FROM LEGOS TO POLICE CORRUPTION: The Bricks and Minifigs, Reckless Ben and Stolen Lego situation in a nutshell.
Ok. So it all started when a guy named Bryan Mansell went to a lego reseller store called Bricks and Minifigs to sell his 80+ year old fathers lego collection so he can pay for his fathers medical bills. Mind you, this lego collection is all OG Star Wars legos all the way down and worth aprox. 200k.
Bricks and Minifigs, which I will call BAM for ease of time, is a franchise and the store he went to was located in Utah. The owners of said location, Benjamin and Chrys Gorman are not BAM at large, they are just people who signed a contract to go into buisness with BAM under their name as a franchisee.
The owners put those legos of Bryans up on consignment. Meaning Bryan still owns them, but the store gets a cut of that money for selling the legos themselves. It is explicitly stated in their contract with BAM that they can sell things on conisgnment.
Corporate BAM comes in once they learn of the lego collection and takes the store away from the owners. The owners previously had decided to move country for Benjamins job so they had contacted BAM about selling the store. BAM just fucking took it. They sent a guy named Brandon Best (more on him later) to get the keys and kick the owners out. They didnt let the owners take any of their personal property out of that store. Not even their fucking bird. But in the process of this, Brandon does say, on camera, that he is going to take on the liability of the consignment. BAM then puts new people in the management spots of that specific location. Josh Johnson and ...well lookie there....Brandon Best.
The store then starts selling those legos and not giving the money to the old man who owns the legos, saying that they dont DO consignment.
In comes Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) who is an investigative youtuber. He goes all out to try to get these legos back to the family. Even suing the two new owners in small claims court to get that money back to the family. Which he won BTW. Meanwhile the CEO of BAM ,Ammon McNeff, threatened the old owners of the store, which they have recorded, saying that if they take BAM to court, BAM will drag out the court case out so they can drain money away from the old owners. Even ending the conversation with "if you think this is a threat...well...it is."
So Reckless Ben wins the court case. Josh and Brandon now have to pay that money back. They don't pay that money back and in fact, Josh threatens Ben on the phone (recorded) that if he persues this, he will claim Ben stole the legos and SWAT him.
Again, His words, not mine.
BAM, Josh and Brandon close that store so they can get out of paying for those legos.
Ben, not to be deterred, files a second lawsuit. He can't get it to go through until he can prove that he has spoken to both Josh and Brandon about getting the situation resolved. So he does.
He goes to Josh's house. The cops are already there. They pull him over for failing to stop correctly at a stop sign, despite having evidence on their own cop car dash cam that is available to the public saying otherwise. They ash for Ben by name. Ben is NOT driving.
They get off with a threat and a warning.
They then go to Brandon's house. Brandon comes out but says nothing. He looks like hes on fucking queludes or something this man is GONE. He sticks around for a few minutes and then fucks off back into his house.
That part of the court case is accepted. They tried to have a conversation, it failed. Got it in one.
Now they gotta go try to talk to Josh again to get everything sorted out.
This is where shit starts to really go down.
They get to his house. Cops are there again. They get pulled over on suspicion of HEROIN possession. Obviously the cops don't find anything but they break shit and threaten this kid anyway. Hours later, Ben gets home. His lawsuit is accepted. Now he has to serve them papers personally.
He goes to Josh's house again and tries to get the papers served. Four times the cops came by, three times they were like "Oh are these papers real? You arent doing anything illegal. Carry on". Until the fourth time where they, ON CAMERA, confirm with the court system that yes, the papers are real and yes they needed to be served.
So they arrest Ben for tresspassing.
Ben gets off on bail after a week.
He decides to do a go fund me for the family. He brings a huge banner for it and puts it up on the public sidewalk across from Josh's house.
The cops are called again. They know its not illegal to do what they are doing. The cops go back to their car, talk it over, admit its NOT illegal, poorly redact the body cam footage saying that and come up with a convoluted reason to arrest Ben again. So they do on suspicion of stalking.
They try to keep him in jail for a month, no bail. A judge went over the order and decided that it was crazy to do that and changed the order to let him go with bail again. Ben goes home.
THEN THEY SWAT THE PLACE HE IS STAYING ON SUSPICION OF HIM HAVING STOLEN THE LEGOS! Remember that threat that Josh gave Ben? Well, it came true. Ben was arrested again. This time they dislocated his shoulder and sent him on his way when they didnt find anything of note. Still, The kid gets harmed, threatened and bullied for the crime of...making an enemy of this company and those people.
And then the cops issue ANOTHER warant for Bens arrest. This time with no chance of bail at all.
So he flew to Mexico and is right now, currently in Mexico while he confers with lawyers over his situation.
The most fucked up part of the whole thing. Every cop and judge that harrassed him was Mormon. The CEO of BAM and Josh And Robert are all Mormons and every single one of em donate hella money to the Mormon church. Like, crazy amounts of money.
I am not making any of this up either. Like there is body cam footage, there are doccuments, emails, arrest records, court orders, dockets, contracts ETC that tell the story better than any words can.
I am not shocked at all by the corruption happening here, but I am hopefull that this is a thread that can be pulled to its source, that something good might come of how exposed these people and their crimes are by their own blatant assgrabbing tomfuckery.
But holy shit. What a development in the lego collection sphere. BAM seems to be going full force into destroying any credibility they have. Because if they can do this to anyone, they can do this to you too. How do you know if the legos you are buying arent stolen? How do you know theyre going to honor your consignment deal? How do you know theyre not gonna send the cops to break your fucking legs if you express any wish to get your rightfully owed money back from them?
This shit is heinous. Unspeakably heinous.
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