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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

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Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#341

Post by red-iron-pine »

aqme28 wrote: post #307
jclulow wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is generally to recover cents on the dollar from money you can't otherwise use. Imagine you have a network of people moving illegal drugs. They collect money from their customers, and they need to pay it to you, the supplier. Arrange for them to eat a lot of food at your restaurant. Maybe they shout their friends. The money goes into the restaurant, and is mingled with other money. That money is used to pay…

You don’t need them to eat kebab. Just put on your books that you sold a lot of kebab. Do it in cash. Buy some meat and throw it out if you want, and you’re fine.

they only throw out the meat on the books: mark it as unsellable and deduct it as shrink.

in reality it just goes home w/ the business owner and/or his people -- sometimes the same day as it's bought. drop off a couple kilos of unsold doner kabab meat to his mom who is retired, hand some out to uncle, etc.

it's hard to trace, and hard to ID -- just some random meat in an old lady's freezer, and may have already ended up in a stew or something -- and in theory should have been disposed of (in theory) anyway per health code regulations.

pretty common technique in use, like, everywhere.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#342

Post by eddiewithzato »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #246

Here in Berlin there are an enormous amount of kebab places (thousands). Basically, most places are embedded in neighborhoods and have a crowd of locals that go there. The quality varies wildly as a lot of these places are obviously aimed at the money laundering business (cash only) rather than serving food. Poor hygiene, indifferent service, etc. Many of these places are completely pointless from a business point of…

Pretty sure it’s mostly for tax dodging than money laundering. Less risky too

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#343

Post by ido »

vanderZwan wrote: post #333
ido wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose been living in Berlin for the last 11 years I'm always horrified to read people say they wish the had high quality kebabs "like in Berlin" - the average kebab here is atrocious (obviously optimized for price and not for quality) - the best ones are OK but definitely not amazing. I don't want to find out how bad the kebabs are in Sweden and other places you hear the from like some US cities if you thi…

Well, technically I did say "has best options", not "the kebab quality median is great". I now live in Malmö, which has a much higher number of people from Middle-Eastern countries, so their cuisine is also a lot better than what you can get in Stockholm. However, since I've also become vegetarian in the intervening years I could not tell you what the local quality of the kebab is. Falafel is pretty passable though.…

"Least disappointing experience" is how I would put the better kebab places in Berlin! Shawarma in Tel Aviv is not exactly the same but similar and so much better (of course there's a lot of variability in quality there too, and it costs something like 2-3x as much as kebabs in Berlin).

I'm sure you can also get amazing specimen in Arab countries and in Turkey (I don't have first hand experience there).

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#344

Post by eloisant »

numpad0 wrote: post #292
maeln wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would second this. In Paris, but I find it to be true in most European city, the area surrounding train station is usually not very nice. It is usually surrounded by cheap hotel for 1-night traveler, overpriced fast food (hence the initial theory) and social housing / cheap building (a lot of people don't want to live next to a train station due to the nuisance, so poor people often get stuck there). On the other h…

As a non-Parisian: the hard distinction between "metro" and "train" can be non-obvious, even perplexing, depending on which train systems one is accustomed with. Some systems just don't have it, in manners that if said in Paris terms it might be train to Lyon arriving next to Line 6 Westbound.

There is usually a difference between a "local network" to travel within a metropolitan area and "intercity" train to go from one big city to another.

That is what matters here.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#345

Post by HelloNurse »

lqet wrote: post #243
JmsPae wrote: post #86

Hi there, "OP" here. First off, it's been fun to see this post spread across the interwebs since I first wrote it one caffeine-fueled day just over a week ago (first Menéame, now here) and for the heck of it, I thought I would clarify a few things; This post was (sortof) a meme. Sure, I "understood the assignment" and performed the quick "study" ("analysis" might be more fitting) for the sake of the original post ove…

Why did you include metro stations in your study? The original quote only included train stations. The metro originally largely replaced a tram network, so the metro station density in Paris is higher than for other underground systems. I think it is very hard to find kebap shops in Paris that are not within 500 m of a metro station. This kind of dilutes the significance of your study, because I never really noticed…

Seconded. Train stations are important attractors for some kinds of people and some kinds of eating place, metro stations (particularly relatively small and uniformly distributed ones, as is the case in Paris) are only able to give a restaurant an easily reachable position, only for metro travellers, compared to others in the neighbourhood. Different effects, good for a different study.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#346

Post by thaumasiotes »

jajko wrote: post #276
thaumasiotes wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you gamble tens of thousands in those machines, and you don't care about the losses, you get a reasonable expectation value back out as laundered winnings. Where does the laundering come into it? If the machine pays out in cash and you just walk away with it, you've gone from having a big pile of dirty money to having a slightly smaller pile of dirty money. You could declare that the smaller pile is all gambling…

You are overthinking all this. This is not Al Capone investigation, tax offices are understaffed and petty negligence or even crime happens with tax returns very frequently. You think taxmen are going to investigate endless hours of video feed from some casino via court order for some 10k win claimed in taxes? Not sure if casinos even keep all video feeds for say 3 years since it takes time to actually file and proce…

You can say whatever you want if you assume you can't be audited. In that case there's no reason to play the slots at all. Your money will stay just as dirty in either case, but you'll have 30% more of it.

The problem I see with the casino "strategy" is that, as soon as you are audited, your story immediately falls apart. That's a terrible cover. Who needs a defense that can never be penetrated as long as it's never attacked? The idea of laundering is to say something that's difficult to disprove.

> You think taxmen are going to investigate endless hours of video feed from some casino via court order for some 10k win claimed in taxes?

If you have a thousand of them, yes. If you have one, it was a waste of your time and your money to pretend to launder it through slot machines.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#347

Post by hot_gril »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #304
coryaf wrote: post #193

For the Americans - by kebab it means gyro

Kebab and Gyro are pretty different in terms of bread, salad, sauce and even meat.

Also, Americans all know what kebab is, but not the case with gyro

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#349

Post by Alifatisk »

I was hoping when clicking on the article that they would also reveal new ways or collecting data of restaurants and their menus nearby, damn. Very fun article to read anyways!

Would overpass turbo maybe be a better alternative for finding specifics things depending of multiple clauses geographically?

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#350

Post by hinkley »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #321
hinkley wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more common thing that comes up in hypothetical conversations of the sort “you acquire $5M through less than legal means. How can you spend it?” is owning a bar. Buying the liquor gets a bit fuzzy as to where the money comes from. But the bigger thing is you can have imaginary customers and either drink “their” alcohol, pour it down the drain, or use it for gifts and bribes, all while booking receipts for people…

While on holiday in South America, I visited a friend and we went out for drinks quite a few times, we visited different neighborhoods and at times I was really puzzled as to why this very "new" looking, gigantic, fully staffed bars were often completely empty, he clarified that those were likely laundering drug money.

Well, let it never be said that South and Central American cartels aren’t ballsy af.
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