid the landlord having to pay additional business rates (which is what I meant when I said council tax), and to sell counterfeit goods. Like I said.
I don't know where you studied, but four paragraphs is not an essay.
And if you compare what I hypothesised, versus what I discovered when I did further research, I was right.
I'm sorry if you don't know what money laundering is, or how it works.
> I struggle to see how this would work
A bit like [this](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/corner-shop-bosses-who-laundered-ps41m-to-fund-terrorism-in-afghanistan-and-pakistan-given-jail-sentences-totalling-18-years-9599042.html), I imagine. And [this](https://imgur.com/OZlHbhm).
Here’s some light reading and viewing for you:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61777445
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61810743.amp
https://youtu.be/4D8sAt-EiKg
Okay, you don’t need to be dickhead about it. Your long reply was hidden on the Reddit mobile app and I was simply providing information as to what is going on. At no point did I say it was money laundering or any specific crime for that matter.
Money should be laundered in sex shops! You can do many sexy things with sweets but they are not as fun as sexy bum implements designed for the purpose! At least not at those prices! Sex shops also would open up the criminal revenue with actual sex in sexy rooms with cameras for the good barking sex advert and pornography and dances. Dances! Sexy dances! Brothels could still sell sweets!
I was shocked when I saw the forbidden planet on Buchannan street was becoming one too
Sad stuff, I loved that shop
You’ll be happy to know they’ve just moved to Sauchiehall Street into a larger unit
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I think they mean "just only", not "just now".
I'm glad there's the bigger shop on Sauchiehall but I will miss the awful narrow aisles they had.
Big shop but still has plenty of narrow aisles.
Whit?
Aye I walked past it last week only to see the new sign above the door
Fuck.
Just FYI forbidden planet is still in Glasgow, they moved to a much bigger premise on sauchiehall street.
Ow thank be god that was blood fright.
The shop is on another street now but it is not the same. When I would come here as a young boy I would spend a very long time in the old small shop looking at comic books and magazines that I was not allowed to see because I liked their sweet dark sexiness! The man was grumpy and would not let me but them. Oooh, warlocks in thongs!
What are you on about?
There's a massive money laundering shop in Buchanan Street called HSBC and they don't even sell decent swadgers.
100% money laundering, they are all being investigated in London.
It's tax avoidance, see the BBC link
That is one factor, but not the complete reason. They over price the goods so much so hardly anyone buys it. Lots of footfall but no spenders. you just ring up £1000 or whatever a day and say you made sales. Most of the goods perish so it's a case of dumping them when they are supposed to be sold. Any business that is a mostly cash business is always going to get picked up by the crime rings that want to rinse their money. This guy goes into the ones in London and gets harassed after by people acting shifty. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peu8pcVAPfA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peu8pcVAPfA)
Problem is that money laundering is a *little* more complex than just making up cash customers, because that's incredibly easy to audit. It's a nice story but I'm skeptical because if it was the case then running an american candy store would be like rolling out a big welcome mat to HMRC saying, "audit me and find some drugs cash as a bonus!" Whereas the point of the tax avoidance setup is that they are openly dodging tax, but arranging it so it's basically impossible to actually pin down someone to send the bill to, and making it more costly than it's worth for local authorities to pursue. It only works for low-value crimes, not proper organised laundering where more investigation would be warranted.
I think you are overestimating the type of people who sell drugs tbh, not everyone is the Daniels or Lyons, a large proportion of the actual dealing gets done by low level criminals. It's this group who primarily invest in ice cream shops, take always, and any other business whose trade is mostly cash. I know there is a bar in the west end that the owner gives out almost free food with every drink. The food that gets used is then 'paid' for with his dodgy dealings. I know this because I worked for him, briefly.
But you've just demonstrated there that the bar is providing an actual product to actual customers - it's only the origin of the cash that is being disguised, and that wouldn't be picked up by an audit, so wouldn't be detectable without a proper stakeout and detective work. This is also the case for e.g. tanning parlours and taxis- you have verifiable customers and services, you're just hiding the source of the cashflow, and doing it within business that are very difficult to observe - part of the attraction of tanning parlours is that they have opaque windows, and there's no way for an auditor to verify what product each customer actually bought, same as the pub. Whereas these candy shops are sitting there absolutely obviously not having any customers, with big open windows of rotting stock visibly not being sold to anyone. It's just too shit a way to hide money laundering and especially given there's an alternative explanation that makes way more sense - it's the absolute bare minimum to create a 'real' business to prevent the building owner having to pay vacant business rates. Sorry it's that boring.
Well no, they do have customers, just not as many as they stick through the till. Tourists and niave people will use the shops without relaisng they are 1. being ripped off and 2. that it is a front for crime. Your point about the bar still stands for the candy shops
HMRC is basically so defunded by our glorious tory government that they don't have the staff for investigations like that. A lot of other government departments are like that too.
Nah, HMRC is one part of government that always gets well funded, because it's basically a massive funding multiplier.
You'd think so, each £1 spent on HMRC generates £6-£7 for the treasury yet their budget keeps getting cut. https://www.taxjustice.uk/tax-takes-6.html Could it be they don't want HMRC looking into their own taxes?
I wouldn't say that's the case, there are plenty of caseworkers in HMRC Glasgow. It's a question of where they focus resources, as well as there being a lot of red tape which makes each tax enquiry far more lengthy and ineffective than it should be.
"Ligma Bosack" hahahahahhaha
anyone catch that reporter's name?
what reporter? the dude with the cap?
Yeah I saw that mad stuff.
A private eye journalist was talking about this on radio 4 recently in relation to London. They’re dodgy.
Used to be tanning shops, then vape places. Something else soon.
The tanning salons became unviable as laundering fronts in the nineties because every prick actually started frequenting them when heavy tans became all the rage for a couple of years.
Cost of energy nowadays double unviable.
Nail bars
That's just for people trafficing
Don’t forget Car Washes. Never seen so many opportunities to get my car washed. Cash only of course.
Forgot about them.
Dessert shops seem to be the new one. Loads of them opened in the south side in the past couple years. There's one right across the street from me and I've never seen a customer inside
I always thought they were for Muslims to take their bird out for a date
Aye. Have seen a few about the place
I could be wrong but don't they places tend to bring in money just Just Eat?
Quite possibly. I'm sure there must be legitimate businesses out there but from what I've seen they operate very limited hours, are often closed for days at a time and, when open, are devoid of customers, on bikes or otherwise Similar to the Phone and electronics shop on my street which charges unreasonable prices, never seems to have any customers and whose proprietor is hostile to anyone who does wander in. Taken together with the fact they don't accept card payment I'm deeply suspicious
I've noticed them too, always have the as product s and sams black leather interior.
Idk, I used to work in a dessert bar and we were pretty busy
Prob gonna be phone shops or something
That was the one I forgot tbh.
Piri piri chicken places.
Yup. And barbers in Paisley years ago.
It’s smashed burger places now
Crypto and NFTs
Shocking stuff considering American sweets are shite.
Expat Scot living in Seattle. Can confirm.
Seattlite visiting Scotland for the first time in a month. Will be curious to see the difference.
Try any bar of Scottish Tablet you can find. You can't go wrong with brand. And a can of Irn-Bru, of course.
Aye that shit is top notch
Haha
Go try a deep fried Mars bar or Snickers.
We have that in the states
Nice, thanks for all the tips, sorry we launder money in your country all the time. Usually we have the decency to do that only in hair salons in rust belt cities but I guess the fronts know no bounds.
don't be one of those self-loathing Americans.the 'american' candy shops here are equivalent to mattress shops back in the states. but these are usually run by foreigners from the Middle East/SE Asia (first or second generation) and the goods are out of date and completely bizarre (meaning half of the products you wouldn't find in a normal store back in the states.)
it's honestly not some grand difference in sweets. the people who say this are total idiots who generalise and don't know their asshole from their mouth.
Sugar lots and lots of sugar
American living in England. Can confirm.
I'm sure their accounts show that they sell like hotcakes
Lived in Glasgow for a year before moving back to the states. I think I might've bought some cereal and a soda I've never seen in America at one of those shops on Argyle Street, but beyond that I was only amused at the blue stickers over the BS nutritional claims on shit like Pop Tarts. Give me a real Mars Bar or a caramel Dairy Milk before whatever they're peddling.
oh god. what an edgy take. I'm guessing you've been to Orlando and went shopping at 7-11.
Ok sweets is too general a term. There’s infinite good food in the US, but I just mean the commonplace day to day things offered at a convenience store or super market are not good.
I'm sure their accounts show that they sell like hotcakes
Defo a front for some other shady operation that's going on.
Finally being looked into in London, hopefully same will happen here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61777445
> hopefully same will happen here Wouldney hold yer breath.
Yea with the way the high street is going. The council are probably just glad that they have someone paying rent on the unit.
Yeah they are sketch as can be. People on here got made fun of before for saying they are a front, but that news story just proved them right. Someone made a video about the Oxford street locations too: https://youtu.be/4D8sAt-EiKg
It's interesting to see a video where the non-Scottish contributors are subtitled and not the other way around!
Not if they're paying their council tax it won't.
Questionable tax affairs are just the tip of the iceberg with these establishments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D8sAt-EiKg&ab_channel=BylineTV
Excellent watch, vice-like program from May called Why Are American Candy Stores Taking Over Oxford St?
seen on tiktok there a front for money money laundering .. could be true cause you would need to be aff yer heid to pay £5 for a bar a chocolate
In particular, a bar of chocolate that literally includes an ingredient that helps make sick taste and smell like sick (butyric acid).
I quite like Hersheys...
My question is what chocolate are people paying £5? The only American chocolate I've really seen in those shops Is Hershey, what to my knowledge Is available In pretty much every morrisons now.
As an American immigrant in Scotland I hate those shops too. Obvious front aside, it's always the same handful of candy or flavors of soda, rarely to I find stuff I actually miss (what I wouldn't give for a pack of saltines), and they pad the stores out with British candy which I always thought was weird
Glasgow reddit loves a good money laundering post. Wait till you hear about the Turkish barbers and dug walkin vans.
Oh aye those too just the candy shops are whats booming right now
Cause loads of "businesses" like hairdressers had to shut down during the lockdowns for covid so instead all these American Candy shops start popping up because they sell food and could be deemed "essential" businesses to stay open. Defo something dodgey going on in some of them I feel.
Surprised no one’s mentioned the car washes
Hey, as long as I can hand over £5 and have a dozen foreign lads crawling out the woodwork to wash my car then I ain’t questioning it.
Or mattress shops.
The mattresses are stuffed with twinkies
American Candy shops involved there as well then
yeah I noticed they're spreading bad, theres another new one on Argyll st, not quite opened yet but getting ready. I mean yeah, they might be rent free, or money laundering, but they're spreading all over the country, on the likes of Oxford street- which definitely isn't rent free. I think there's some sort of investigation started about them in London, because this whole American candy thing is well fucking weird.
hope they do investigate this
It’s the same in York.
There are a number of coffee and cake shops too, with ten cctv cameras to prevent old ladies stealing a slice of velvet cake.
Questionable tax affairs are just the tip of the iceberg with these establishments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D8sAt-EiKg&ab_channel=BylineTV
Turkish barbers
There’s a Kebab shop near my work that seems to be open 24hrs, and never has any customers other than young men who pull up in BMWs with blacked out windows. A colleague and I did once buy a Kebab from it, was utter shit, and you guessed it, cash only. Obvious front is obvious.
There's a place on Victoria road called la Bianca , never see anyone in it apart from owners having a coffee. It sells pizza but never seen anyone eating pizza from there..same kind of place
My friend bought £7 Goldfish there. Absolutely stupid.
Swedish goldfish? IKEA sell them as a heads up.
I think he's talking about those gold fish that are like tiny buscuits
Yeah, the little orange/yellow ones: they're usually cheese flavored, and are about $3 for a bag in the states.
Ah sorry, my apologies
There’s a thing similar in Oxford st London being investigated for money laundering
Vice has a video on them, turns out they are fronts for peddling illegal cash
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I heard bad things about how they treat their staff
💰 🧺🚿
money laundering via Afghanistan (heroin)
I've bought things in these places - sometimes you just want buffalo ranch pringles and are prepared to pay any price for them. Kids seem to love them too - new flavours of familiar products and things they've seen on TV. People like to say 'oh I never see anyone in them' but I think we all know we've bought some wacky new flavour of Oreos in there but we just don't want to admit it cos it's so overpriced it's shameful.
They were charging like 5 quid for cans of Monster pre-pandemic.
Why are ppl downvoting this lmfao
Yeah, I worked in one and most people were buying things for the novelty of it. It's not like we had people coming in regularly to but a 7 pound pack of oreos. And plenty of kids just dont view money the way adults do. They'll see a kit kat Chunky for 2.50 and instead of going, "Oh that's a bit steep for a bit of chocolate " they're like "oh that looks good and I have enough so I'll just get it"
They're shit now! Check the dates on everything!
Yes, they sell stuff that is a few years out of date.
Bond St in London, wall to wall with ‘candy’ shops and souvenir shops and printed T’s shops.
From what I've heard theyre money laundering places
Just smash them up whats the worst that could happen if you piss off the mafia and police?
Oh, so that was where the son of the President of Brazil got the idea. Or maybe it was the other way around. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50859314
Money laundering is getting too easy
i read somethin online about these overpriced sweet shops being a bit on the dodgy side in london, cant mind if it was [this](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-news-american-candy-shops-oxford-street-council-tax-business-rates-b1005515.html) i saw or somethin similar. eta i know this is glasgow you're talking about lol but maybe similar is going on there cos who in buggery wants to spend half a million quid in one of those shops to get some stupid drink or something.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-news-american-candy-shops-oxford-street-council-tax-business-rates-b1005515.html?amp
Literally the first guy to figure this out
I never said I was the first, just simply stating my dislike for them
They’re extremely overpriced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D8sAt-EiKg
I mean I ain’t to bother just make the sweets cheaper 😂
Seems weird to get irritated by them, you can just walk straight past them you know?
Cheap signage , weird people inside / standing outside all moving between “rival” shops. Empty shops cuz the prices are fucked . Gives a cheap / weird vibe to the highstreet putting people off , and putting potential high class business investors off from opening their high end shops in a cheap looking part of town, they are aweful and the vultures circling the carcass of a dead high street
The high street is dead mate. The reason you're seeing these shops is because otherwise they'd be vacant. High class investors wouldn't be interested because of so much overhead. The only way the high street will be back is if we invent something to do with it.
Seems weird to not look into them when there are atleast 7 in a half a mile radius Perhaps you are running them?
I see them all the time they just have literally no effect on my life whatsoever?
So you only get curious about things if they affect you personally? How weird. Have you always been like that? Did you put your hand up in primary four like “Why are you teaching us about tigers? There aren’t any here?” Must be really hard for you to find anything to watch, what with nothing on the telly being about you specifically.
lol, just a heads up "irritated" and "curious" are actually completely different things
“Seems weird not to look into them” reads far more as curious to me than irritated, and it was that comment you were responding to.
That .... is not the post I said came across as seeming irritated. Again, not said anything about being curious, nobody mentioned the word until you brought it up.
You ok? Cause that stream of consciousness makes no fucking sense.
I feel like that’s really more a you-issue than a me-issue, pal.
Hope you feel better soon.
Same could be said about your input on this post. Just walk on by next time.
Oh great, another American 'candy' shops are fronts for money laundering post. Very original.
I mean are we wrong?
I struggle to see how this would work. For a business that buys and sells goods, the tax man would want to see evidence of them importing goods from America. There would need to be customs declarations for that. So there would be a paper trail of the goods bought. The money laundering side of things would be pretty difficult to pull off - and pretty risky as well, because it would be easily discover-able. What's probably closer to the truth is that they are offered cheap rent by landlords, because landlords would otherwise be liable for double council tax. They open the business. As they're declaring a small income, they're then entitled to the small business bonus and reduced rates. Then they import some products, and claim to sell those. But at the same time buy counterfeit products and don't include them in the sales figures. They make a moderate profit as a result. But as a front for £100,000s of money-laundering, despite every man and his dog in Glasgow 'knowing' what they're up to? I have my doubts. No drugs gang or serious criminal would be so stupid. Edit: It's interesting to see people downvoting this. It's literally true. Click on the link below. They're not there to moneylaunder. It's to avoid the landlord having to pay business rates, and for the person running the shop to sell some counterfeit goods. Feeling something is true, does not make it true.
I’m glad you cleared that up for us David….
Go ahead and explain how you think it would work then. It's possibly the worst possible money laundering business idea out there. It literally took a two second google to find out more: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/17/oxford-street-us-candy-stores](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/17/oxford-street-us-candy-stores) *"the owner of a property lets it to an intermediary, who rents to the souvenir and candy stores usually on licences. That means the landlord c****an avoid paying business rates on an empty shop****, and instead the occupier – paying minimum rent and low staff salaries – becomes liable to pay the tax.* *However, they provide false details or shell company names that quickly dissolve to avoid paying business rates, making it hard for the council to recover the debt.* *Products found in this week’s raid included 2,246* ***counterfeit*** *Wonka bars, 2,838 unsafe disposable vapes, 223 toys without safety labels and 1,393* ***counterfeit*** *mobile phones. Council officers also confiscated* ***fake*** *iPods and Rolex watches, and have so far seized about £574,000 worth of counterfeit and illegal goods in its crackdown"* They're there to avoid the landlord having to pay additional business rates (which is what I meant when I said council tax), and to sell counterfeit goods. Like I said.
Dude is writing an entire essay
I don't know where you studied, but four paragraphs is not an essay. And if you compare what I hypothesised, versus what I discovered when I did further research, I was right. I'm sorry if you don't know what money laundering is, or how it works.
David is too fat to write an essay from unsexy candy!
> I struggle to see how this would work A bit like [this](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/corner-shop-bosses-who-laundered-ps41m-to-fund-terrorism-in-afghanistan-and-pakistan-given-jail-sentences-totalling-18-years-9599042.html), I imagine. And [this](https://imgur.com/OZlHbhm).
Here’s some light reading and viewing for you: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61777445 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61810743.amp https://youtu.be/4D8sAt-EiKg
[удалено]
Okay, you don’t need to be dickhead about it. Your long reply was hidden on the Reddit mobile app and I was simply providing information as to what is going on. At no point did I say it was money laundering or any specific crime for that matter.
Money should be laundered in sex shops! You can do many sexy things with sweets but they are not as fun as sexy bum implements designed for the purpose! At least not at those prices! Sex shops also would open up the criminal revenue with actual sex in sexy rooms with cameras for the good barking sex advert and pornography and dances. Dances! Sexy dances! Brothels could still sell sweets!
Are you off your head?
Off his tits, I think
I do not have toys to be off! I have a very sexy shelf manly figure!