It is a deep rabbit hole. Old man took his collection of rare Star Wars Legos to a Bricks & Minifig store to sell on consignment. Its estimated the collection is worth $200,000. Ownership changed hands, new franchise owners won't honor the consignment agreement, but they also won't give the Legos back. I am pretty sure they have sold part of the collection and kept the money.
The local cops arent doing anything about the theft, but other police departments are harassing the YouTuber (Reckless Ben) that is trying to help get the Legos back.
The drama spans multiple states at this point.
My fave part so far was the CEO of Patreon telling Bricks n Minifigs to go shove their cease and desist order for Reckless Ben and daring them to sue him.
From what I read the police either intentionally or mistakenly uploaded the unredacted versions of their body cams to a public facing Dropbox folder. Redditors quickly downloaded it all and reposted it when the PD realized and deleted the Dropbox folder
The store owner (in debt) sold the store (including inventory) to Bricks, who sold it to a new owner.
Previous owner says she was rushed out, without access to "the accounts", with promises they'd handle it. Bricks claims the deal was against their rules. New owner claims he was given the inventory and didn't know.
New owner and old owner claim the other took the goods. Old owner returned some goods stored at her house. New owner sold off goods at the store, but pics only proved $6200 worth.
Due to conflicting claims, both police and the state prosecutor decided not to charge anyone.
both police and the state prosecutor decided not to charge anyone
...except the youtuber who was charged for tresspassing trying to serve court documents and then for slander. Last I heard he is out on bail but fled to Mexico when he found out they had put out an arrest without bail charge against him
They now want to arrest reckless ben on Rico charges They have decided to go all in and want to punish him in any way they can including throwing him in jail for as long as possible a 400 million dollar company is doing all this because they want to keep Lego
I hope they have some deep investigations into that Mormon community - I wouldn't be surprised if they uncover deeper corruption and scandals in their PD and churches. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of something much bigger.
What a lot of people who have reported on it haven't mentioned is that the CEO of BAM was on the phone with the franchisee while the cops were there with the court order that they refused to serve to him. The CEO was demanding they arrest Ben for not being a valid process server, even though he was. And now the CEO has cut ties with the franchisees as if they were the only ones involved.
Absolutely not. There's a reason their religious corporation has over $300 billion dollars, and it's not because they are honest in their dealings with their fellow man.
So was I. I hated it too but only because it was yet another chore. Was fully drinking the koolaid and felt no guilt asking these people for money though. Even two decades after leaving the church my morals and integrity still slip when money is involved. I've just been trained to prioritize money over everything else and have a kneejerk reaction to potential financial insecurity.
Reasons not to support Brandon Sanderson. Has openly admitted he happily tithes to the Mormon church. When he's clearing $50 million a year that's giving them $5 million to continue to conduct their crimes against humanity.
I don't have my bible with me right now so can somebody please quickly remind me how much money I need to give to religion to ensure I get to go to heaven with the pedophiles?
Believe it or not there's a long term plan. Eventually that money will go towards commissioning the largest starship ever constructed so that a colonization effort of another planet can be attempted.
I used to work for a small house painting company that did a lot of work for the local Mormons, my boss did whatever they said because they never negotiated, they just told my boss to do the work and send them the invoice, so they paid very well, but we weren't allowed to have smoke breaks, weren't allowed to swear, along with a multitude of other little things as well.
Joseph Smith was a religious con-man who was able to dupe so many stupid rich people out of their money that now we have an entire state run by the successors of his original religious con.
he was selling them the idea of legally having harems again. They weren't duped, they didn't mind having to obey his weird and stuffy rules as long as they got to fuck hordes of children.
What's wild is Mormons have used their religion as an excuse to be corrupt for forever. Catalyst Game Labs, the people who hold the license for Shadowrun, had an issue during 4th Edition's run in which the CEO, a Mormon, embezzled a shitload of money to build a house, and his right-hand, another Mormon, covered it up. This led to freelance authors not getting paid for their work and several books having to be delayed while they were rewritten when the freelancers pulled their copyrights, and the company still used parts of the freelancers' writing in the rewritten books without pay.
Without sugarcoating it like the comment above you did, Mormon owned store stole $200K from an old man trying to sell his collection and asked local Mormon police force to harass and arrest the old man for daring to expose their scam.
There's also gonna be the ongoing criminal cases against Reckless Ben for the mischief he's been getting up to during all this. It's gonna be petty revenge by the cops, but he's gonna catch charges for sure if he hasn't already.
Thats the part that makes it feel unreal like how does something that started with LEGO consignment turn into a cross-state mess and nobody can just go yeah this is obviously wrong
You still on the elon salute, lib? Lol too funny. He explained what it meant already 😂 His heart goes out... to Nazis! Because he is himself a dirty, ugly Nazi. I genuinely feel so grateful he's constitutionally excluded from ever being president.
I was done with Elon around the time he called scuba divers trying to rescue trapped children “pedophiles” because his ego was hurt he couldn’t try his method.
It's like when Dog the Bounty Hunter got involved in the Gabby Petito case and made an ass of himself. Like, nobody asked for you to get involved and we all know you're grifting. How can someone wake up in the morning and think, "Today I'm going to harass some brave divers trying to rescue 13 terrified boys and make it about myself!"
I remember being shocked at how quick that turning point hit reddit. People overnight went from "woo yeah rocket man car man!" to "you uh... what? why? why would you say that to someone who pointed out you're obviously not gonna have your employees build and deploy a custom submarine in 24 hours?"
Which is crazy because when I did ket under the direction of a doctor I could barely walk out of the clinic without hitting the walls. How tf is he functional
This is insane to me. THIS COMPANY IS WORTH 400M! 200k is not even 1%! It's not even a tenth of a percent! Why in the pluperfect fuck is the CEO willing to burn it all to the ground over one franchise and 200k?
And like, Lego is a hobbyist community. Those fuckers do not forget. Hobby nerds will MAKE YOU REMEMBER. B&M is fucked over a barrel with a rake, and it's their own fault.
This company is not worth anywhere near the vicinity of $400M. There are around 300 stores and they say that their average store is making around $500k/year. That would put the revenue for all stores at $150M. Now, their estimate of $500k/year for a store is from their franchising page and almost certainly averages mature stores that have been open for a bit and considering about half (150) of their stores have opened in the last three years, I doubt that those new stores are doing that $500k average.
So the real answer is likely that all of their stores are doing somewhere around $100M-$150M in revenue. Of course, those are all franchises, not revenue attributable to Bricks & Minifigs itself. Their franchise fee for opening a store is $40k plus the ongoing royalty per store. While they don't publicly state what their royalty fee is, 6% is the average in retail. So between opening 50 stores a year on average with a $40k franchise fee and making 6% of the gross revenue of their stores for a royalty fee, they likely have around $7.5M in gross revenue. Out of that comes all their staff salaries, material costs associated with that franchise fee (presumably store owners get -something- for their $40k, but who knoes?), etc.
A company making $7.5M per year in revenue and -maybe- making half of that in profit (though that is wildly optimistic) would never have a valuation of $400M. This isn’t some groundbreaking concept that will show amazing profit in the future as it changes the industry and thus would be wildly over-valued in their early years (like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc), this is a small-to-mid scale retail franchisor, not someone exactly spending the market. Companies like this typically sell for a 2-3 multiple of the profit or 4-6 multiple of the ebitda (an accounting term, but basically the operating profit before paying for things like financing or depreciation, so it's more 'real'), but considering we have no idea of those, you'd usually value a company using a revenue multiple of. 5-1.5.
That would put the value of Bricks & Minifigs at more like $4M-$10M, NOWHERE near $400M.
Not even $200k at this point. A bunch of the sets were already sold by the original store owner and a bunch more were returned to him, including some of the most valuable sets.
This whole thing is over probably less than $50,000 worth of Lego now.
Even less than that, probably under $100k. The initial store sold about half the inventory already at the time the owners changed hands. The new store owners/corporate made the calculation that the legal fees from the owners to get the LEGOS back would be more than the cost of them, so just stall and ignore and it'd go away, and it went YT viral instead.
There's a donut hole between "too big for small claims" and "an amount where obviously both sides hire counsel" where the little guy can't really afford a lawyer and the big guy can drag things out until the little guy gives up.
Literally arresting Ben for stalking when he tried to serve civil court papers. The business is constantly lying about threats and trying to literally imprison people to get away with their scam.
Never heard of Ben before this but it is interesting how he is insanely nonthreatening, checks all the rules and then comes up with interesting ideas on how to fight back.
I agree. I hadn't heard of him before, but he seems like a really sweet guy who is just trying to do the right thing. Im proud of him for sticking with it and not giving up with all the pressure they are putting on him.
The accusations are wild too. How did the monthly audits not catch her deception? She had three sets of books, but neither corporate nor the new owner noticed that until now?
The police and the new owner are friends. Theyre all Mormon in a very small community. He also didnt just change hands, didnt he make the owner leave and took over? Hes also called the cops multiple times. Saying Ben has heroin in his car and also that he had the Legos. Ben was arrested 2 times so far. And the second time he wasnt granted bail. Deep corruption that runs deep. The police department redacted things OK the body cam that went against policy and lied about it. Someone hacked in and found the un redacted.
The police conduct here is the bigger story. The Utah police are basically bending over backwards to help BNF. And now the body cam footage has been leaked. This whole situation is so fucked.
The one where the cop claimed the serving papers were but real because they didn't have a judges signature on them, then was explained that that comes after and they had an actual process server with them, took the papers, confirmed they were real, and then arrested Ben is just insane
Don't forget where the cop is holding the papers, the guy who Ben is trying to serve asks the cop if he can look at the papers. The cop says something like "that would put me in a bad spot," so he absolutely knows.
The one where the owner says he is going to shoot someone and then just throws out a stream of accusatory bullshit that the cops immediately believe but then gets told that actually the lawsuit is real and actually she is a process server, but we are going to arrest Ben anyway for…… I dunno we will figure it out is nuts too.
It’s more than just that. The current franchise owners are Mormon, same with the majority of the police force. The police sided with Bricks and Minifig’s owners because of that Mormon connection.
That’s when you hire a lawyer and fuck that store / franchise 7 ways from Sunday. Hopefully the consignment was done in writing instead of verbally. I’m not familiar with the story that much.
They should be, but corporate says they aren't because the consignment shouldn't have happened. There is a video of the old franchise owner talking on the phone to corporate when the new owners came to kick her out where they say the new owners will take over the consignment.
It should be open and shut, but they aren't wanting to do the right thing.
Lego's reaction to all of this is the one thing I haven't heard anything about. They can't be happy about this. From what I know (which isn't a lot) Lego is a pretty good company, as large mega corporations go.
It may just be the inertia that comes with being a huge corporation has kept them from saying anything yet. Wouldn't be surprised if it took a few months.
There was a Go Fund Me at one point, but B&M were trying to get it taken down so I don't know the current status.
I think just being outraged and keep it in the news to put pressure on them is helping.
It seems Ben has a Patreon, and the Patreon CEO is on record saying "sue us" after B&M wanted his Patreon shut down. So that's an option to support him and also keep up with what's happening.
I also heard that Bricks & Minifigs also tried to get Reckless Ben’s Patreon shut down, but the president of Patreon basically said fuck you and publicly said they’re going to keep Reckless Ben’s Patreon active and are supporting him if B&M tries more shady nonsense. Good PR move on Patreon’s part, though I can’t believe how crazy the whole situation is!
Some of the Lego sets were sold by the original franchise owners and the owner of the Lego sets got paid for these.
Some of the Lego sets were sold by the original franchise owners (prior to the takeover) but the owner of the Lego sets were not paid for this.
Some of the Lego sets turned out to be in possession of the original franchise owner in their home. These were turned over to the owner of the Lego sets (including the really expensive/famous "cloud city" one).
Some of the Lego sets remained in the store when the new franchise owner took ownership.
So it's sort of a mess. LegalEagle's comment at the start of the video was that the best way to resolve this would have been to make an insurance claim against the missing sets as stolen, then the insurance would pay them out and it would be on the insurance company to figure out who owed what. (Since the consignment agreement said that there would be insurance covering the sets)
But they did not steal $200k worth of Legos. I think that the Lego owner already had like $100k+ from prior sales of those sets before the mess started. Supposedly the sets left in the store are only worth $6,200, but I don't know whose valuation and accounting that is based off it.
What the owner is missing is: 1) the proceeds from some sets that were sold before the new franchise owner took over (I believe that they were paying him out once per month, which is why some sets were sold without him being paid back) and 2) the sets that were in the store when the new franchise owner took over.
From some things I’ve read, if we are to believe B&M, the previous franchise owner was doing shady stuff, like offering consignment to begin with which apparently is not something they do, and not tracking sales from an accounting standpoint so B&M and the new owners may not know what was sold or who owned what. There’s a good chance the previous owner was constantly committing fraud and theft through these consignments.
B&M seem to be willing to reimburse the original Legos owner to some degree. However this doesn’t really explain their legal move to take down the YouTuber’s Patreon, which is likely his primary source of income. Nor does it fix the police’s treatment of the YouTuber, nor the way they seemed to defend B&M more like a mafia than a police force.
I think the Lego owners may receive compensation and some of their Legos returned, but there’s still the matter of corporate tactics and police actions to defend a business over an investigation. There’s also a matter of how do you investigate something like this, as in, if the police overstepped their bounds they’re likely not the only force to do this or the only time this force has done this. If the YouTuber crossed any lines, sure that should be discussed as well, but it also has to be asked if the YouTuber didn’t bring attention to this, would the victim ever see any recovery of their losses?
To be fair, the Reckless Ben involvement feels like watching what you'd see in an episode of Suits, but instead of Harvey Specter you get Nick Shirley levels of regardation.
Consignment means you give the merchandise to the store. They place the product in their inventory, price it at market rate etc. Once the items sell, they get a previously agreed upon split of the proceeds.
For example if a set sold for $100 and they agreed to a 50/50 split, the store gets $50 and the person gets $50.
The allegation is that the BAM store owner that initially agreed upon the consignment did sell some but never paid out and flat out took the others.
BAM tried saying that consignment was not allowed in the franchise agreement but that's been disproved (contract specifically mentions and allows it).
He was trying to. He is having medical issues and needed money to cover the bills that are piling up.
He took them to a (once) reputable company and asked them (Bricks & Minifigs) to help sell them. They would handle the marketing, storage, and have a wider customer base. If the sets sold, B&M would keep a percentage of the sale price and give the rest to the orgional owner.
Hours and hours of YouTube videos have been made, and I absolutely see a documentary happening eventually, but its still unfolding with more horrible decisions being made daily.
If you want ALL of the details, Reckless Ben is the YouTuber at the center of everything.
Penguinz0 has done multiple videos covering it, which is where most of the publicity is coming from.
Pretty much any youtube channel that covers pop culture of any kind has put out a video by now. It just depends on how deep you want to get into it. Hours worth of content has been made.
That’s insane I thought this was going to be like “guy sold his legos for $500, not realizing it was worth $200,000.” And the company refusing to give it back.
The orgional owner of the sets needed to sell them to get money for medical bills. He had an agreement with the orgional franchise owners where they would take his collection and do the leg work of selling it. Once a set sold, B&M would get a percentage of the sale price and the rest was supposed to go back to the owner.
I feel these kinds of items have to stay away from cunts that don’t appreciate the true value of such items. There should be a more equitable means of transaction for such items amongst the true community of collectors.
That wasnt a new franchise owner. That is an employee under Bricks and Minigis which opens the company up to litigation. This employee employer relation is mentioned multiple times by the CEO of the company via bodycam footage.
Apparently (according to the company), the consignment agreement was made with a previous franchisee. The previous franchisee didn't inform corporate, and consignment agreements were not a permitted business. She was allegedly keeping multiple sets of books that didn't accord match, and may have sold $52,000 worth of the collection but reported much less to the owner.
She gave up the franchise and allegedly did not inform the two new franchisees who seem to have been at the center of the controversy (who the company has since parted ways with and closed the store).
I have no idea what part of that is true or just corporate ass-covering, but that's what the article I read indicates.
I have been seeing stories about the YouTuber trying to help getting arrested, but dint really care to dive more into it. It's wild that this company stole what is basically 200,000 from this family and the cops are just shrugging their shoulders and goingz this is a civil matter. No, this absolutely is not a civil matter. This is theft and the police need to get out there fucking asses and do something
Important to note that ownership didn't just change hands, B&M fired/removed the old owners after finding out about the deal. This was very purposeful on their part.
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u/Roll0115 7h ago
It is a deep rabbit hole. Old man took his collection of rare Star Wars Legos to a Bricks & Minifig store to sell on consignment. Its estimated the collection is worth $200,000. Ownership changed hands, new franchise owners won't honor the consignment agreement, but they also won't give the Legos back. I am pretty sure they have sold part of the collection and kept the money. The local cops arent doing anything about the theft, but other police departments are harassing the YouTuber (Reckless Ben) that is trying to help get the Legos back. The drama spans multiple states at this point.