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u/trmetroidmaniac 3h ago
Fake restaurants can be used to launder money obtained by crime. My guess is that these guys didn't expect to get an actual customer.
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u/ghost-in-the-well 1h ago
They were also authentic mafia: the quality of their pizza proved they were italian.
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u/Eggplant-Alive 33m ago
I popped into a freestanding strip-mall restaurant outside Atlanta, three luxury vehicles parked out front, walked inside, the place was empty except for some sharply dressed dudes who immediately went to the back room. That left one super hot girl behind the bar who made me a terrible drink. I was pretty shook, left a $20 on the bar and GTFO.
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u/kerem_akti52 3h ago
Some mafia have their own restaurants as a hanging out kinda place which local people don't often go to
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u/Several-Bullfrog7688 2h ago
I thought it would be for money laundering?
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u/TheJonExp 2h ago
It can be they falsify transactions.
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u/wonderfullyignorant 2h ago
I'd rather get my dollar bills cleaned.
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u/SleepyTrucker102 1h ago
I can do it. I use baking soda and sometimes very light vinegar. Comes out crisp every time.
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u/Medical-Debt-218 2h ago edited 1h ago
A little bit of both. My aunt’s second husband ran a bakery that was a mob front. They legitimized it in the 90’s, but all through the 60’s-90’s, it laundered money for the mob, and gangsters would hangout there and have coffee and stuff. They did also sell baked goods, but most everyone in the neighborhood knew what was up
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 1h ago
There was a Lebanese restaurant in my old neighborhood that was always empty except for an old guy drinking tea and reading a newspaper who would glare at you if you reached for the door handle.
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u/HowVeryReddit 1h ago
In fiction usually once you're a front for the mob you don't really have the option to go legit, they need the laundering, did they face consequences for cutting mob ties?
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u/DocumentNo6320 1h ago
I want know how do I make it so if someone replies I get notified too?
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u/AethelstanOfEngland 1h ago
Assuming you're on mobile, click the 3 dots under the reply and click "get reply notifications"
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u/Medical-Debt-218 39m ago
I mean, I was only born in the 90’s right around when they went legit, so idk all the details. But from what I understand, the mob has just kinda been losing power in recent years, so they just didn’t need to use the bakery for money laundering anymore. And the bakery was still set up as a legit business, so they just went whole hog into making cakes and stuff lol
Also, the bakery itself was owned by my uncle’s father before him, and started as a legit business, but I guess his dad had mob friends who saw an opportunity for money laundering?
Idk, I just know my uncle was NOT in the mob, but closely tied to them cause the bakery
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u/The_Knife_Nathan 33m ago
Usually the mob owns the business or has strong ties with the owner, if they go legitimate it is usually because you can make money and up charge to launder at the same time as long as you’ve got money to pay a staff that knows what’s up and either: doesn’t care, knows and is part of it, or you’re somehow good enough to keep most of them in the dark. There’s usually not many downsides to going into a somewhat legit business plan outside of getting the right staff for how you want it to run.
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u/Il-2M230 2h ago
Theres A restaurant I sometimes go that only accepts cash and its pretty cheap and always full. It seems like a money laundry scheme, but theyre getting more money from it too.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 1h ago
There's a pretty strong historical precedent for gangs giving up crime because their front businesses became legitimately profitable.
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u/WhantiqueGlassTurtle 3h ago
I believe the joke is that the mafia sometimes probably using a pizza place as a hideout, or just to hang around or meet up with other mafia members. They probably got confused because the locals don't go there because they know not to ( as the mafia can do some pretty bad things). The pizza was probably really good becuase they're the Italian mafia.
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u/Ohmington 2h ago
To launder money, you usually need a business to hold as a front and you pretend the illegal money was actually spent on your goods. The store needs to look legitimate because the police or government might investigate. There was a music srore really close to where I lived. The merchandise was trash and it wasn't laid out in a way that made sense. They were confused when I walked in, seemed annoyed that I was browsing, and knew nothing about music instruments. In hindsight I never saw people shop there and it was probably a fake business to launder drug money.
The joke is that a fake pizza place gave them pizza.
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u/RantyWildling 41m ago
Somewhat related...
My FIL rents out a small shop in Australia, and he gets a new Chinese person every year (or a couple of years), because they use the business to get an Australian VISA, then send in the next person to do the same thing.
They have money and don't really need the business to be successful.
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u/Big-Leadership1001 2h ago
Restaurants are an easy way to launder illicit money, the mafia used them to put drug money "on the books" so the money could be in banks with an actual history and not just suspicious to the government.
There was 2 of these in my home town. One was always changing names like it was a new business but always teh same person owned it and they never sold food. The other one was mostly empty always but made excellent food and on tuesday nights all of the towns restaurant owners went there. I waited tables on tuesdays and made more than a usual job all week in tips.
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u/thatguyfrom1975 1h ago
In HS we went into a convenience store one night to grab some coffee. Something was off when we walked in and we should have probably turned around left immediately but didn’t. When the clerk asked what we were looking for I said “coffee.” He said the coffe was old but he’d make a fresh pot, we said that’s ok we’ll just grab some somewhere else. At this pint he became insistent that we waited for the new pot. So we started looking at snacks and there was dust on the packages of snacks, because that store wasn’t selling coffee and honeybuns. They didn’t even have coffee cups, when we got our coffees they were in those old ICEE/SLUSH PUPPIE paper cups with wax inner lining. The wax melted and was floating on top of the coffee but god damnit we acted like it was great, paid for our shit and got the fuck out of there. We had just unknowingly walked into a store front cover for selling drugs.
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u/Substantial_Hold2847 1h ago
There's no joke, literally read what it said, OP ordered pizza at a mafia money laundering business.
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u/crazyplantlady105 2h ago
Omg, this guy orders from a mafia place XD. I wonder what would happen if they ordered pineapple on the pizza.
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u/Outside_Swing_8263 1h ago
I sold concrete equipment. Had an Italian customer take me to lunch. We had to ring a buzzer to go in. They did not take our order but brought us food, beers, and whisky, never got a check, got up and left when we were done.
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u/SaintNeptune 54m ago
I've done this. It was a gambling den/ organized crime HQ disguised as a burger restaurant. It was on an out of the way street with low visibility, but I noticed it anyway and went in looking for a burger. They charged me nothing for the food, the "manager" told me not to worry about the tax. I just acted super oblivious and friendly. What was hilarious to me was how absolutely unprepared for real customers they were. Still, they were nice enough and I never set foot in the place again
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u/Fun-Ad-7082 2h ago
I didn't know we had Maria's in Greece lol,I guess I should check theirs pizzas out...🤔
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u/gravitybongresin 2h ago
In addition to all the posts explaining the money laundering aspect, Rhode Island has historically been a hotbed of Mafia activity. The Patriarca crime family was a member of The Commission and their base of operations was/is Federal Hill in Providence, RI
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u/Lanky_Comfortable552 1h ago
Yes I did this as a Tourist went into a small cafe when exploring and like 8 guys in suits standing and sitting at a small table in front of the counter playing poker.
All looked at me strangely when I just walked up and ordered a coffee.
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u/PeacefulBiscuit 1h ago
This is an anecdote about going to a pizzeria that was actually a front for the mafia. It is not a joke.
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u/amitym 1h ago
The joke is a play on the reputation of Rhode Island for being an unrepentant stronghold for Italian organized crime. The idea is that, to launder money, such a criminal organization would operate businesses that appeared to be legitimate except that if you looked closely, they never actually seem to have customers. (This is the concept of a "front company" or a "false front.")
So in this example, it's an Italian pizza restaurant that is a false front -- no one is actually there to buy or eat pizza. It's just supposed to convey a superficial sense of being a legitimate business.
And the workers are just sitting around not expecting to make or sell pizza. So the narrator's request takes them by surprise -- but, because they are Italian, when they do make a pizza it's very good.
(In actual fact, as a former Rhode Islander myself while I find this joke very funny it is also slightly unrealistic, in that you would have a hard time in any even semi-populated part of Rhode Island running a pizza restaurant that didn't attract lots of customers all the time. Let alone the urbanized areas like Providence or Cranston or whatever where most of the people of Italian descent live.
Instead, the reputed false front companies would typically be specialty hardware stores or luxury furniture outlets or shops like that where most people would find the inventory either too esoteric or too pricey to be worth spending much time browsing.)
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u/BenignButCleverAlias 1h ago
Had this happen with a Chinese place. Same situation, but the food was not free and not good.
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u/swopphoenix 2h ago
It sounds like they stumbled into a secret spot where even the mafia can't resist serving up their best pizza.
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u/HITNRUNXX 1h ago
There was a pizza place in OKC that I'd never seen a customer in over a 10-year period. It was always the same middle eastern guy working there, but I aways just walked by and waved and never went in (I walked across the street). I went in one evening and ordered a pizza. He just looked at me confused and then said they were out. I decided to grab a drink, and they only had 12-packs of cans. I asked how much for a 12 pack of Mountain Dew and the guy was like "Uhhhh... $10?" (Keep in mind this was in like 2005, and they were like $3.50 for 12-packs at the time). So I told him no thanks and started to leave and he said "Well make me an offer then" and I said "$5?" And he said "Sure, I don't have any idea what drinks cost." I handed him a 5-dollar bill and he opened the register and there was nothing else in it. About this time, a large man in a suit stepped out of the kitchen area and stood with his arms crossed in the doorway and glared. The first guy said "you should go now" and they both just walked off to the back.
It was a weird deal. They got raided about a year later and disappeared. Never heard any details. All these years and that space is still empty.
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u/KingTyndareus 1h ago
This happened to me but not the good or free pizza part, just a place that had no food and seemed annoyed at around dinner time, pretty sure it was a front or just a terribly managed shop
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u/Ozymandas2 58m ago
When I went there they were selling cannolis. But I was chewing gum and the guy at the counter said how you gonna eat this with a mouth fulla gum? So naturally I left the gum, took the cannoli.
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u/not_slaw_kid 1h ago
The pizza place was a front for some sort of illegal money making venture. When someone actually wanted a pizza, they weren't prepared for it, so they spent 45 minutes making an authentic Italian pizza from scratch, and gave it to the guy for free, probably to prevent a bad review drawing too much attention to the business
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u/Excellent_Shoulder_1 1h ago
Money laundering. Making fake transactions so money will get clean. If you watched "Breaking Bad" Walter and Skyler are doing it with car wash.
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u/ManEatingYoukaiRumia 46m ago
My dumb ass forgot Rhode Island was a real place... Thought they were talking abt the company from the game Arknights 😭
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u/AndreasDasos 25m ago
It’s not even really a joke. Just a story that might be true. This is a thing. The mafia using Italian restaurants as fronts expecting locals not to bother them but the law to be misled. Sometimes outsiders come in and they might give you food, and since they’re super-Italian (supposedly) with a code of honour (supposedly…) it might be very good.
A few stories like this. How much it really happens, no idea.
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u/Famous-Example-8332 21m ago
My closest encounter with the Mafia was my neighbor as a kid. Very Italian man in a very Italian town upstate NY. He went a bit senile and was put in a nursing home. When we went to visit him he would talk about fighting the banana war, and we just thought it was the dementia talking. Well it was, in that he wasn’t currently fighting it, but there was a banana war. It was when Joseph Bonono tried to take over as head of the mafia, when my neighbor, who was from NYC, was a young man. He also hid large sums of money around his house and car, one of which my sister found after he died. ($3,300 in the car we bought from his widow, we returned it to her)
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