
A mattress conspiracy theory got even weirder after top comment got deleted - NicoJuicy
https://thenextweb.com/distract/2018/01/22/this-mysterious-conspiracy-theory-about-mattresses-is-everything-we-love-about-reddit/
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wahern
Mattress stores cluster for the same reason automobile dealerships cluster.
And just like automobile dealerships, many stores in the same area have the
same owner.

There's a Freakonomics podcast episode about the mattress store industry at
[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-
bubble/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/)

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ac29
Sure, but these are the exact same brand clustering together in the provided
examples. It would be like seeing 3 Ford dealerships in the same block.

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MR4D
I’ve seen 3 Shell stations on one intersection, and a Starbucks literally less
than 100 feet across a street from another Starbucks, so I could believe that.

 _For a great joke, look up “Starbucks across from a Starbucks” on google by
Lewis Black.

_ *Technically there is a third Starbucks if you count the one in the Barnes &
Nobles. [http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2009/09/18/three-
starbu...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2009/09/18/three-starbucks-on-
one-houston-corner/)

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camillomiller
In Berlin it would be Matratzen Concorde. They have dozens of stores. They
always do liquidation sales and inventory replacement and the stores always
look pretty much empty. I got some great deals a couple of times there,
though. The product is good and during the heavy discount periods you can get
good mattresses up to 60% off of the original (probably heavily inflated)
price. Gotta consider that the average purchase price in these stores is quite
steep. It’s totally possible that they are legit, because two or three sales a
day are enough to keep the lights on, pay an employee or two and turn a small
profit.

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patcheudor
Because of inventory, ergo a factory ships a mattress, a customer buys a
mattress, there's something for investigators to grab onto. This would on the
surface make it seem to not be very good for money laundering unless the
retailer also controlled manufacturing and could cook the shipment books there
which is unlikely. Now here's where this conspiracy theory gets interesting.
Stick with me for the briefest of intros to what makes for a good money
laundering business.

Typically businesses for which it's hard to account for the number of
customers and who don't have inventory that can be traced are better: golf
courses, bowling alleys, car washes, etc. The case of car washes is pretty
awesome in fact and relates well to the mattress conspiracy theory. At one
point they were getting busted because investigators would look at their water
usage, but that was quickly resolved by becoming "environmental" and
installing water capture and re-use systems. Now it's all about making the
power usage look like the place is busy and counting on local investigators to
have other priorities than long term 24/7 stake-outs.

Okay, okay, with this in mind, back to the mattress company. How often are we
told to replace our mattresses these days? I've quite literally had a mattress
from Ethan Allen for 20 years and it's still like new. However, my wife keeps
pointing out that mattresses should be replace every eight. With this in mind,
how many people are like me? I suspect a lot - if your back isn't hurting, if
you aren't feeling springs, if it's still firm, why replace it, heck, that
would introduce the opportunity to get a worse mattress. As such, there's
likely not a lot of turnover, so... A mattress company could use this to their
advantage by making large orders of mattresses, claiming they sold all of
them, while only selling a tenth. They could then ship the remaining new
mattresses to 'recyclers', claiming they were customer exchanges. Having
physical stores, they could claim a lot of their business was cash and by
having a lot of stores they make it all but impossible to stake them out with
anything but a satellite which few law enforcement agencies who would be
interested in catching this scheme would invest in & by being in locations
with shared parking lots could make tracking all but impossible even by
counting cars. Honestly, I think it could work and we are all part of it for
buying into the whole replace your mattress every eight years line! OMG.

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jsjohnst
> Having physical stores, they could claim a lot of their business was cash

The number of people paying cash for a $500-5000 mattress are likely fairly
low and I doubt many investigators would buy it either. Money laundering
“businesses” are typically places that legitimately do mostly cash
transactions (like the ones you mentioned, aka car wash, laundromat, etc).

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phire
I bet a lot of people buy mattresses on hire-purchase.

I wonder if they have managed to somehow funnel money in through fake hire-
purchase arrangements.

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brad0
Link to original thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7s36ub/what_cons...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7s36ub/what_conspiracy_theory_do_you_100_buy_into_and_why/dt215gv/)

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meesterdude
Said mattress company is shady, has gone through rebrandings to avoid
collecting a dirty name, and has very anti-consumer policies and tactics. This
doesn't make the conspiracy stuff true, but it is... interesting.

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aalleavitch
Heh, I saw this thread. The top comments were actually surprisingly good as
far as conspiracy theories go.

