I usually assume these always closed places to be money laundering joints. Ie, make a fake eatery and sit at home and ring up $5,000 in drug cash sales per day, then deposit and keep receipts for any IRS review. Has anyone ever seen the Caribbean Cafe in Petworth open?

Pennywise,
Not many of these drug dealers are making anywhere near 5K a week. Let alone a day. This isn’t the Wire.

Smells like insurance fraud to me.

I recall a story where a guy had been a drug dealer for many many years, lived however he lived, and drove a beat up hooptie w/ temp tags. When arrested they confiscated $11,000 from him and he complained in the newspaper that without access to his money he couldn’t hire an attorney. The article was the first time I learned that street dealers didn’t make much profit- there were cops to pay off and lookouts and muscle to pay. The guy was dropping $50 on McDonalds every day.

At the time I was making like $25k per year and had saved like $4000 of it.

Pennywise – you mean Island Cafe?

Can you say “DRUG FRONT?”