After much experimenting and with significant help from the community, I've figured out a relatively simple method to find every illegal business in a city.

If you're not sure why you'd want to find and access illegal businesses, there are a few good reasons.

• Some figures in your cases can be employees there, so if you don't know where all of them are, that can become a hindrance to your case.
  
• In murder cases, if you know what the murder weapon was, checking the sales ledgers at the Weapons Dealer or Blackmarket Trader can be a great source for prime suspects.
  
• Some illegal businesses can provide you with useful items, such as Sync Disks in Blackmarket Sync Clinics.
  
• Blackmarket Traders stay open 24/7, so they're a great alternative if you have items to sell but the pawn shop is closed.

The guide is structured like this: The first three sections contain useful information you'll probably need to use in your search. The fourth section contains some keywords for the City Directory that you might find helpful if you're stuck. The fifth section has general information about the businesses, such as opening hours and what items they sell. After that is the actual search method.

I recommend reading at least the first three sections before moving on to the search method.

Greyed-out rooms and addresses on your map will light up once you see their interior. This will also show the icon corresponding to what that room is. Every commercial, medical, and government room has an icon. Apartments, power rooms, and other more miscellaneous kinds of buildings don't have icons (but maybe they will in the future.)

What's important about this is that when one of the illegal businesses you're looking for lights up, its icon will also appear.


Weapons Dealer:


Blackmarket Trader:


Blackmarket Sync Clinic:


Gambling Den:


Loan Shark:


If you see any of these icons in your map, that is certainly an illegal business.

There are two different graffiti you have to look out for. One will tell you the password for the Weapons Dealer, and the other will have the password for the Blackmarket Trader.

These two are the only illegal businesses that will require a password. If you enter their premises without giving the password to an employee, you'll be trespassing. However, this isn't much of an issue since employees don't even show up to work anymore because the game is broken, haha :(

Weapons Dealer graffiti example

Blackmarket Trader graffiti example


These graffiti are quite easy to stumble upon and repeat several times throughout the city. There's not really any secret to finding them. I recommend you play the game as usual and photograph or note down the passwords when you inevitably stumble upon one.

It's helpful to create a case board just for these, where you can pin their passwords. When you find the businesses and tell the passwords to an employee, they'll be open to you forever, so you can just discard the passwords after that.

More often than not, these graffiti will be found on grey brick walls like this:



Pay special attention to them. They can also appear in the basements of buildings, so those are sometimes good places to look.

Remember that these graffiti have nothing to do with the businesses' locations or quantity.

Illegal businesses on ground level will always spawn in places I call "back alleys". They are places like these:





These are the only two floorplans you need to investigate if you're looking for illegal businesses on ground level. They won't show up anywhere else. In both of these example images, they are on the block's southern side, but they can be on any side. They can be easy to miss, so keep your eyes peeled.

In the game world, they're small alleys with wooden walls around them:



Whenever I mention "back alleys" in one of the search methods, I'm talking about these.

Illegal businesses can also spawn in industrial apartments . These are apartments that are merged with an industrial company and its office. They go up to the 3rd floor and also have a recognizable floorplan.



Notice the big room (highlighted in red), and the small corridor cutting to the center of the building (highlighted in yellow). These are two defining characteristics of industrial apartments. You can see them on the Ground Level of the map.


Note:
This was the last essential section you had to read before getting into the search method. You may skip to that now if you'd like.

When browsing the City Directory, there are "keywords" that can help you identify illegal businesses.

Be aware that these lists are not absolute and only represent what I've found after searching many cities. Some keywords may have already been phased out or appear in more contexts than I've discovered. There's no way to know.

• Bank
  
• Cost-Effective
  
• Essentials
  
• Group
  
• Hardware
  
• Holdings
  
• Home Center
  
• Home Improvement
  
• House & Home
  
• Ironmonger
  
• Screws and Nails
  
• Storage
  
• Tool Supply
  
• Warehouse
  
• & Partners
  
• Toolworks

• Solutions
  
• Incorporated
  
• DIY

• Chemistry
  
• Management
  
• Enterprises
  
• Express
  
• Corp
  
• Social
  
• Pharmaceuticals
  
• Ward
  
• Networks
  
• Pawn Shop
  
• Genetics
  
• Industrial
  
• Company
  
• Dining
  
• Systems
  
• Labs
  
• Workhouse
  
• Saloon
  
• Biology
  
• Sync Clinic
  
• Technologies

Opening hours:
24 hours a day, every day.

Items for sale:

• Camera
  
• Lazarus 5 (8mm pistol)
  
• Pistol Silencer
  
• Pistol ammunition (8mm)
  
• Rifle ammunition
  
• Buckshot ammunition
  
• Deer slug ammunition
  
• Bandage
  
• Paradoxol (painkiller)
  
• Splint
  
• Combat knife
  
• Poison
  
• Bloodhound tracker

Opening hours:
24 hours a day, every day.

Items for sale:

• Lazarus 5 (8mm pistol)
  
• Silenced Lazarus 5 (8mm pistol)
  
• Pistol silencer
  
• Pistol ammunition (8mm)
  
• Rifle ammunition
  
• Buckshot ammunition
  
• Deer slug ammunition
  
• Lucky 7 [9x32 caliber pistol)
  
• Shackley Shotgun (Buckshot or Deer Slug ammo)
  
• Hamilton Rifle (.309 high-caliber ammo)
  
• Faucon Rifle (.309 high-caliber ammo)
  
• Combat Knife
  
• Flash Grenade
  
• Incapacitator Grenade
  
• Ballistic Armour

Opening hours:
17:00 to 7:00, every day

Items for sale:

• #16 Infiltrator Sync disk
  
• #17 Interceptor Sync disk
  
• #18 Trespasser Sync disk
  
• Bandage
  
• Paradoxol (painkiller)
  
• Splint

These Sync Disks can also be acquired legally as rewards for side jobs (Thanks Tantalus for the info). It also seems as though there are more, rarer Sync Disks in the apartments of underworld doctors (employees at Blackmarket Sync Clinics), so it may be worth checking those out. (Though I haven't tested this thoroughly so take it with a grain of salt)


Opening hours:
17:00 to 7:00, every day

Items for sale:

• Kola
  
• Gemsteader
  
• Bobbin Hard Cider
  
• Ruby Choice
  
• Old Wheel Bourbon
  
• Noire Vodka
  
• Hamburger
  
• Fries

If their floorplan is big enough, gambling dens also have payphones, along with a city directory and a corkboard from which you can get jobs and apartment offers, just like any other bar and restaurant.

Also, according to zerx44, bottles on the floors of basements can be a sign that there's a gambling den nearby.


Opening hours:
7:00 to 19:00, every day.

Loan sharks offer a loaning service, as the name implies. They'll give you a down payment of 2000 crows, and you'll have to pay back 250 crows a day, plus an additional 250 crow fee. If you don't make your payments, a hitman will eventually be sent after you.

---

As you may be aware, the game currently has a major issue with employees not showing up to work. Because of this, you may struggle to find people in these businesses after the first few days of your city, even during their open hours. This is something we all just have to deal with.

• Every city has exactly five illegal businesses, one of each type.
  
• Illegal businesses can spawn in three places: Back alleys, industrial apartments (both of which I explain in section 3), and basements.
  
• Every illegal business is listed in the City Directory, although using a fake name.
  
• Location names can be read from the location's evidence card, even before discovering the location.

Now, onto the search method.

---

I start with the ground level since it has the fewest places to check.

1. Find a back alley in your map;
   
2. Right-click it and open its evidence card;
   
3. Check the name on the card. If it sounds like a business name rather than a "Vacant address" or an apartment number, it's an illegal business.
   
4. Plot a route and go there.
   
5. Once you arrive, open the door, or peek under it—whichever's easiest. This will light up the business on your map.
   
6. Repeat for every back alley you can find.

Now, we'll look at the industrial apartments. Stay on ground level so that you can find them by the defining shapes in their floorplans. Once you find one on your map, do the following for each floor above ground level:

1. Right-click each room and open its evidence card;
   
2. Check the name on the card. If it sounds like a business name rather than an apartment number, it's an illegal business (except for the offices of the industry part of the building).
   
3. Plot a route and go there.
   
4. Once you arrive, open the door, or peek under it—whichever's easiest. This will light up the business on your map.

Finally, we'll check the basements.



On your map yet again, go down to the -1 level basements. Don't bother checking the -2 basements; there's nothing there. Here, we'll repeat the same steps:

1. Right-click each room and open its evidence card;
   
2. Check the name on the card. If it sounds like a business name rather than an apartment number, it's an illegal business.
   
3. Plot a route and go there.
   
4. Once you arrive, open the door, or peek under it—whichever's easiest. This will light up the business on your map.

After doing this, ensure you've found five illegal businesses. If you have, you're done. Congrats! You can also stop early once you've found five.

If you have less, you need to double-check. If you've been thorough but are still missing one or two, you may need to go the extra mile with step 4.



The city directory can be helpful when struggling to find the last few businesses. Find a telephone box or a payphone at a restaurant or city hall. These places will have a copy of the city directory: a blue book with a house symbol on the cover. Apartments have one next to their phone too. Open it.

The city directory is divided into tabs, which you can find to the right of the book, each containing entries for three letters of the alphabet at a time. The tabs are divided into pages, which you can flip through with the arrows at the bottom. We'll be skimming over every entry, so knowing how to navigate it is crucial.

1. Check the business names in the city directory.
   
2. Ignore entries with "Ward." Those are just infirmaries and such.
   
3. Ignore Enforcer Divisions.
   
4. Ignore entries with "Management." Those are the control rooms of apartments and businesses.
   
5. As for the rest, there's no hard-fast rule. Open the cards for any that seem suspicious. You will already have information on some, and you can eliminate the actual businesses that way. Keeping the "keywords" for illegal businesses in mind can be helpful, which I explain in section 4.
   
6. Pin the ones you'd like to check to a case board and go to each one.
   
7. Once you arrive, open the door, or peek under it—whichever's easiest. This will light up the business on your map.
   
8. If it's an illegal business, good! If it isn't, you hopefully still have more suspicious addresses to visit.

After all this, you should have found five businesses. I will admit there have been a few occasions where I couldn't find all five. I'm unsure whether that was just me missing them, a bug with city generation, or if there is a slight chance of not all five businesses spawning. Either way, you will probably not be that unlucky.

---

Below is a video of me finding every illegal business in a city using this method, if you'd like to see it in action.

If, for some reason, you're having a lot of trouble finding the graffiti with the passwords, or if they're all behind those stupid dumpsters, below are all the passwords I've collected from the game and this guide's comment section that you can try when accessing an illegal business, as a last resort.

However, be careful when using these, as the person who asks you the password will sometimes say you got it right, when it was actually the wrong password. If that happens and you enter, it'll be considered trespassing and you'll probably get in trouble. The opposite can also happen, where you'll get it right but they'll say you didn't.
Before entering, just wait for the dialogue options to appear again. If there's no longer an option to say a password, then you got the password right and gained access to the business.

A reminder that there's no guarantee that one of these will work in your case, since there's no way for me to know how many passwords are missing from this list.

• Admiral
  
• Albatross
  
• Alpaca
  
• Amber
  
• Armadillo
  
• Ash
  
• Azure
  
• Blitzkrieg
  
• Brassknuckle
  
• Briar
  
• Buffalo
  
• Bumblebee
  
• Butterscotch
  
• Canary
  
• Carnation
  
• Cobra
  
• Cobalt
  
• Consult
  
• Cotton
  
• Crab
  
• Crimson
  
• Crow
  
• Daffodil
  
• Danger
  
• Dolphin
  
• Dragon
  
• Eagle
  
• Elephant
  
• Flash
  
• Flamingo
  
• Ginger
  
• Graphite
  
• Hardcore
  
• Hare
  
• Hickory
  
• Heron
  
• Hornet
  
• Hyacinth
  
• Indigo
  
• Iris
  
• Ivy
  
• Jackal
  
• Jackrabbit
  
• Jam
  
• Jasmine
  
• Juniper
  
• Lavender
  
• Lily
  
• Lime
  
• Lobster
  
• Magpie
  
• Marigold
  
• Medallion
  
• Midnight
  
• Moss
  
• Mulberry
  
• Notorious
  
• Obsidian
  
• Orchid
  
• Partridge
  
• Pheasant
  
• Pineapple
  
• Pink
  
• Porcelain
  
• Porcupine
  
• Power
  
• Punk
  
• Rabbit
  
• Radioactive
  
• Rampage
  
• Rat
  
• Raven
  
• Revolver
  
• Rose
  
• Rosemary
  
• Ruby
  
• Sage
  
• Scarlet
  
• Shark
  
• Skunk
  
• Slam
  
• Snow
  
• Sparrow
  
• Spark
  
• Stork
  
• Strawberry
  
• Superpower
  
• Tangerine
  
• Tawny
  
• Trout
  
• Velvet
  
• Wolf
  
• Zebra

If you've seen any that aren't in this list, please let me know in the comments so I can add them.

People who've contributed to this list (thank you!):

• Tantalus
  
• Some immortal blob creature
  
• Cryera
  
• zerx44
  
• Sinaed
  
• Alvo
  
• Spimet
  
• kingtdog1
  
• Oddshot
  
• Doge-Space
  
• Calamari Camel
  
• Vrime
  
• Dasisar_Omox_R
  
• Friistii
  
• SpiderKhan
  
• cinternet
  
• opex27500
  
• GoogleFrontier929
  
• Zapan
  
• DC2
  
• aBlimpfox
  
• --Mithrandir--
  
• Greenish Boy
  
• GatorByte
  
• Purple Carnation
  
• TheninjaPostman
  
• https://sp.zhabite.com/profiles/76561198333640890
  
• Sea_Jaye
  
• StormTigrex
  
• Nosh Gilligan
  
• thousandbowedheads
  
• schiefer117
  
• Nyx
  
• TYRANNOSAURUS-SEX!
  
• artsydog
  
• XUSOXD
  
• TheA1ternative
  
• https://sp.zhabite.com/id/ballamazing

Thanks for reading! Hopefully, this guide helped you.

This is a pretty important part of the game, so I want to keep it as up-to-date and correct as possible. If you noticed I said something wrong or misleading, please let me know so I can update it.

Thanks to the folks over at the Shadows of Doubt Discord for telling me that illegal businesses could indeed be found in basements, way back in the day. This guide would be painfully incorrect if they hadn't.

And special thanks to everyone who contributed passwords, search methods, and new spawn locations. This guide is up-to-date, thanks to you.