Totally Not a Criminal Front

Looks legitimate. So why the human brick for a bouncer?

"Just a Souvenir Shop. Nothing Suspicious About It. No Need to be Alarmed."

— Sign in front of Team Rocket's base, Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver

Ah, The Mafia. Known for their subtlety and planning, they can orchestrate murder, drug dealing, prostitution, racketeering, and the sale of non-labelled tomato sauce without anyone finding out. But their fronts lack the same subtlety, as can clearly be seen on the massive sign above their hideout that reads, "Legitimate Casino! Not Mafia-owned!" Expect a great deal of Doublespeak. Sometimes, what gives the game away is the effort put into securing a supposedly legitimate establishment — for example, what's that scary 350-pound guy doing standing in front of a bakery? Other times, it's the total lack of effort given to make it seem like an actual business — if this bar is closed for the night, then why did those six men come in as a group, get served free drinks, and then walk into the back room? Similarly, others may not have anything outwardly suspicious, but things just don't add up - that liquor and smoke shop on the outskirts of town almost never has any cars out front, has loads of inventory that clearly hasn't moved in years, and the staff are apathetic at best and hostile at worst, but the lights are always on and the HVAC works just fine despite a clear lack of revenue.

This trope applies to all thinly-veiled front businesses, such as casinos, import/export firms, warehouse or moving companies, and so on. The point of the front business is to have a base of operations for meetings and storing various items, a plausible reason for having twenty 350-pound, stocky brutes on your payroll, access to delivery trucks and warehouses for mysterious crates you pick up, and a way to launder money.

Don't be surprised if a top tailor visits The Don here with fine cloth and a measuring tape to do a Mob-Boss Suit Fitting.

Sometimes non-Mafia criminal organizations such as bikers or other gangs also employ this trope.

Compare Most Definitely Not a Villain. See also Covert Group with Mundane Front, which may overlap with this trope in less parodic cases. Not to be confused with the Smoky Gentlemen's Club, although it may look like one in its luxurious decor, especially if it's the personal hangout of The Don himself. An Outcast Refuge is a non-criminal version for other "outcast" groups to gather in relative safety.

May overlap with an Illegal Gambling Den, which may be hidden behind a sliding fireplace in the club. See also Crime-Concealing Hobby.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The premise of Akiba Maid War is that every maid cafe in Akihabara and some of the businesses that support them are Yakuza fronts, to varying degrees, and are constantly getting into violent mob wars with each other.

Comic Books

• In the Batman comics, the Penguin runs the Iceberg Lounge, a seemingly innocent nightclub, but with areas hidden from the public to deal with things of a more illegal nature. Batman is aware of this and sometimes hangs around the club in disguise to keep tabs on The Penguin's activities.
• The Kingpin's organization from the Marvel Universe (particularly Daredevil and Spider-Man) used to pose as a normal spice business before being eventually exposed.
• Robin (1993): The branch of the mafia that Henry Aquista ends up running that used to employ Johnny Warren as a hitman is run out of a pool hall with a Smoky Gentlemen's Club type atmosphere. Most of them ended up killed by Johnny after he got superpowers.
• Sin City mobsters usually tend to hide in plain sight. They pretend to be country clubs, legit casinos, and even the church but they are usually fronts for criminal organizations. Most people know this, though. They just choose to ignore it.

Fan Works

• In The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, the Flair family's "legitimate business" is real estate, which had holding in 19 states and brought in lots of legitimate money. It comes up when Titus O'Neil, a record mogul, meets Charlotte Flair for the first time, asking for help with some snags he's having with regards to the upcoming music festival, Fozzfest. When she asks him what kind of business he thinks she's in, he bluntly replied "Real estate", which lets her know that he knows very well she's really a crime boss.
• In Risk It All, Ren learns that a 24-hour diner is a front for the Snake-Flower Triads, making it a target for Black Mask's mafia. But it also means that there are ordinary people inside, springing Ren into action before Black Mask can light the place up with bullets.

Films — Live-Action

• Bullets or Ballots: A gangster racketeering organization calls itself the Metropolitan Business Improvement Corporation.
• In Dick Tracy, Big Boy Caprice uses the Club Ritz as a front for gambling and a base for his other illegal activities. Tracy isn't fooled, and even manages to use this knowledge to keep tabs on him.
• Get Shorty has two in Florida! Vesuvio is an Italian restaurant where, while it might not be owned by the Mafia, they let Ray Bones do whatever he wants. Rich's Barber Shop has the barber actually cutting hair, but the back room is a loan shark office. Even legitimate patrons know it's a front, and tip off Chili Palmer when someone is coming by coughing. Bo Catlett runs a limo service that is a front for a small time drug ring. And one could say the point of the movie is that all of Hollywood is a front for organized crime calling themselves Producers.
• In Mississippi Burning, a savvy, Southern-born FBI agent discovers a hangout where some local men are drinking beer. When he orders one, the crooked sheriff's deputy tells him, "You have to be a member to drink here." The FBI agent asks, "A member o' what?" The deputy replies, "The social club," but it's obvious to everyone (including the audience) that he really means the Ku Klux Klan.
• In The Professional, the scenes with Leon and Tony always take place in an Italian restaurant. Also, when Mathilda Lando poses as a delivery girl to assassinate Norman Stansfield (the man who killed her family), he quickly catches on and pointedly asks her if she's delivering Italian food.
• In the original Scarface, Castillo is president of the "First Ward Social Club". After Camonte kills him and Lovo takes over, it becomes the First Ward Athletic Club.
• In Sneakers, the Big Bad's Covert Group with Mundane Front would be a lot more convincing if not for the freaking laser fencing.
  The whole building says, "Go Away."

Literature

• Baccano!: The Martillo Family run a speakeasy in Prohibition-era New York City, with a shop selling honey as a front.
• In Constance Verity Destroys the Universe, Ajaw Cassowary's Supervillain Lair happens to be a conspicuous castle in the middle of Nebraska.
  Connie: Masterminds. Most can't help themselves.
• The Serial Murders by Kim Newman: Lampshaded — psychic investigator Richard Jeperson is introduced to some very obvious Legitimate Businessmen by the villain, who is auctioning his supernatural powers to be used for assassination. Upon being introduced to them, Jeperson quips that they must be 'olive oil salesmen', in reference to The Godfather example. They appreciate the joke, but the villain — who is both rather uncultured and a bit of an idiot — is lost.
• Elbow Room: In short story "The Silver Bullet", R.V. Felton's protection gang pretends to be a "non-profit community-based grassroots organization" that collects revenue from local businesses for community development. They're a protection gang.
• In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett pays little attention when husband Frank spends most of his nights with other townsmen at "political meetings". But after she's attacked and he goes to another meeting that very night, Melanie finally admits that these meetings are in fact, gatherings of the Ku Klux Klan, and that they have gone out to avenge the attack on Scarlett. The author herself presents the Klan as this, something that sprung up out of a need to protect innocent white women from rampaging blacks.
• Spy School: One of Spyder's rival organizations is called the International Tulip Grower's Association. Subverted in Spy School at Sea, where Murray admits that the International Tulip Growers association is a legitimate organization and he only claimed they were evil as part of a Long Game to manipulate Ben.
  Murray: That's the whole point, it's a front. If they called themselves the International Association of Evil People who Commit Crimes for a Living, the good guys would have caught on right away.
• Tricky Business gives us the Chum Bucket bar and restaurant (no relation), a harborside establishment in Miami. It's a front for Lou Tarant's chapter of The Mafia and the casting-off point for the Extravaganza of the Seas, a 198-foot casino ship which is also part of their operations. The Coast Guard knows all about it (referring to "our friends at the Chum Bucket"), but they haven't been able to prove anything yet.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad: Discussed when Saul starts shopping around for ways for Walter and Jesse to launder their money, and shows Walt a bankrupt, out-of-the-way Laser Tag place, and Walter questions why he, a recently retired chemistry teacher with cancer, would suddenly buy such a weird business, and how would he explain how it would be turning a profit. They eventually settle on the car wash Walter used to work at. At the car wash, Skyler also does some mental math, as she processes cash payments from fake customers, and realizes they can't move all the money they need through the place without having to report an unrealistic amount of customers. After retiring with an ungodly amount of money, Walt does suggest buying another car wash and expanding their legitimate businesses to increase the amount they can launder.
• CSI: NY: Aiden works solo on a murder case in "Officer Blue". When she enters the pizza shop where the victim was last seen, there are several tables of men placing bets and exchanging cash, but no one eating. She tells Mac, "That place is no more a restaurant than a church in Hell's Kitchen." One of the charges they later hit the owner with is illegal book-making.
• Elementary: early in their working relationship, Holmes sends Watson to pick up some laundry from a dry cleaner, which is staffed by a woman only speaking Polish and a quiet, large man in a leather coat reading a magazine in the back, and with state of the art surveillance cameras, and on a second visit Watson notices none of the clothes in the racks had moved since her last visit, and she surmises both that the dry cleaner is a front for criminal activity, and that Sherlock sent her there specifically to see if she would notice.
• Lillyhammer: Frank buys a local pub and turns it into Flamingo Club, which acts as a convenient conduit for his many criminal dealings.
• Luke Cage: The Stokes crime family is based out of a nightclub known as Harlem's Paradise.
• In the Murder, She Wrote episode "Love & Hate in Cabot Cove", the new owner of a restaurant in Cabot Cove is running an illegal casino upstairs. Sheriff Metzger is having difficulty proving this (because one of his deputies is on the take, and the owner can switch it out to look like a disused function room), but to Jessica it's really obvious that a lot of people are going upstairs without even pretending that they're there for the restaurant.
• Ozark: As Marty starts trying to find businesses to use for money laundering at the Lake of Ozarks, he meets with the owner of the local strip club, who turns him down, and Marty realizes the club is already used for laundering by someone else.
• Sons of Anarchy: It's an open secret in Charming that SAMCRO is an outlaw motorcycle gang who run guns, but they insist that they're simply a motorcycle enthusiasts club and launder their money through the Teller & Morrow Autobody Shop, which is a legitimate business.
• The Sopranos prominently features a few front businesses used by Tony Soprano and fellow members or associates of the DiMeo crime family; including the Bada Bing strip club, Satriale's meat market, and later a nightclub called the Lollipop Club (renamed as the Crazy Horse).
• The Wire:
  • The Barksdale organization is headquartered in the backroom of Orlando's Gentlemen's Club. However, Orlando Blocker, the owner who the gang needs as a clean name on the liqour license, suffers a bad case of ambition, and is constantly trying to get involved with the drug trade for extra income, and after getting caught up in a sting, is forced to sign the club over, and is later killed in an ambush. After Orlando's is seized at the end of season one, the organization starts running the business out of a funeral parlor.
  • The Greek's associate Spiros almost always meets his drug dealer associates at a dingy Greek diner that never seems to have any clientele except for an old man who just sits at the counter reading a newspaper. Said "customer" is the Greek himself.
  • Old Face Andre runs a corner store that has half-empty shelves, but a thick pane of bullet proof glass at the counter, surveillance cameras at all angles and a hefty armored door into the back room. Both robber Omar, and later detective Bunk figure out it's a stash house.

Podcasts

• Discussed in the Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day episode of We Hate Movies. The guys, speaking as four New Yorkers, mock the fan hysteria which arises around the mob murders committed by the protagonists, pointing out that most people on the street are ignorant of the presence of organized crime because their business is done behind closed doors at these places; unless you're connected or you get involved in sketchy mob-related business, you won't know enough to be able to follow the Mafia or the Triads like they're a sports team.
  Stephen: The only time the Mafia enters your life in New York City — if you live in a Mafia neighborhood, which I have done — is, you can't go into certain coffee shops, and that might be a bummer. That's really it! You go in, and [they say], "we're outta cawffee!", and you're like, "ohhhh, it's one of those coffee shops. My apologies, Giuseppe! Enjoy your crime!"
  Chris: Or one of those bars — oh, wait, tonight's karaoke night, and there's nobody here? Weird.
  Andrew: Uh, in my neighborhood in Queens, there's a lot of "social clubs", where [people] go to watch "soccer games", and I'm not allowed to go "watch the soccer game". And that's totally fine, and that is your interaction with the Mafia!

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering has a card in the mafia-themed set Streets of New Capenna called Witness Protection themed after this trope, which transforms the enchanted creature into a new one called "Legitimate Businessperson."

Theater

• In Bells Are Ringing, Titanic Records, which sets up shop within Susanswerphone's offices, is a Mafia-controlled bookie operation pretending to be a record company. The "musicians" associated with it are strongly implied to be more familiar with violence than violins. As Ella innocently observes, the company's ledgers contain a lot of orders for recordings of works of Classical Music that don't actually exist, so she decides to correct some of them, inadvertently putting herself in danger.

Video Games

• At the beginning of one of the Burger Barn levels in Cake Mania 4: Main Street Jack mentions a gentleman called Don Carlos who's come to make him an offer. When the level finishes...
  Jack: This is great! I'll be providing catering for Mr. Carlos' exclusive social club, the "Legitimate Business Establishment."
• In City of Heroes, Mafia Expy "The Family" has a pizza chain. Billboards advertise "Made Fresh. By Made Men." Which is most likely a shout-out or homage to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for his Cosa Nostra Pizza, Uncle Enzo and the world's most brutal 30-minutes or less delivery guarantee.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, for obvious reasons, the Thieves' Guild doesn't have open guild halls like the Fighters or Mages guilds. Instead, they tend to operate out of various taverns and clubs in major cities. Justified, as these are something of an Open Secret to create plausible deniability, since their guild halls actually being secrets would be bad for business.
  • Morrowind: The Thieves Guild and their Evil Counterpart, the Camonna Tong, both operate out of various taverns and clubs in the major cities that are used as guild halls, and talking to anyone on the street makes it obvious that their function is an Open Secret. )
• In The Godfather: The Game, one suspects that the various families would conceal their businesses better if they didn't post guards around it who smack their fists into the other open palm every time they see you come near. Or outright open fire indiscriminately if your Vendetta with that family is high enough.
• The Grand Theft Auto 3D Universe games have the Marco's Bistro in Liberty City, which is usually a front for the Forelli Family.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: Lester owns a small garment factory staffed by a couple of women who don't speak English for the purposes of using the office for planning heists. Lester also instructs Franklin to buy up legitimate businesses around the map to act as fronts for his newfound wealth.
  • Grand Theft Auto Online allows the player to buy a number of businesses from a non-descipt startup company used to run illegal cargo to a roadside biker bars and nightclubs that also act as hubs for drug and counterfeiting businesses, and an Arcade to plan out heists on the Diamond Casino. Returning Grand Theft Auto V character Franklin has founded F. Clinton & Partner "Celebrity Solutions Agency" from which the player can both complete a story mission shaking down and murdering people who have copies of a leaked album from Dr. Dre, as well as "security contracts" that range from stealing back stolen goods to destorying rival criminal operations and murdering gang leaders.
• A Hat in Time: The DLC stage "Nyakuza Metro" has the head of the titular Nyakuza establish her center of operations as a high-end jewelry store... in the middle of a metro station. The locals mention how out of place it looks in a place where the only businesses are fast food establishments, but the ones who know what kind of person The Empress is know better than to try and start anything.
• In KGB, Progressive Enthusiast Club is a bar filled with bums and criminals, which is actually a front for Snuff Film studio protected by corrupt KGB agents. They also use nearby meat shop to hide corpses of their victims, though unlike many versions, they do not sell human meat there.
• Kingdom of Loathing has a Penguin Mafia. They run The Raffle House and Uncle P's Antiques; the latter's shopkeeper tells you they are "absolutely, positively a legitimate establishment, and not a front for any sort of criminal activities," and the former's owner says something similar.
• Mass Effect Chora's Den, the strip club on the Citadel, ends up being one of these, with how Fist runs the place.
• In Pizza Tycoon, you can order sabotage devices/weapons from stores which claim to sell "joke articles" and "ice cream", respectively. But if you try to buy weapons openly, they'll tell the police, and prison ensues.
• Pokémon:
  • The first generation of games has the Rocket Game Corner, with the entrance to the Elaborate Underground Base below it behind a poster guarded by a guy in full Team Rocket uniform! Lampshaded by one of civilians you encounter in Celadon City:
    "Don't look behind the poster! There's no hidden switch behind it!"
  • In Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, the Team Rocket Base has a sign proclaiming its innocence. It also has a discolored tree with highly visible antennae sticking out of the top, and the shopkeeper keeps telling you that the breeze coming from that mysterious gigantic box in the middle of the shop is just your imagination and is not coming from any hidden hideout anywhere. It doesn't help that he says it every single time you try to buy stuff from him. Parodied when Team Rocket is driven away and the legitimate owner comes back... and the whistling noise doesn't stop, because she's old and her dentures don't fit right.
  • The Game Corner in Veilstone is space-themed, is located in the same place as Team Galactic's headquarters, and features Team Galactic symbols as counterparts to triple 7's. In fact, the only Game Corner that wasn't once or is an example of this trope was in Hoenn.
• Sam & Max has Ted E. Bear's Mafia-free Playland and Casino, complete with a horribly catchy theme song.
  "N-O-M-A-F-I-A! Oh baby..."
• In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, Al Capone owns a high-class club called "Four Deuce" from where he operated until his arrest and subsequent incarceration in Alcatraz Prison some time prior to the events of the game. Now the club is in control of Mao, Capone's Drunken Master/aspiring starlet/giant cat of a bodyguard.
• The rabbit hole lot type generically known as "abandoned warehouse" in The Sims 3 is the base for the Criminal career. Specific varieties of this building include two examples of this trope: "Outstanding Citizen Warehouse Corp." (found in Sunset Valley, Riverview, Barnacle Bay, and Hidden Springs), and "Good Guys, Inc." (the Italian-themed equivalent unique to Monte Vista).
• In World of Warcraft, the Warlock Trainers in the human city of Stormwind pose as a seedy bar named "The Slaughtered Lamb", in the middle of the magic district. While they are not criminals in the more traditional sense of the word, their demon-summoning activities are forbidden in Stormwind. Not that the guards have any problem with the players running around with their demon familiars in plain sight.
• In the X series, it's an Open Secret that the Teladi Company either cooperates or turns a blind eye to the local Space Pirates; their sweatshop shipyards apparently sell directly to the pirates — as (modified) Teladi ships make up the bulk of pirate squads — Teladi police generally do not engage pirates, and bounty hunters who destroy pirates do not receive recognition for it.

Web Animation

• RWBY: The club is genuinely a nightclub. It's also the front for the Xiong crime family, whose HQ is located in the back office. The club itself is staffed and protected by the crime family mooks, so is full of men in uniformed black suits, hats and indoor shades all wielding weapons. Even the non-criminal seventeen-year-old Yang knew the club was the place to go for information.

Webcomics

• Problem Sleuth: Mobster Kingpin's front for his speakeasy and other operations is the LEGITIMATE ESTABLISHMENT.

Web Videos

• The Pittsburgh SOAPranos: The mob soap shop seemingly exists entirely to dispose of bodies, although Old Man Calzone seems to take it personally that people prefer Sami's soaps to his. The soaps are extremely pretty, and named after serial killers.

Western Animation

• Invoked in one Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Bugs torments a couple of crooks, and finishes up by erecting a huge sign on the side of their hideout. The police find the two crooks in no time.
• Played with in The Fairly OddParents!: Fairy mobsters actually do manage waste. Big Daddy's (Wanda's father) company even has the slogan "A Legitimate Business!"
• Family Guy: The Mafia do their dealings in the "Pet Store. That's it, pet store." All of the "pets" are cardboard cut outs, and people regularly order "bunnies" in both 12 gauge and semiautomatic (the cops have it bugged).
  "Whichever 'bunny' you think would be best for shooting a guy in the head."
• Futurama:
  • The Robot Mafia, which is based in a meat store called "Fronty's Meat Market: Not a front since 2437". They also run "Small Bill's Laundering".
  • A subversion also appears in "Bender Gets Made", in which it appears that the Robot Mafia really are members of a legitimate club:
    Donbot: Perhaps you'd care to join us later, at our... social club.
    Bender: Nah, I'd rather plan some felonies.
    Donbot: Oh. In that case, we should meet at our Mafia crime headquarters instead.
• The Simpsons:
  • Springfield's local Mafia hideout, the "Legitimate Businessmen's Social Club", has a softball team and "family" picnics. In the episode where Fat Tony's son appeared, the front is "Waste Management".
  • In "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", Moe's Tavern becomes a speakeasy when prohibition is declared in Springfield, and changes its name to "Moe's Pet Shop". The true purpose of the place is obvious, but fortunately for Moe, Rex Banner — the guy in charge of enforcing the law — is just as stupid as Wiggum. (Maybe even more so; unlike Wiggum, Rex can't be bribed, but he still can't solve crimes worth squat.)

Real Life

• The infamous Kray Brothers of London ran several legitimate night clubs which let them mingle with celebrities. Some of the celebrities were prominent politicians who ran interference for the Krays for a number of years, until their criminal activities became so open and notorious that nobody could get away with defending them any more.
• For much of his career as a major player in Los Angeles organized crime, Mickey Cohen worked out of a men's clothing shop and referred to himself as a haberdasher.
• The Japanese Yakuza gangs stand in an interesting contrast to this trope: they are in no way secret societies, and openly maintain offices. Members may even have business cards. That being said, the Yakuza are known for referring to themselves as "ninkyō dantai", literally "chivalrous organizations". This only refers to the direct, overt yakuza organizations themselves — there are tons of fronts, shell companies, associates who exist on a spectrum from real hardcore yakuza to victims making payoffs to survive either literally or in regard to their careers, and many, many other "connections" or "affiliations" or "friends," especially with tightening organized crime laws. Anything from a record label to a restaurant can be a yakuza front now. These connections turned out to be a benefit to everyone after the Kobe earthquake in 1995, and the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, as the construction companies operated as fronts were among the first to lead the recovery effort after each disaster.
• Capone's crosstown rival Dion O'Banion ran a floral shop in addition to his bootlegging operation. He was evidently a pretty good florist, and seemed to have as much of a passion for flowers as he did for crime. Admittedly, many of his customers were mobsters, but it wasn't a money laundering business. He was just good with flowers, and they knew him. Whenever a high-ranking Chicago mobster was killed, O'Banion's shop sold lots of flowers to the funeral home. He made a killing.
• Chinese-American (and -Canadian) gangs called "Tongs" literally translate to "social club". Some tongs have actually reformed and become actual civic-minded organizations. It must be noted there have always been legitimate tongs too, criminal gangs just often used the term as cover.
• Many old-school Italian-American social clubs used to be (and some still are) mob hangouts and fronts for illegal activities. However, the traditional Mafia social club (which was always less a "Mafia" thing and more a "New York" thing, with many similar non-criminal private clubs operating out of storefronts as well) has largely become an inversion in the modern era. With many urban locales becoming heavily gentrified, storefront real estate is simply too expensive to waste on a private club.
  • Former Gambino boss Paul Castellano used his butcher's training to launch "Dial Poultry", which supplied poultry to several New York City grocery chains. While technically legitimate, he would use strong-arm methods to force his "customers" to carry the poultry. Part of this was that Castellano fancied himself more of a "legitimate businessman", and while some businesses he ran did technically become legitimate, the intimidation tactics and the Mob ties helped ensure their success.
  • Bonanno family boss Sal Maranzano used a real estate brokerage and development company as a front for his illegal booze and heroin rackets. His acolyte Joe Bonanno ran a funeral parlor in Brooklyn that was used as a front for disposing the bodies of mob victims. Bonanno's successor Joe Massino operated from a catering company in Maspeth, Queens.
  • Former Genovese boss Vincent "Chin" Gigante and his crew was based out of the Triangle Social Club in Greenwich Village. In an effort to stymie law enforcement efforts to nail him, Gigante used the Wandering Walk of Madness and Obfuscating Insanity tropes to dress like a disheveled madman who mumbled incoherently and sometimes urinated in public.
  • Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano of the Bonanno family based his crew out of The Motion Lounge nightclub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
  • Al Capone was officially an antiques dealer. He even owned an antique shop. However, most people, including the police and the press, knew what he really was, but couldn't nail him on anything worse than tax evasion.
• The Hells Angels often use the legitimate aspect of their club to mask their criminal activities. Members insist they are only a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together, to organize social events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies, and that any crimes are the responsibility of the individuals who carried them out and not the club as a whole. Additionally, there are many biker clubs that aren't involved with crimes, so this can come off as plausible if one isn't aware of their well-documented activities.
• The Ringvereine (Ring Clubs) of interwar Berlin were a variation of this trope. While in reality they were mafia organisations, they were Vereine in both an official and a technical sense, since (in startlingly a display of Germanic Efficiency) they were structured like any legal club (featuring things like executive committees, clerks and treasurers).
• Atlanta drug trafficking organization Black Mafia Family insisted that they were a record label, that only had one signed artist. Similar accusation is central in the trial of rapper Young Thug whose label YSL is accused of being a shelter for Thug's old gang Young Slime Life.

---