Corporate is also claiming that they don't allow stores to take on consignment deals, contrary to their franchise agreement explicitly allowing franchise owners to take on consignment deals.

(sprinkle a bunch of IIRC's) You're glossing over the fact that they have continued to sell the items in spite of a cease and desist from the brick owners which makes them totally culpable of selling other people's property, and that they're also being sued for unfair termination because the managers were calling in good faith to let them know they were going to take a job abroad.

But the end of the blog post says the man sued and won.

But the store closed to get out of paying.

Which makes no sense if the store was corporate-owned. So why isn't the corporation paying?

When the parent buys the store, they are also buying their contracts and obligations.

Unless the contract was written so poorly this didn’t happen?

It is hard to understand if you only read the blog posted here. They left out a lot of this specificity.

As soon as there is a shred of dispute every theft becomes a contract dispute

This is a gofundme I would gladly donate to. Fight the power for what's right.

I have heard of the same thing happening with fancy used car dealerships, where cars that were to be sold on consignment have been lost.

Forgive me if I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. I just read the linked blog and some of the links within, but I don't have time to watch all these long YouTube videos

> The goods were still there, still on display and being sold.

The store says the full inventory was not discoverable at the store. They said the person gave a written statement in the past saying the collection was "moved off site for security reasons" so I don't think this is really as cut and dry as the YouTuber and blogger people are trying to make it look.

> Corporate says, "this is mine now"

Their statement says they located what inventory they could and offered it back.

I think there's a lot more to this story. I wouldn't really trust the YouTube influencers for the whole story.

I used to sometimes do consignment with artistic products I made, and 80% of the time I ended up being jerked around by the store. Even stores that kept good records and paid for a while would, after a few years, end up with inventory left that they never returned or paid for. Sometimes the stores would close and disappear with the inventory. Other times they’d avoid me. Sometimes they’d insist they paid for everything already, and have done such a poor job of documenting what payments were for that it was difficult to tell. Some people just straight up ran their stores like Ponzi schemes - paying off old consignment with sales from new vendors. As an individual artist, I became very wary of consignment as it’s essentially an unsecured loan. Even worse was that some people who faded away and kept inventory were friends and good business partners, and it’s not like I would sue them for $400.

If the consignment contract was not legal then BAM never owned the goods and would not have had the right to sell them.

EDIT: as other commenters point out, BAM actually did lose the lawsuit over this and now the issue is the consigner is trying to collect the judgment. In that case it would normally be irrelevant that the store was a franchise location, because BAM would have become the successor to all liabilities upon taking over the store (in the U.S., at least). With deep pockets BAM could drag out the collections process long enough to try an extract a settlement from the consigner; the risk with doing so though is that interest accrues on the settlement at statutory rates that are normally higher than market rates and they face the possibility of court sanctions for any attempts at delay that have no reasonable legal basis.

Theft by conversion.

Lucky though, you can find somebody with deep pockets to step in and take his share of the case should you win.

> It seems like theft, but it's a very common civil contract dispute.

What if he reported theft? Wouldn't they have to prove how did they come into possession of the goods they are selling?

They were actually getting a 35% share. This is pure greed.

> It seems like theft

It is theft!

Sounds like theft to me.

> It's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I couldn't follow it either from the blog.

This is essentially what is going to happen with Monetary Metals (although I hope not!)

By this logic, nothing is theft, and everything is just a civil contract dispute.

There is no need for us to accept your sociopathic assertion that the rich should and will win.

> The goods were still there, still on display and being sold.

This appears to be in dispute.

As per bricks and minifigs:

>It was clear the full list of inventory in his documentation was not located in the store. What items could be reasonably identified as allegedly belonging to the consignor was offered back to the consignor, but that offer was refused.

>A deeper dive into the sales receipts uncovered that a significantly higher volume of the listed sets had sold over the course of the consignment deal prior to the store transition.

It appears they are alleging that the prior operator had sold a larger portion of the consigned goods than they had claimed to the family.

> They were not allowed to do that

Incorrect as the article points out with an image of the contract:

> However, it was brought to my attention by site user @luddevig that Chrystal Law, the Bricks & Minifigs Salem-Keizer store's original owner, was able to pull the franchise agreement between her and and the B&M Corperation, that clearly states that consignment is allowed.

According to the former franchise owner this is a lie from corporate and they were indeed allowed to sign consignment agreements. They showed a contract that says as much as evidence.

Incorrect.

We really need an eccentric billionaire going around trolling all sorts of petty legal trolling. Ben is actively making the world a better place with this, and every person with a networth worth a damn is barely a toenail the man he is.

I didn't know Ben dealt with cults until he revealed he started the "Scientology Sucks" religion, but as soon as the cops started baiting him into agreeing they had cause for arrest, I instantly guessed he had completely accidentally walked right into another cult corruption video. If I had a penny for the amounts of times I saw this exact type of cult discovery happen, I'd have 4, which is a pattern -> ALL cults are corrupt.

when people say that the police are there to enforce laws to protect capital, this is what they mean.

If cops are pulling over another person from Utah probably not a big deal but when dealing with an outsider from out of state the situation is different.

Yeah, as a non-Mormon, I agree. I think the Mormon connection is a paranoid distraction. The behavior of the police can be explained by the same kind of corrupt-small-town-police-defending-locals-from-outsiders behavior that happens across the country.

Stereotyping and bigotry are accepted if done against Christians.

You are more or less accusing a named individual of severe crimes without much to back it up.

I watched a video from a lawyer who was explaining some of the legal aspects of this debacle, and this one stuck out. Basically, if the Mansells had filed a form with the Oregon Secretary of State, they would have a much simpler claim. That form basically just says "X company is holding Y merchandise that is mine for consignment". Because they (likely) didn't do that, the process for determining their ownership may be more complicated in certain events, and closure of the store might be on that list. Reasons the new owners and BAM corporate are screwed: 1) they made statements during the seizure of the store that they are aware of the consignment and that will transfer to them 2) they were made aware of the consignment in writing by Mansell in a letter terminating the agreement and demanding return of the merchandise after a missed payment in Nov 2025 3) they sold a set from Mansell's collection after 1 & 2 to one of Mansell's confederates 4) they knowingly removed stickers placed on the collection by the previous store owner to identify it as part of the collection

Even if the consignment was undone, they don't get to just keep the collection. The agreement can almost certainly be terminated, but the collection would then be returned to Mansell.

I believe that's the one thing BAM refuses to acknowledge, they have no legal possesion of the lego sets, that's the beginning and end of it. They are trying their damnest to hide that fact behind a consignment/contract/franchise/corporate/arrests/heroin/lawsuit curtain of smoke.

> I'm not a lawyer but I don't see how the Mansells ever stopped owning the lego sets.

The store declares bankruptcy, and corporate is a prioritized creditor. From a certain view, based on the consignment contract means they wanted money, and I could see an argument that they're really owed $200k rather than the physical legos. Ie they're effectively just another creditor, and probably not a prioritized one.

"Ownership" gets very odd when you hand goods over to someone with the expectation that you'll never see those goods again, but will get money. It gets even weirder when that someone ceases to be a legal entity, and the goods are now in possession of someone you never had an agreement with. The store obviously has an obligation to hand over either money or the goods, but it's not clear that obligation is transient to anyone that ends up with the goods.

It goes more like:

"How did you acquire these sets?"

"We acquired them from the previous franchisee when we purchased the store. Here's the contract we signed to acquire the store and contents, here's the payment we made"

"Okay thanks that checks out"

I think it's more visceral, but a smaller story. 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system' is a headline that will be relevant again, with new participants, tomorrow, or next week.

This headline about star wars lego? Less so.

But you're not. The head of corporate is someone who thought he could get away with this. And almost did, until Reckless Ben showed up.

> It sounds like the first franchise collapsed owing money.

It did not, the franchisees simply wanted out because they were offered better paid work overseas.

They told corporate they wanted to sell the franchise back to them, as they say they wanted to recoup their investment in the franchise before they left the USA.

Corporate arrived the same day and started saying the franchise owes them $200,000, didn't inventory the franchise, terminated their franchise that day, seized the franchise that same day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ktgvoH4Mc&t=590s

I don't have the facts about who's right about that, but that corporate behaviour seems remarkably aggressive and fishy to me.

It’s a farcical notion that people are uniformly rational actors, as well as the notion that rational is adjacent to just.

It’s an unfortunate fact that many people in positions of wealth and power default to “F-you my lawyers will drown you and I will win” in every single case, regardless of merit.

Many times, that is the singular strategy that has put them in that position of wealth and power. Many times, they apply this strategy to every situation where they already possess an asset or service for which they have not paid, and that asset or service is valued higher than an ongoing good faith relationship with the person or entity that they owe for the asset or service that they received.

It’s a wholly predatory strategy but it can be a very rational calculus, and it can propel you to the very pinnacle of wealth and power. Its continuously surprising to plebs because it goes against the fantasy of the fundamental justice of society that they have been inculcated with, a convenient lie that keeps powerless people in their lane and justifies the use of police powers to protect the criminal activity of the owner class.

I say this as a member of the owner class. I try not to be one of those people, but it’s easy to see justice as an unnecessary and frivolous expense. I’d estimate that a significant fraction of my peers are in this category, and nearly everyone else occasionally dabbles, often without even being aware of it as their lawyers push in that direction.

Ultimately, it’s a side effect of obscene inequality. I don’t know how to fix it, much less how to make the world somehow intrinsically just. IMHO there is no justice except the justice we go out of our way to create. Justice is not the natural state of the world.

This is the answer. They thought they could get away with it. And from what I understand, they nearly did, because the original victim couldn't afford the risk of a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

+1: I'm so glad I happened to watch Mr. French's video first.

Big, if true. Mansel received ineffective counsel from several lawyers, because no lawyers he initially consulted mentioned this form.

If you like Part 2 (it shows the most egregious police misconduct I've seen in the USA in a while) then please consider Ben's Patreon where he will post Part 3 next week. The Part 2 is technically "paywalled" but the link has leaked. I think everyone needs to see Part 2 as it really blows the story fully open.

His Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/RecklessBen

The latest updates on the whole scenario are happening here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RecklessBen/

Holy mother of God this seems like one of those landmark cases by the looks of what's going on. So much rot in there... Bro also fled to Mexico, they could even make a movie out of this.

do we know the debt is "imaginary"? Was this inventory seized in satisfaction of some debt.

This entire story started because the corporation took control of the franchise though

I haven't dealt with anything like this, so maybe this is naive, but wouldn't you also sue for legal fees as apart of the damages?

Mormonism is the original cult that survived the first generation. It has all the hallmarks of a cult, singular charismatic leader, polygamy, child abuse, apocalyptic prophecy etc.

The best part is when the officer takes the process server's subpoena, says he'll serve it, then walks back and says the defendant isn't accepting it while refusing to allow her to serve the subpoena.

The search of his person over a call to police is a clear violation of his rights, a phone to call to police is not PC or RAS. The fact they held him for three hours will to be to his benefit in court. Arresting him for starting a gofundme, a clear violation of his first amendment rights, I mean they're just digging that hole. Then they raid him, dislocate his arm, and now he has a warrant out for physical threats?

This story is not blowing up because because of Legos or stealing from old people. It's blowing up because we're watching a corporation and a police department abuse their power and we're all grossed out by it.

Regardless if it's a civil manner or not the police clearly had no intention on even working towards a solution. They didn't attempt to find out if it was a civil or criminal matter, because he refused to listen.

Find him annoying sure, but it was made very clear why they even had to call in a youtuber to be annoying and get attention. Clearly legally they would bury the original owner with legal fees. If you have a solution that doesn't involve fighting big corperations, that very clearly do have connections with morally questionable cops then go ahead because it is made very clear why "just get a fucking lawyer" doesn't work

Watch part two and you will understand the claims of "the police are in on it". I agree it sounded like a joke in part 1, but after you see the rest of the story it makes sense.

That was part 1. I'm referring the Utah police in part 2.

The police are literally in on it. It's very likely they've violated Ben's civil rights, roughly at the behest of the new franchise owners (who they know personally through the LDS church). I hate to say 'details in part 2' but there are further details in part 2. IIUC it'll be available on youtube in a few weeks.

It's explained multiple times in the video that Mansell has considered suing, but the most likely outcome of that is he pays a lawyer upwards of $60k to get <<100k in awarded compensation, then struggles to collect. The new franchise owners threatened exactly this. It's a classic and well known (and exploited) problem with our legal system.

https://youtu.be/14ktgvoH4Mc?t=1029 talks about the distinction between civil and criminal here (and the whole video is good, worth a watch). There's not exactly an either-or distinction like it's commonly presented. The police can+probably should have investigated the initial refusal to return the legos as criminal theft.

> Just get a fucking lawyer.

First they tried and realized they couldnt afford one. Then they came up with a way to settle this in small claims, won, and the franchisor decided to close the store. The legal process did not work here

I'm not doubting the claims at all. I simply don't understand why a massive company would shoot themselves in the foot over something relatively small.

The apt comparison would be wage theft. It's one thing to advertise a job at a particular hourly rate, entirely another to breach the contract and lose public trust for a paltry gain. If you're going to commit what people will interpret as theft at least make sure it's worth your while.

I suppose if you advertise a job for $20/hr and a bunch of people show up and apply for the job, you're probably not going to start advertising the job for $40/hr instead.

And whether $20/hr is a "living wage" depends entirely on your circumstances. If you're a solo adult you can probably swing it. If you have 3 kids you will probably be on food stamps. Should Amazon pay people with kids more? Or only hire single people with no dependents?

Yikes, you can't find a single sentence in there that doesn't basically say "we're clueless, so we assume that the most convenient thing for us is true". Reads to me like: "We have no idea where the collection is! So we assume it's not our problem!"

I think you're right. I can't think of any reason an entire organization would act this way unless it had been repeatedly successful for them in the past.

Its a different kind of rational though. There is a world leader who gets away with all kinds of obvious theft and bribery and grift and fraud and self-serving out in the open, but to reasonable people, he doesn't seem rational at all, despite getting away with everything.

> It seems like their franchisee went bust, and they bailed him out to some $ value.

Not what happened, according to a legal commentator: https://youtu.be/14ktgvoH4Mc?t=590

> The seizure. November 14th, 2024. The [original franchise owners Crystal Law Gorman and her husband Benjamin Gorman] approach B&M about selling the store. They have an overseas job offer, they want to recoup their investment before they leave.

> The same day --- same day -- corporate dispatches a representative to the Kaiser store. By B&M's account, the Gormans owed approximately $200,000 in unpaid royalties. The transition negotiations broke down and B&M terminated the franchise agreement under what McNeff described as a clause permitting offset of store assets similar to an asset seizure in a bankruptcy proceeding. By the Gormans' own account, they had approached corporate about selling, not closing. And B&M's response was a same-day forced removal? No notice, no inventory, and a single box of personal belongings?

> That same evening, Law Gorman says she informed the B&M representative on site who was on speaker phone with the corporate director of operations, Key McAllister, that there was an active consignment in the store, that Mancel had not been fully paid, and that the property remaining in the store was not the store's to sell. According to Law Gorman, McAllister responded that the new operator would be "taking over the consignment as well."

> This is a critical factual claim. McNeff has refused to address it on the record, citing pending litigation. McAllister has not responded to media requests at all. The Gormans say the store's security camera footage captured this exchange and that it has been provided to Kaiser police.

This reads like B&M corporate are hardball-playing morons, and they choose intimidation as their first action. They clearly didn't know or care about what a fuckup they just made in effectively seizing consigned goods while taking over the franchise, even though they were told about it. And they've relied on the stacked-deck of civil proceedings costs to get away with stealing a guy's property, while they taunt the guy and lie about their actions. And the police, instead of prosecuting them for what looks like a criminal offence, are helping them get rid of the annoying guy publicising B&M's malfeasance.

This isn't an individual franchise. The franchise was already taken over by corporate!

This literally involves the CEO.

I read through all of this too. It just seems that 1. why would the consignor decline? 2. if he did decline, especially "in writing", then why not post proof?

As you suggest, maybe the reason is more complicated, e.g. some was sold, consignor not happy to have what's left returned and no compensation for what was sold, so refused to just have the smaller amount of stuff returned. If so that could have been much more clearly expressed in this letter. And again they could just post the correspondance.

Difficult to imagine why it would be declined. Did they perhaps insist on unreasonable conditions for doing so, such as fully indemnifying them in the matter? (Just wild speculation on my part since for whatever reason neither party seems interested in providing a full, clear, objective telling of events.)

I dont see how B&M can even continue after this. The lego community is small. Why would a single person ever shop at one of their stores ever again? Maybe you can get some families trying to buy stuff for kids, but the vast majority of money here is adults that are very plugged into the lego scene and surely know about this.

The Legos were being sold to fund the college education of the old man's young descendants IIRC. So, like the killing, the alleged issue is a corporation stealing from a young man, actually.

> This looks like a corporation stealing from an old man,

I would. They are evil. Treat them like so.

Wow. I do not want to knock collectors but I will never understand them. That particular set worth 10k looks kind of crappy to me. I understand the star wars crossover appeal but still. And I have three kids and have bought countless sets. Every bday and xmas times 3.

But it is then a greater fool "investment" unlike stocks.

Have you actually gone through this process? Like sure, obtaining a writ is technically part of the same case, but it's pretty much starting all over again. And you'll still be paying filing fees, dealing with court clerks, and waiting weeks or months.

Finding a corporation's bank is a whole separate issue, where you have to go back to court for a post-judgement discovery to force them to tell you. And even if they do - or you already knew - you have to get the writ served to the bank, and just hope they didn't move funds beforehand - or else you're back to start.

As GP said, it IS a huge PITA to get judgments paid, and it's particularly menacing in Small Claims. Unless the other side act on some virtue (which, they were already bad-faithed enough to have a lawsuit against them AND lose), your judgment is just an IOU, and actually forcing collection is often way more money — or time in money — than most state's Small Claims limits.

It's a broken system.

And when they try to serve him they keep being told they need to do it the right way but the cops stop them every time. The system is totally broken.

I dont understand how that works: The entire $400M business decided to close over $200K judgment? Or just the single store? If just the store, why did they sue the store and not the underlying business?

Watch the video. They worked around this by selling lego sets to 10 different people (as it was still owned by the lego owner), then the 10 different people all opened separate $10k suits, which they all won.

Then corporate shut down the location to avoid paying the suits they lost.

The legal system is captured by legal professionals. The average American is bound by a system that they can't engage directly with. The middlemen who most people must hire to navigate through it generally will not help unless there's a substantial payday in it for them. And in civil matters, defendants have no right to representation.

(Also, the judge is colleagues with counsel, opposing or otherwise; none of them think much of you, which a trip to /r/LawyerTalk will confirm.)

All of this is a choice. Essentially the same choice that we have to have medical insurers instead of a single-payer system; a broken housing market controlled by large corporate interests, instead of one where prices are moderated by a stock of residences built by the government and sold at-cost or lower, as in Singapore or pre-Thatcher Great Britain; broken and spread-thin policing instead of the kind of sophisticated social support system that you would expect the richest country on the planet to be able to afford (and avoids sending the same armed ex-jock to domestic disturbances, mental health crises, car accidents, public school security, etc.). My suspicion is that the fight against change in any of these cases is so fierce because breaking one cartel threatens the others.

All of your examples show the same pattern - the smaller party (in terms of capital) stealing from the larger party.

The law protects capital and binds humans.

All your examples are also in the category of "individual vs. organization" though.

Did the criminal investigation start before or after the social media campaign. I suspect after.

> I have no social media presence.

You know HN is just social media for nerds, right?

The individual franchises can always get the clue and drop being a franchise, just be a local store.

a lawyer

This is worth the read.

The strange part continues to be that the 2023 franchising agreement that explicitly permits consignment. While BAM is also claiming that the 2023 owners manual prohibited franchise owners from consignment agreements.

I would guess that BAM simply had poorly audited, conflicting documentation. It's one part they haven't addressed (albeit not central to their claims).

No affiliation, other than being a fan of building bricks in general, and making a couple small purchases from one of their franchises (not in Portland, OR).

Someone should let bigTech know about this

Ruined as in - Lego sets are glorified EZ-mode puzzles and not creative toys anymore. Too many limited sets means it's trending toward "collector items" and not kids toys.

It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.

What a weirdly hypocritical post.

You played with legos as a kid. Congratulations, so did lots of other kids at the time, and so do kids right now. Nothing has actually changed. Legos are still sold in a box with instructions, just like they were 20 years ago and 40 years ago and so on and so forth.

The idea that adults can't play with or enjoy legos is, well, genuinely sad, as in, it invokes the emotion of sadness. Adults are allowed to have fun and play games, whether that be building race cars out of metal or out of lego or any other activity they find joy in.

> At secondary school (age 11 in UK), the LEGO was cast aside as a mere child's toy. We had moved on and the idea of 'still playing with LEGO' would have been a social faux pas.

I genuinely wish you had a better childhood. Maybe you would have grown up into a person who can feel empathy for others.

and My Little Pony.

The pokemon company intentionally limits the supply to drive up demand. Cardboard is in no way a limited resource, they could print as many cards as there is demand for if they wanted. The problem is not the scalpers but the corporation who values the artificial scalped demand more than gameplay. That no one in the so called community can correctly place blame is an indictment of their intelligence.

I assume they were talking about 75159 right before it retired.

I think that was when Lego speculation was just becoming a bigger thing.

Now, I don't think something like that could retire with stock being on the shelf.

I grabbed Betrayal at Cloud City (75222) from my local Lego Store after it retired because they still had one in stock. I don't think I'll get that lucky again.

Especially with the push for exclusive Gift With Purchase (GWP) sets. It's become slightly ridiculous.

But I'm not a speculator, I'm just a dude who likes assembling plastic bricks.

You can’t be in your full mental health capacity if you put 200k into Lego

Instead of kids, education, house, transport, renovations they put all their hard earned cash into plastic bricks for kids…

What other stupid, no not stupid, insane decisions they made with this company that we weren’t informed about?

Single word: Credibility

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this more criminal?

BAM / new franchisee claims that any consignment deal is null and void after their takeover. If they knowingly possess items that therefore do not belong to them legally (because they were never owned by the previous franchisee), is that not theft (and therefore criminal behavior)?

Like imagine the previous franchisee left their phone in the store. Then the new owners say "nah, it doesn't belong to me". But actually it does. That is theft.

>Please enlighten us what other "due diligence" these people should have done for your point.

$20 filing with the state

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ktgvoH4Mc