Why Shady American Candy Stores are Taking Over the UK 

The UK is really really run down.

How can they launder money? The rent on those buildings must be astronomical and they NEVER sell anything!

@@LambsyLamb I don't know how that works, but it's well known for funding Afghanistan terror units. Same as the drugs in Birmingham.

More than money launder they are trafficking persons too !

@@charlottefactteller2519 Money laundering is all over the world. But the thing is, in London it is totally in the open. Even people on the streets know what happens there with these businesses. It seems the government and the police gave up with the UK.

any tax revenue withheld should be investigated

@@molybdomancer195 I agree, but I also believe we need to focus on the big fish first and foremost

@@GreenLarsen Well given that it's the big fish who are investigating it, I don't think there is much chance of that.

Your right there,

And we bail the criminal enterprises out

He did edit in additional commentary from him a bit later. I mean, the guy is walking down the street, gets ambushed by a reporter, asked some inane questions, and then they edit in a few seconds. Yet the tourist is the idiot here?

Really some hard hitting “journalism” 😆

for real what feedback would you even expect?

@@gravityissues5210 i didn't take it as the tourist was the idiot, i mean what other valuable insight would they expect upon asking a random American tourist about a store filled with American candy?

🤣🤣 agreed

Almost doesn't matter. It seems like since the "pandemic" because of supply chain shortages everything being made as far as clothes is basic stuff. As in no fancy material being used and that sort of thing.

Bond Street?

Oxford St was ruined many years ago to be fair.

But do they pay tax???

@@mogznwaz They don't.

Guess where their accountants are?

@@justjacqueline2004 where?

@@Moshimulations Of course they pay tax lol. That’s the whole point of a business front/Laundromat. To pay tax on criminally acquired money so they can buy legal assets. False receipts and invoices for sales that never happen etc. the dirty cash goes through the till and into the bank.

You've just summed up the overall problem with the British media

It's probably because they aren't jaded and tired enough to realise it's a waste of time questioning anything certain "minorities" get up to. No one in authority is willing stick their head above the parapet knowing they will be made an example of...

young people are not stupid just raised around bullshit

​@@capturedflame The problem with Britian is self hating Brits, like yourself.

Dave, money laundering is a British institution par excellence. Now you probably do not know many small islands/nations were created after the centuries long holocaust that black people endured ( slavery ) specifically to transfer and conceal cash. I have no idea why you are one bit surprised.

@@PHlophe Dave Mitchell, 2 days ago " we should not be surprised,..". I'm surprised you couldn't read that...

The UK is itself a tax haven and money laundering centre. Most has come through the London Property market. They are just branching out with more criminality from lower down the food chain. Meanwhile someone is getting paid to continue to turn a blind eye.

Suprised no ,pissed off yes.

Well said pal.its the british way to launder money and evade taxes lol.

Omg I was just about to comment that! They sell Cheetos for like 11€

Same in Sydney, Australia

That's just real prices in canada

@unknown In Cologne as well...mostly Chinese. The streets in the High Str. have been taken over by shit-selling Chinese shops.

I mean.. I was a frequent customer at 2 or 3 stores like these in Poland. Very expensive from import costs. I missed certain junk food that just wasn't available. Mainly mac n cheese and jelly beats. But could easily spend 100 euros on just junk food from 1 visit. Im sure there's a lot of american expats going for these candy stores

Your mate sounds like a typical bullshit talker tbh

Yep. It’s basically a free for all and the vast majority of British people are too naive to understand the exploitation.

@@crabapples1995and the council's dont care because they are getting rent

What have you done to make sure authorities know?

@@DafyddBrooks Nothing at all. Why because sadly they don't want to know. The local Police seem to be intimidated by the accusation of racism and also the local council is predominantly run by people who come the country as my friend. Either way you can't win.

*its

No no no, "rules for thee - not for me". If you're not born into their circles, you can get f***ed.

The Del Boy Trotter & Arthur Daley approach.

lets see how labour council deals with it

Except it's not our populace is it?

I steal from them regularly, they don’t seem to care at all

@@StoutProper 😅🤣😂🤜🏻🤛🏻

@@StoutProper No wonder you steal from them, @ nearly £20 for a candy bar, is a total rip-off. Yeah these places are all right, yeah if one has money to burn. These Establishments do not surprise me, in the nobody zone as CM calls it, in a song called "Missing You" Laters Guinnes. The best pint of Guinness I've ever tasted, is in Dublin. :-) :-)

@@bjtt9841 yeah the Guineas in Ireland is different gravy. I don’t think they care if you steal from them, they’re definitely not there to sell the sweets, you can literally walk in help yourself and just walk out. They probably ring it through as a sale and wash the cash

@@StoutProper You are damn tooting Guinness, it's certainly a money laundering set up. & Yeah, the pints of Guinness in Ireland, are different class. One needs a calculator to keep tabs, on how many pints one has consumed, superb, & loads of Iron as well, yum-yum. Anyway Guinness, I bid you pleasant times ahead, & enjoy, & good luck, sincerely, BJTT. :-) :-)

loada dross

Dumbing down is common place.

Cry me a river

As much as I like HMV it was a victim to change in technology. Can't really blame anyone for that. 🤣 The problem for HMV is that it didn't innovate or adapt and evolve.

@@MrPiccolop I agree. It was possible to have great conversations with in-store specialists on music and films,and make new discoveries.

They sell heroine an legal high even magic machroms

As said, Heroin money

@@asgdhgsfhrfgfd1170 A lot of that real estate is part of the Crown Estate's portfolio. It's rarely put on the market so I suspect it's just that the rents, although high, are miniscule compared to the profits they are making. You could put 10,000 pounds in the till in one day and have paid the rent for a month. The merchandise just gets reused, so there is no restocking. You could be right in some cases though.

Big brother UK government sure seems incompetent. But they'll come to your house and arrest you over a mean tweet or no covid mask. What a joke.

@@jimmyjung9510 I don’t think you’re aware of how much rents are for prime Oxford street retail space. Upwards of 60k a month.

Spot on!

The other problem is if you removed these shops what would you have in their place (boarded up, charity shops)?

@@stevehill4615 No, rents would continue to fall until they were affordable, or they would be converted into residential units (there is a massive scarcity of residential property in London now). Just as online retail posed a huge threat to commercial landlords, conveniently these money laundering operations have come into to fill the void and pump rents back up.

Yep. Dodgy as

It’s priced high on purpose so they don’t have to provide a legit receipt since no one would buy it

@@caio5987 It's not just that, the prices vary wildly

@@caio5987 Exactly that! The stock isn't for sale, it's there to be written off and claimed back... I bet their sale receipts would not match actual sales... there was a chip shop near my house in North London that only used cash.... and I every time I bought something, it always got put through the till as 1p....

@@I_am_Spartacus That's if they are just avoiding tax. For money laundering, they exaggerate the till receipts and bank the dodgy cash brought in. It might get taxed but it now appears legit.

damn so they are pushing boof carts over there too?! goddamn... Please don't smoke those from some rando, my British homies. We had a big problem with those over here in the US. You are fr better off smoking the shittiest ditch weed you could find, vs that, like 99% of the time. Unless you know the source/manufacturer, don't even consider smoking a grey/black market cart. ESPECIALLY if they try to show you 'how thick it is' as if that is a measure of quality (i.e. "look how slow the bubble moves when I turn it over", etc).

One of my flatmates from uni student halls used to buy his weed from an american candy store in Camden... he said that most of them do if you just "ask the right way". Its actually quite a genious way to openly advertise that they sell drugs, almost like a chain.

@@crymp2057 All of those American stores don't actually sell thc, it's k2 spice which is 20 times worse than actually weed. I had a mate that got hooked on it, really not good stuff. That's the reason why they are able to get away with it, the chemical compound within spice is not thc and therefore is technically legal, despite it being physically addicting. Furthermore, the 50mg found in vape shops in Camden/ American candy shops is not actual nicotine, literally burns your throat. In general, just stay away from anything they sell

@@sirflexall0t56 Im seeing Delta 9 everywhere in the U.S. now

That's interesting. I suspect though that the guy just had a side hustle selling weed in the shop, when the main purpose of the place is as part of a money laundering operation. I imagine his boss wouldn't be too pleased if he found out.

Is that not the governments fault that these “genuine useful companies” can’t afford to let those properties ?

You're mad at the wrong people

I wouldn't say its the governments fault per say, although they don't help. Of course these kinds of prestigious locations with some of the highest footfall will demand high prices, it's just got to the point that even decent businesses struggle to pay all their overheads and make some profit, then we have these junk sweet shops that look colourful but don't really add much to the area. I don't get it 🤷‍♂️ but oh well

If they're paying the rent who cares? This is just capitalism all money is dirty do people even know how the UK became rich in the first place? This is such a non issue it's ridiculous

​@@jacksevert3099 yeah bro corruption and illegal shit is fine why are you complaining about what goes on in your society. you're either braindead or a shill

Londongrad or Londonstan or something similar.

Roddy, same with greece and Cyprus , money is invested there, the local politics pocket huge commissions and refuse to send auditors to interrogate provenance of the influx of cash. The Uk enjoys cash from dictators from across the globe no questions asked. huge interest generated is repurposed in a tax havens. and some of it is to buy arms which are then resold.

You also get a free passport to stay. Bringing 32 of your close relatives.

Are you sure about this? I am sceptical of your claim.

Its quite pricey to import

I remember those days.

Oxford Street is massively overrated......in fact it's a disgrace tbh. The entire street needs a total rethink, not just in terms of banning all the diesel belching vehicles, but ridding it of 'tat' aswell. It's supposed to be Britain's premier shopping street, but lacks the class and glamour of Regent Street, or the regal splendour of Edinburgh's Princes Street. Oxford Street is just so shabby, has no style, and is trapped in the past quite frankly. Now that Westminster has a Labour council, perhaps they will do something to address all the things I mention above.......oh, and be 'cycle friendly' too - something that Conservative controlled Westminster Council were notorious for not being. Just ask the London Cycling Campaign (LCC).

Oxford St is now a sad mess , not the place I remember growing up when going there was a wonderful experience. Today it looks run down and has lost its lustre…….

I'm more sad for Tottenham Court Road than Oxford Street, which used to be the electronics road like Akihabara of Tokyo, nowadays it's just another street in Central London.

Went to hmv and virgin in Glasgow in the 80s looked forward tae it every week mad days 🥺🤣💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This is just more evidence that society and the economy is turning to sh1t. I imagine that Oxford street was quite a magical place in the 80's and 90's compared to now.

@@marks-0-0 If they're paying the rent who cares? This is just capitalism all money is dirty do people even know how the UK became rich in the first place? This is such a non issue it's ridiculous

@@marks-0-0 I wouldn't say magical. But certainly before the internet and apps the only place you could make a big impression with Londoners were on the sides of buses and on Oxford Street. A lot of money went into having the biggest, flashiest store fronts.

Heralding lawlessness just because some in the distant past got rich through nefarious means is absurd.

@@nancyvandermeer4480 "stealing money" how are these shop owners stealing money when they legally renting the space? they are working! they are just laundering the money like British Banks do for the Drug Cartels and Oligarchs. It's the same shit different level don't get mad get glad! London was built on this shit!

there are so many in york!!! it's so sad to see our highstreets become this way

is london tat a mispelling ?? is york no longer a touristy town, i have good memories of york,

@@landz2228 sadly not a mispell, a large portion of highstreets are now I

@@landz2228 No it's not. It's officially titled "The London Shop" or something like that, the exact same "franchise" you see on every street in London. Selling nothing but big ben statuettes and London magnets etc.

via an investment visa?

I would add any business that doesn't accept cards. :/

i had a friend in high school who had a part time job at a music box store. he said no one ever bought anything there and the owner didn't seem bothered when they came to visit the store. didn't mind if he took long lunch breaks either. i remember my friend said he thought it was a front and i didn't know what he meant by that :-)

Also use expensive lawyers and accountants.Although the real accountants and lawyers are often on low key shopping centres with tiny little name plates .Its really fascinating, obviously the real accountancy goes on here with the big name presented with clear paperwork and a fat fee. problems arise when the big name accountants try to take the client out for lunch!

Actually not true most shops like tanning salons and beauty parlours do OK it's these whatever the stans that are defrauding the taxman and reclaim non existent vat etc.

Not necessarily, have you sat outside those shops all days and at all times and no exactly what is going on inside? I own a small takeaway, and we mainly do deliveries. If anyone was to glance at the shop from outside they’d think we’re always dead as there’s hardly any customers ever inside (although we actually do get quite a bit of collection customers, enough to survive off even, but they’re spread throughout the day so there’s no que’s ever) but we do a lot of deliveries, we turn over 5 figures a week. But you wouldn’t know just by looking at the shop from outside. Yes it could be the case that people use shops for money laundering, but it’s not always the case. And another thing people confuse money laundering and tax evasion, people who money launder are not trying to evade tax, they’re actually trying to pay tax in order to legitimise their illicit money lol

😾🥲 it's a real shame 😔

Even if you don’t care about the company and their products its sad, that’s what intelligent anti war Russians say about McDonalds leaving Russia and selling of almost 1000 restaurants. Big change and not for the better! 😢

Some of them fancy shops you see with like one shoe on display in the window and not really selling much is normally owned by a wife of a rich business man to give her something to do.

Not only live but the UK does not care that this is in fact blood money.

Just how prolific do you think this problem is...?

If they're paying the rent who cares? This is just capitalism all money is dirty do people even know how the UK became rich in the first place? This is such a non issue it's ridiculous

@@billjefferson3092 It's waycist to be mean to about the brown people blood money

People in the UK are more concerned about the bloke across the road claiming disability benefits while loading fishing gear or golf clubs into a car he got on mobility than they were about the Panama papers.

Good point; I see these barber shops everywhere now in the Home Counties. They are always staffed by Turkish guys.

Yeah, Sauchiehall Street is really bad for them, open for a while, close down for two weeks, reopen two units down and repeat - I did read something about if your business closes within 18 months you don't need to pay some sort of tax.

@@HostageK1ll3rHD Not aware of that, the liability to tax is not extinguished.

Most of these so called American Candy 🍬 shop's are just a front... Behind most of them it's pure drug Dealing.... I personally knew someone who Had a candy 🍬 shop which was Empty most of the time and when I asked him he blatenly told me it's Just a front!!!

@@Shahzadkhan-dm3cv Just about every Eastern European food shop in Grimsby sells cheap cigarettes. Some are smuggled in and some are dodgy but when they get raided there are literally hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of them. As soon as one is raided people go to the next one and so it continues.

@@Shahzadkhan-dm3cv what gear are they shifting ¿?

I know where you mean. There are a couple now and they’re hideous, not least because they’re tacky looking places but mostly because they’re clearly a front for nefarious business.

@@rachaelgraceblack So very true Rachael, and at least we now know that our suspicions were spot on.

It's the same stock they've had since day 1. But the accounts will show large purchances of new stock and large customer purchases of candy (always in cash).

Stupid thing is they could run those businesses properly and make money legitimately

​@@mogznwaz yes but that would take a lot of effort for a relatively small return. This way is much easier and very profitable and almost zero effort as no customers or stocks to restock.

Ah but you have to be able to prove it.

Probably linked to Tory party mate, what illegal shit isn't?

same in liverpool. example we had a large H&M store on church street which relocated further up the street and now it’s a american candy shop it’s always empty how the hell can they afford the rent on this prime location on church street 🤣

Who are the people behind the stores? How much money are they declaring as profit?

Are they likely laundering, then?

It won't surprise you to hear that it is most likely for fencing stolen mobile phones and drug trafficking.

Small shops don’t need to pay business rates and barbers don’t need to hold stock. You have three chairs but only one in use.

@@Dazreil - very small shops in poor areas maybe, but it's a small number.

With the amount of 'Turkish' barbers in the UK I wonder how the Turks at home get a haircut.

@@theolderigetthewrongbitget4746 Its a style and method of cutting etc

With absolutely nobody in them and not one English worker makes zero sense

Always get my Souveniers from Shepherds Bush Market, cheaper and the stalls are run by locals

HMRC is owned by the NSA & GCHQ US national Security

Came back tae the toon a few years ago , nearly gret when ah seen the high st , wi the imagine shops . And the only guy in the street for a while was a busker playing the same 4 bars over and over . Gled ah wiz exiled noo .

Aye it's sad to see the state of the town when you consider how busy it used to be. I've walked though Paisley at times and it is deserted.

Coatbridge exact same barbers and nail bars always empty 🥺💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@@laurencesmith2199 exiled 😅👍🏻💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@@ianmclaughlin4043 Fur lack o commitment to the swally , ah wiz always a lightweight . They flung me o'er Hadrian's wa' , and hauf the toon came , to reassure the other hauf it happened .

What they need is an HMRC compliance unit to swoop on them

Money laundering is already illegal.

Tell us more!

Lol

Same around here. Afghan takeaway shops and barbers everywhere. One shop got busted for a cannabis grow. That's what the money is coming from - illegal drugs.

What don’t add up is why England and America went to there land and raped and pillaged there people and the spike in opium in USA after the war

That's what turns me off , Byline.

A vacant shop in Oxford street would be bad for tourist image, so any shop will do. Lower rate.

Laundered drug and people trafficking money.

i love the sweetcorn place

@@Joseph-os6nl they must've used jedi mind tricks

Police don’t stop crime, that’s a myth.

I can't speak for the reasons for Brexit, but you are entirely correct that the EU were planning to bring in more financial regulations to cut down on tax evasion in various forms. Impossible to tell if it was a factor though, but it is interesting timing.

Angelika, watch a documentary called “ The spiders web” Britain’s second empire, it’s about all the money laundering and explains a lot . A question would be re Brexit whom created the EEC or common market? They have turned everything into a private corporation and that includes us.

The EU hasn’t brought in material new controls in evasion or secrecy, while the UK is doing so.

@@andyhill1268 i second ur recommendation, was a quality vid.

Sorry when you called the UK a tax haven, can you explain what you mean because the UK isn't a tax haven?

@Steve Sherman You're right. I, myself, am not ashamed. It's an idiom.

im from canada and living in europe for over a decade. European candy and snack food tastes like shit. chocolate is the only exception. i'll gladly pay 5euro for a pack of twizzlers that cost 1$ at home. every canadian/american i know takes empty suitcases when they travel home so they can load them up with candy/snacks to come back with..

@@gerrya4818 "i'll gladly pay 5euro for a pack of twizzlers that cost 1$ at home" Genuinely made me chuckle. Thanks, wannabe yank.

As other comments on here attest these dubious shops are found in numerous other countries…

This is what happens when you open the floodgates to foreigners.. Criminals the lot of them.. I'm in a town 25,000 people and we've got four shops like this.. No one ever in them but it well known they're fronts for drugs, fake tobacco and fake branded alcohol and money laundering.. Small town and you can't keep secrets especially when no one ever goes in them... Shut them all down and kick the bastards out of Britain..

As well as being a front (most likely) the business also ''gets sold'' usually within the same family or group and renamed and enjoy a lower tax status as a ''new business'' for another year or so, people having been doing it for years.

cidercik ...............they close down as their visa runs out......should never have been shopkeepers in first place as came as tourists......can earn enough in 1 year to support themselves for a lifetime back home......outcome is they bump landlord off with rent,local council with rates and free electricity...also pay zero tax..........theyre not stupid........all supported by local mosque (who is probably initially bringing them here and giving them interest free loans for start-up.........aim is to bankrupt the west as they love (HATE) us so much.

Even Sainsburys stock some Amercian Lines (more so since Kraft took over Cadbury) And they have high prices. B and M stores have a few lines, and they are much cheaper BUT the Amercian Sugar Content is way high

Maerahn .........home bargains have most of the same sweets these stores are selling and alot lot cheaper.

Tesco has some 'murrican candy

You just steal them, they don't care.

So you are saying that Americans should bring some candy over and sell it to the Brits? :)

They don't even do it well they open shop right next to each other, if you are going to do something do it well at least. Back in the 60's my grandparents owned a small hot dog restaurant in Chicago and they said at the time if the restaurant looked like it was crap but was around for years it was for money laundering. But you never saw like ten of them on the same freaking street.

And the government will never allow anything which threatens demand for commercial property. The most powerful interests in the UK are all invested in both commercial and residential real estate, so rents and asset rises are all but guaranteed. Whenever there is a threat to them, the government takes measures to push them back up again.

the weird thing is, the UK is a good country for candy, american candy is terrible.

@@kanedNunable Yes but not since the Americans bought cadbury.

@@geneytube18 Cadbury has gone down the toilet hasn't it?!! It's very sad. I don't even know where to get good quality milk chocolate any more, perhaps I should just order it directly from Belgium.

Sweets by weight scam

@@The_New_Abnormal_World_Order I still like Cadbury creme egg. I had my last one left over from Easter as I was watching the UK coming second in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Laundromats have a potential weakness - the amount of water and energy they use should amount to the number of washes and the cash taken and so would also be quite easy to investigate. Also, if you are "buying" large amounts of American candy every month, you have a legitimate reason to pay your overseas suppliers. So clean money gets sent out of the country.

@@capitalb5889 good point

Presumably they buy enough stock for the place to look legit and the storeroom is empty. The high prices are to dissuade anybody from buying. Phillip.

@@philliptemple4534 Also, to cover the fact that the till "receipts" are huge. "Sure we made £50k last week, have you seen how expensive this stuff is?"

Are those Scientologists still on the high street? Me and my mum had the displeasure of running into them a few times. They used to be a few of them stopping people on the high street dressed in white and yellow suits and they had a base upstairs from what I think was a restaurant and there was a Christian bookshop on the corner. In Sunderland the Scientologists got into trouble as they were trying to recruit school children on their way to and from school. In Birmingham I also saw evidence of another cult called The Family, who used to be called The Children Of God. But these used far subtler tactics such as leaving religious magazines on the bench near where Scientologists were stopping people on the street. Many cults use this 'let's just leave a pile of our religious books or magazines on this bench' tactic including Jehovahs Witnesses and now Scientologists do it in Sunderland. A lot of these front shops are linked to religious / psycho or political cults. They are also involved in multi level marketing schemes and financial scams. Scientologists have a few business fronts, and both they and The Jehovahs Witnesses have come under fire for harassment, especially the JW who are now busily selling thousands of Kingdom Halls in order to pay for huge legal cases for claims of child abuse and illegal sophisticated spying in Australia. If you ever see those vegan shops be aware that they appear to be linked to new age religious cults and money laundering. These cafés have what's like a library of piles of panthlets and newsletters all preaching 'clean eating', new age healing, far left socialist politics and environmental issues. If you do a Google search on the contact details on this literature you will find that they are all seemed to be linked to the same people and there's a lot of front organisations.

Business rates evasion by landlords too in full knowledge of HMRC because they're well connected.

That would be less palatable than lowering the rents. We are talking about 25% of all the properties on Oxford St being rented out for nothing if your theory held water. Yes, it would make demand look stronger but involve forgoing far too much rental income.

bring it on!!

a lot of smaller shops wont take card payments as they have to pay a small transaction fee to mastercard/visa. its why they if they do, they will charge for it or have a minimum spend. the bigger chain stores will eat the cost.

We have barber shops popping up everywhere. Cash only. 🤔

@@johnnypay I think it’s more to do with tax declarations

That’s what I think when I see watch repair or shoe repair shops in the states

@@robert039 At least those once made sense and squeezed into lower level kiosks in suburban malls. That second shop my buddy mentioned was/is selling over-priced tacky bric-a-brac and NOBODY shops there yet they still exist afaik.

...and mobile phone accessories kiosks, Oriental massage parlours, and nail boutiques.

@@gwynbetts29 In my local suburban mall every kiosk and shop selling mobile/cell phone accessories and services apart from the giant national ones is run by the same guy. I counted at least ten shopfronts and kiosks one day. A staff member at one of the major branded stores clued me in that price shopping among those independents was useless because it was all the same owner with shared staff and resources. Ironic then that horse trading was not being done.

Turkish barbers and tanning shops are the ones to look out for...never anyone in them but somehow they afford the high Town centre rents/business rates

@@mickbitchum4664 Yes, there does seem to be an overabundance of those these days, though, if they are a scam, then rent isn't an issue for them, as they would typically pay rent to a subsidiary company, which, if you can trace it back, is ultimately owned by the same person/group. As for business rates, they simply fold the company, before the end of the financial year, and have new "tenants" (at least the names of any directors and the company secretary will have changed) in on the Monday morning, to continue business as usual. I used to rent a small workshop on an industrial estate, here in Herts, and there were a number of sizeable companies there who pulled exactly this trick, repeatedly. The biggest, and most notorious one, would regularly change the name on the front of the unit, which was an enormous warehouse complex, so it would look like the place had changed hands, but you'd see exactly the same people turning up for work there, and it was usually a name, or acronym that closely resembled the old one. It was honestly that blatant, and it was a standing joke, as everyone on the estate knew what was going on there. Of course, nothing ever got done about it, to my knowledge, though the small businesses there got the exact opposite treatment and were pursued relentlessly for every last penny (the rates department once got a decimal point wrong, and forced my little venture into the ground paying for it, complete with the usual shaven headed thugs, hammering on your front door at the crack of dawn, demanding money), but that's Hertsmere for you. I do wince, every time I go past one of their signs, proudly announcing "Hertfordshire, the County of Opportunity", and mutter "County of incompetence and corruption more like" under my breath.

Turkish barbers and tanning shops are the ones to look out for...never anyone in them but somehow they afford the high Town centre rents/business rates

Many years ago there was a takeaway that set up shop amongst a University campus and where many students lived in a residential street in Cheltenham. It targeted students by selling hotdogs, and sandwiches made in front of you for rock bottom prices. Strangely it used to be open at unusual times such as all day Sunday and into the early hours in the morning. It was open for a few weeks until there was a huge police raid on it late at night. My housemates told me that were police cars surrounding it with armed officers as they were going past it. Also, on the same street just a few metres away there was a newsagents that was never closed, had overpriced stuff and it was the place where one of my friend's boyfriend who worked in a local drugs community scheme said that they had a lot of young women who had reported first getting into drugs via this shop and the men who owned it. Me and my friend witnessed a drugs deal just outside of this shop and one of the owners of the shop was stood with us who watched this deal intently as he pretended to read a newspaper.

Rachel, i think if those were asian shops , everyone would have zoomed in on the inner activities but because the front is american. everyone is cool and calm. with the odd person noticing. and its one thing racism benefits from.

You took the words out of my mouth! Colchester is hella dodgy same for Clacton

@@PHlopheYeah, people find Americans more trustworthy than ‘Asians’. Gonna cry? Ask yourself why that might be… Btw, my sister has stopped going into town because men kept harassing her and even following her, and guess what, they weren’t American men.

What street is that and wats the shop called

@@yusufalii1927 Yusuf Ali’s convenience store.

Exactly! That is one of the concept of money laundering. Buy cheap, sells high with no valid reason. It just doesn’t make sense. One or two store is acceptable but so many same stores at the same area is so dodgy.

You would have to go through a big accountancy firm as well as a big solicitor firm to even get close and then you would be at least two or three tiers away from the real accountants and lawyers never mind the owner.

@@justjacqueline2004 Oh you betcha... 👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

And the "austerity" was caused by the Great Mortgage Scam of 2008.

i take it your a loopy leftie

So true.

I lived in Lisbon and there loads of tourist shops that are expensive, no customers.

They would be more expensive and due to there being no deterrent, unnecessary.

Come to think of it I think that there was a shop in Bridgwater that sold nothing but bottles of pop as well.

Not really,they do pay rates no matter what the councillor says.

@@justjacqueline2004 you ask Ali that?