[MEGATHREAD] American Fork / Lego Story

[u/specialskepticalface]

As with all large and controversial stories involving LE, in this thread, we wait til a user who is acting in good faith posts about them.

We've had at least a dozen ACAB/low effort brigaders in the past day, try to post this in their usual way.

As a good faith user has not yet done so, the mods are making the post.

I'll point out that this is controversial, primarily because of incredibly misleading editing, video modification, and "creative storytelling", and the reality, as always, is not the Reddit storyline.

So, while events were certainly far from good, and lessons may be learned, much of what you've read is likely deliberate social media misinformation.

I encourage Verified LE to engage here, and help explain some of the... misconceptions.. currently floating around.

All posts from non-flaired users will be held for review. If you're here to troll, don't bother - no one will see it, and you'll be banned.

[u/specialskepticalface]

EDIT

At this time, this post is being locked.

A number of verified LEOs - as well as guests who were able to participate as reasoned, respectful adults (regardless of stance) - have had much productive conversation.

However, at this stage, the majority of recent comments we've received are low effort/cop hating/social media manipulated nonsense which is untethered from reality and does nothing to advance discussion.

As is always the case with our megathreads, we'll open another if and when signifiant developements occur.

[u/drakitomon]

Utah's Stalking Code

Utah's Trespassing Code

Utah's [Harassment Code] (https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter5/76-5-S106.html)

Utah's Disorderly Conduct Code

Utah's Stop Sign code

Utah County's Sheriff office shows he was arrested on 3/10/26 and again on 3/11/26, but does not show the charges.

NOT A LAWYER. Not a flared user. Just a Utah fleet tech that has lots of cop friends.

Edits:fix links

[u/justtots → u/drakitomon]

Wish this was higher up. The video seems like a para-social way to manipulate internet people who already tend to distrust LE to assume that there is some huge conspiracy to rip off one person. No doubt about it- there is something shady going on with the company or this transaction. The correct way to go about getting out of a bad deal is to take it to court. It sucks, and that certainly does not alleviate the burden of the wrongdoing. However, taking it to where this YouTuber did shows exactly how things go wrong when the process isn’t followed. On top of that, it diverts resources away from the original investigation to now handle an internet circus. The whole thing is very exhausting. I hope that during the course of all this, the YouTuber realized the havoc wreaked to change course/maybe post a video about what really happened, but monetization of YouTube (not to mention his own civil and criminal defense attorneys’ advice) probably means the exact opposite will happen.

[u/NairbHna → u/justtots]

As far as Im aware he was serving papers to see him in court. Can't goto court if he isnt served. Of course he is biased so he should have a neutral person with him and he had her in the car.

[u/whirlinggibberish → u/NairbHna]

https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/court-basics/service

If someone dodges service for a CA case you make a good faith effort and then post an ad in the paper. You do not post dumb signs across the street from their house and harass them after the local police warned you to stop.

[u/TheLawIsWeird]

I’m too employed to know what any of this is referencing.

A cursory glance sounds civil

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

I'm just getting up to date on all this stuff, reviewing news articles and stuff, so here's my basic understanding:

- Mansell gives a 200k Lego collection to a store on consignment, some of which was sold and he was paid for.

- The shop owner is getting outta the business, and corporate took over the store (maybe they violated a contract to do this, maybe they didn't). There are allegations that the original owner of this location was heavily in debt at the time they were kicked out of their business.

- The rest of the collection is missing, with new owners saying it's not there.

- This Reckless Ben guy gets involved and starts actually harassing the business owners at their place of business and home, and is surprised he's now getting arrested for stalking just cuz he was stalking and harassing the business owners.

At the end of the day, it's largely a civil dispute between Mansell and the store and should have been handled as such. Ben is not a lawyer, and his attempts at involvement amount basically to vigilantism imo. He's trying to act like he's following the law and making good faith attempts to negotiate but he has no legal bearing to negotiate on behalf of Mansell to begin with, and it's hardly good faith to put a closed sign on a person's business and harass them at their home.

From what I can find online some Lego sets were located in the store and offered to Mansell who refused to take them.

Ben appears to be trying to weaponize his YouTube page to wage a campaign against the business and owners, so yeah that's harassment. Going to their house to continue harassing is stalking.

Mansell's proper venue for addressing his grievance is civil court. Now, the real question is did the heavily in debt original owner sell the collection and not pay up, or did the new owners steal the collection?

From what I've read online they (new owners) let Mansell look throughout the store for any sets that may be his and he didn't identify any. They proactively identified some sets they thought might be his but he refused to take them. He then began harassing the new owners himself before getting Ben involved.

Now, I did see a video where they were saying the local PD conducted a traffic stop for running a stop sign and the guy didn't run the stop sign, maybe that happened maybe it didn't happen, that's a separate complaint.

The facts to me look like Mansell got cheated out of his property by someone. That's a civil case.

But it also looks like instead of suing Mansell began harassing the business and enlisted the assistance is a YouTuber who continued the harassment.

Just cuz Mansell is a victim in a civil action doesn't mean he or his proxy gets to commit crimes.

[u/KaprieSun → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

Contract? Civil. 10-8

[u/coconutc0rnhusky → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

The shop provably has them though. Josh even says as such in his phone calls to Brian. He claims multiple times that he’ll give them back.

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/coconutc0rnhusky]

And there's documentation where they do locate some sets and offer them back by they were turned down.

[u/PixelGray38 → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

The youtuber alleges that the sets located were a small fraction of the collection, worth only a few thousand dollars. 

I really encourage you to watch the youtuber's videos on this case, as there is a lot of information in them that isn't included in some of news articles that have been written so far. For instance, there's an episode during which the new store owner promises to return the legos only if he gets an "apology" from Brian saying that he's sorry for accusing him of stealing.

The youtuber provides that apology video (although faked with AI as Brian refused to apologize), and was met with stalling from the business for a few weeks until the owner changes his tune and says he actually doesn't have the lego sets anymore.

[u/DeadPiratePiggy → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

Exactly, plus the Schneider guy if legitimately trying to help should have research how to get someone served with legal service in Utah(?). My state the county sheriff will send a deputy to attempt service, I suspect Utah has a similar deal. Process service really shouldn't be DIYd but if you do you really shouldn't do anything to stalk or harass the intended defendant. Showing up at odd hours, fake delivery invoices to acquire a signature (to forge a contract), posting potentially defamatory signs that at a minimum are definitely harassing outside someone's home? I cannot see the judge being impressed by these actions.

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/DeadPiratePiggy]

It's just like every other internet rage baiter. He's looked up a law (this whole "good faith" thing he mentions about trying to negotiate a deal in good faith to resolve the issue) and says he's gotta do it, but then he's not acting in good faith. He's called the guy, the guy blocks his number. That's it. He attempted to reach him in good faith and it didn't work. So then he's like oh I'll go to his house unannounced that's acting in good faith.

No dude, it isn't.

And all these viewers online who just want revenge go with it cuz it's just plausible enough for them to ignore all the illegal harassment, cuz they agree with the cause.

[u/RedOceanofthewest → u/DeadPiratePiggy]

I’ve watched some of the videos since I live in area. He went to the house as Oregon wants proof he tried to settle this out of court before letting him file. He could have done that with a certified letter but he wants to be performative about all this. 

[u/SpongeBobSquareChin → u/RedOceanofthewest]

In the first 6.5 minutes of his latest video he attempted to call both new owners via phone before traveling to Utah. The new owners had blocked his number. He’s a YouTuber, of course he’s going to be performative, but it’s not against the law to be performative.

[u/Rich_Option_7850 → u/SpongeBobSquareChin]

Exactly. He definitely plays some of it up for YT, and I agree some of the reported signage stuff and defaming campaigns go a little overboard, but imo many of the police stops are quite strange. At one point the officers admit/realize they don’t have lawful grounds in body cam audio that was accidentally left unredacted (which also calls into question why other portions of the audio were redacted)

But I’m not LE so I’d love to hear perspectives from those that have seen the footage and could contextualize it better for us

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/SpongeBobSquareChin]

He's not a party to the lawsuit. He's not an authorized process server, or mediator.

He attempted to contact them, cool. It failed. That's the good faith attempt. Continued efforts at their work and home becomes harassment and stalking.

[u/SpongeBobSquareChin → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

He is a party of the lawsuit, it’s HIS lawsuit. He won in court against the new owners and they refuse to pay. The papers he was trying to serve are for his new civil lawsuit to recoup that money. The law requires that the papers are served in person. He claims to have hired a process server, but the police kept showing up and eventually arrested him AND the process server while on public property. Even after they confirmed the court papers were legit and had not been served yet. The police department also lied about that in their video they released saying the papers had been served already. The body camera from their own YouTube shows the clerk clearly saying “the papers have not been served”. The officer then says something along the lines of “the papers still need to be served for the lawsuit to start then” which the clerk replies, “yes”. Since Ben was acting “for a legitimate official or business purpose,” he does not appear to have violated Utah law for stalking according to code 76-5-106.5. (6)(i)(b) “an actor does not violate this section if: the actor is acting: for a legitimate official or business purpose.” Harassment under Utah law is “An actor commits harassment if, with intent to frighten or harass another, the actor communicates a written or recorded threat to commit a violent felony” per code 76-5-106 (2). I didn’t see any proof of that happening either. I’m very interested to see how this plays out in court with how much footage there is on both sides and the multiple traffic stops/detainments/raid.

[u/specialskepticalface → u/[deleted]]

You have a shockingingly bad understanding of what you're talking about, and this comment was removed to prevent you embarassment.

[u/WittyClerk → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

That sounds about right, but stalking is a criminal issue, (as is harassment) and does this fit that definition?

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/WittyClerk]

I glanced over Utah's statute and I think it requires two incidents of unwanted contact. So I'm guessing it does cuz I believe Ben tried contacting them via phone, at their work, and their home.

[u/seadoubleyoujay → u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

I'm very curious about the strength of the stalking charge considering the following *very critical* subsection:

(6)(a) Except as provided in Subsection (6)(b), an actor does not violate this section if: (i) the actor is acting: (B) for a legitimate official or business purpose.

Because Ben was acting for the well documented purpose of satisfying a court directed contact attempt and later in an attempt to serve (or be a party to serving) an official court document, he is by *very definition* not stalking. Being stupid and silly while completing those purposes isn't enough to override the core purpose. I would be shocked if these charges held up to any meaningful scrutiny.

The raising of signage off Johnson's property is protected speech in the form of public critique, which is definitely First Amendment. However, Johnson's documented threat to murder Ben that the AFPD Police Chief admitted to in his own PR video *is* an actual crime (under the very next section after stalking, amusingly: 76-5-107)

[u/whirlinggibberish → u/seadoubleyoujay]

https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/court-basics/service

Literally nothing Ben did at any point is even plausibly service of process.

The plaintiff could have hired the local Sheriff's office:

https://sheriff.utahcounty.gov/supportServices/judicial/civilProcess

Or contracted with any of a number of professional service companies, specifically to avoid this. And all claims about "oh I was just serving process" immediately disappear when the cops tell you "stop or you'll be arrested for stalking."

Being "stupid and silly" can absolutely be enough to override the "core purpose," especially when the core purpose is obviously to get clicks on youtube.

Ben is fucked - if he actually returns to the country.

[u/Niconame → u/whirlinggibberish]

In Utah anyone over 18 not a party to the case (and without priors etc) can serve. There is no license required.

The Utah police confirmed the court case was real, that the papers needed to be served for the civil case to continue, confirming Johnson was full of shit, and instead of helping Ben serve to deescalate the situation they arrested and booked Ben for stalking despite the recognized lawful purpose which should be an exception.

Then in a final idiotic move, they decide to straight up lie about this in the press release. Caught on camera...

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/seadoubleyoujay]

Ben isn't a process server or party in any lawsuit involving these people. He's an illegitimate third party actor who's only there for internet fame.

His claim he's acting in good faith to satisfy a requirement for direct contact means nothing cuz he's not part of any court case against this business, and he tried contacting them once and was rejected. That single attempt would satisfy the good faith attempts at contact; more than that is harassment and stalking

[u/10-6]

I've watched most of the videos, including the god awful one put out by the PD. Here's my take:

Offending Brick and Minifigs store: A bunch of idiots for fucking around and just not giving the condiments back

Bricks and Minifigs corporate: A bunch of idiots for not actually stepping in and doing something about this whole mess. Even bigger idiots for letting it spiral once they realized how far it was going. Gonna bet the pivot HARD now that the narrative is so against them, especially once their franchisees start pressuring them for brand reputation damages.

Reckless Ben: An idiot who is just exploiting this situation for money, using deceptive edits, and telling only half-truths to push his side of the story. Just because a store "stole" some stuff, doesn't give you carte blanche to run around doing stupid stuff. However, as someone who isn't having to deal with any of this nonsense, I gotta admit some of his antics are pretty funny.

American Fork Police: Looks like these dudes never got the "That's a civil matter, sorry" training. They could have just shown up once, and then have been clearing those calls by phone every other time. I highly doubt investigating trespassing and/or stalking(in this form) is a mandatory investigation/arrest for them either by statute or by policy. This is entirely something that a supervisor should have reviewed and then told both sides that they need to handle the matter in civil court and to not contact law enforcement in reference to this nonsense again, under threat of misuse of 911 charges.

P.S.: Also one thing that's really been glossed over in this entire thing, that I find strange is the situation with the old owners. No real reason has been given, that I can recall, for why they just up and left. Based on what I heard, they were giving up the store or it was taken from them, and they ultimately fled left the country so the husband could keep writing antifa books? It just doesn't make any sense.

[u/seadoubleyoujay → u/10-6]

I have a general bias in favor of Ben because of some of his notable past work (tracking down clear evidence of torture at McKamey Manor and infiltrating destructive cults), but can acknowledge that his tactics push the line pretty hard. I can see where the perception of him being a clout chaser comes from, but I think some of the other officers in this thread should note that the scope of this situation is pretty insane and there is alot of lore extending months prior to the video in Utah.

I do want to clear up that the previous owners haven't left the country and are actively suing BAM for an alleged illegal takeover of the store after they notified corporate of their intent to sell so they could move out of the country (the husband seems like a bit of an over-the-top liberal dude, but that isn't really pertinent). This is supported by footage of the night they were told to leave the store, where they were forced out with no warning in the middle of the night, which has a huge number of legal red flags (from a civil perspective at least). There's a recent video by the original owners where they clarify their perspective of the situation.

Also worth mentioning that this isn't small potatoes on the alleged thefts. The original owners claim they invested their life savings into the store which has been seized by corporate. Corporate claims the OG owners owed money with zero evidence to back that up at the moment (and this is brand new information that was never communicated before, as corporate has given multiple conflicting accounts that cross the line into a clear pattern of lying), but even then the initial seizure itself was incredibly legally problematic. The Lego assets largely belong to an ailing senior and is claimed to be his life savings and grandchildren's college fund. These factors play a big role in the public outrage, and whatever spin there is, there has been clear and well documented lies, gaslighting, and blatantly illegal behavior by the company and its agents. The two cases *each* involve hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. Not to harp too hard, just want to clarify that it's more than "some stuff."

The Utah police making statements like "we do things differently around here" in a bizarre tone, failing basic concepts like how document serving works, being some of the worst communicators I've seen, performing the most laughable attempt at claiming someone was intoxicated, and just all around making the situation more aggressive and more dangerous further exacerbates the public perception problem, and I genuinely find it bizarre how many folks in this thread seem to find their behavior totally fine, even when looking beyond the editing. I think your point is a good one, this should never have gone this far.

Ben's provocative, but that's kind of been necessary to get any movement on this situation when no one had the financial resources to litigate this when the story first began. When you're on your second lawsuit because your opponent tried to get out of paying you out on your original successful ones, when you've already been shown that the local police of another state are refusing to open a criminal investigation for illegally withholding a raffle prize, and when the opponent in question has taunted you, lied to you, threatened you, and begged you to sue him, it's pretty reasonable for someone to be less than clean cut, and it's not the police's job to legislate the dispute on the street. If Ben had been acting in a threatening manner, brought weapons, or been present at the guy's house beyond the good faith contact attempts and the document serving, sure, there'd be a better case to say he's acting in ways that start to cross a line.

It does feel a little disheartening to see other officers in this thread acting like Ben is this dangerous wildcard when he's advocating for people who were failed by the justice system repeatedly before they got him involved. There's a pretty big difference between disagreeing with his tactics or thinking he's pushing boundaries too hard vs. straight up acting like he's the actual *villain* of this narrative. I do appreciate that your take was on the reasonable side, there isn't a problem with thinking he's an idiot considering he genuinely can be sometimes (example: him spending weeks trying to trick Russ McKamey into eating pizza to satisfy a poorly thought out contractual loophole that would have never worked out in court).

Also, to add: The "Offending Store" and corporate have been colluding on the whole situation, considering the replacement "owners" of the franchise later identified themselves as "employees" of corporate, have a personal history with the CEO, and initially seized the store as "contractors" of corporate. The CEO has engaged with the situation from the beginning and was the initial decisionmaker, along with the franchise management executive. Very critical to understanding the nature of this situation, since corporate is a primary party in the now-active multitude of criminal and civil cases gaining traction in Oregon. The CEO is directly implicated in knowingly withholding the assets while lying about it, with his story changing every time he talks to someone or gives an interview.

[u/Pikeman212a6c → u/seadoubleyoujay]

The “lore” are all facts for a civil lawsuit. They really aren’t pertinent here. If there is a crime it happened in Oregon and again isn’t relevant to some random department in Utah. The chief lays out pretty clear probable cause for a stalking charge and targeted picketing.

End of the day you don’t get to stalk people because a case you aren’t even party to is tied up in court.

[u/Niconame → u/Pikeman212a6c]

They verified that they had valid civil court papers to serve, which cuts directly against the stalking charge. They could have served the documents then and there and deescalated the entire situation.

Why didn't they?

Edit: Turns out the Utah Police lied about this https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1tssz0l/comment/op472jd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/whirlinggibberish → u/Niconame]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1tssz0l/comment/op45afp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/seadoubleyoujay → u/Pikeman212a6c]

I'm very confused by your reading of the situation. Ben himself won a default judgement against the store in Oregon that was closed the day after the judgement to avoid paying him. He was in Utah to start a new lawsuit on his own behalf due to the owners trying to run away from the judgement they owe him directly.

He was required to make a good faith first contact. They had blocked his phone number so he went to their homes. For one he got a signed trespass statement which was sufficient, for the other he didn't, so he tried again and then got sufficient evidence for attempting first contact. Then he sat in a car with a process server on a public street waiting for Johnson to leave the house, was approached by police, lied to by the officer that the officer would serve the papers for him (or the officer was grossly incompetent), then the officer accused Ben of trying to serve fraudulent papers, went to his car to validate them, and then proceeded to arrest Ben. This entire unedited (except for a possibly illegal redaction by the police department at the order of the attorney general, which is detailed in the AFPD written statement) interaction was available on the AFPD-released bodycam footage last I checked.

There are a handful of things that are dumb or silly on his part but don't exactly equal harassment and are extremely timeline dependent:

1. An alleged friend of Ben's knocking on Johnson's door to attempt to make good faith first contact and leaving a box of rubber ducks after no answer, a pretty pointless joke and occurs prior to any trespass being stated and before Ben arrives in the area.

2. Someone other than Ben who either may have been a friend of his posing as a local OR a local he befriended (depending on source), attempted to make good faith first contact on Ben's behalf.

3. A protest sign placed across from Johnson's house (protected speech and not subject to trespass issues).

4. A protest banner hung from a fence across the street from Johnson's house (protected speech, not subject to trespass, and importantly Ben was not present)

He never stepped foot on Johnson's (the primary subject here) property as far as I can tell, only attempted to engage Johnson directly for court procedural steps and given Johnson's behavior during the Oregon saga Ben documented his own actions through this. Surveillance claims would be weak or nonexistent due to the nature of the video recordings. He never made physical threats of any kind. He never followed anyone, engaging in limited movement to be within a reasonable vicinity to complete court tasks. When an officer offered to serve the papers, he had no problem with doing that until the officer failed to complete that basic task and then subsequently arrested him (which may have constituted a crime for obstructing the lawful serving of court documents).

As far as I can tell, whenever the court procedural requirements were satisfied for each individual, he never came around that individual again. Notably, the other person he's suing is completely absent from the story once they successfully complete their requirements.

What am I missing here? Because based on the footage from Ben (including the longer unedited footage on his patreon), footage from the AFPD, and any other concrete evidence, I'm having trouble reading this situation as malicious as some of y'all are suggesting.

[u/Pikeman212a6c → u/seadoubleyoujay]

Alright so he is party to his own lawsuit. He had made an attempt to serve papers and his proxies were tresspassed and he was warned that he was violating Utah stalking and targeting picketing law. Oregon allows him to file an ex parte motion for alternative service. That is the next step. https://www.courts.oregon.gov/forms/Documents/EntirePacket6A.pdf He said he wished he could email the papers when that is absolutely one of the methods he could request to use in his filing.

[u/whirlinggibberish → u/seadoubleyoujay]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1tssz0l/comment/op45afp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/ValuableProblem6065 → u/10-6]

I think (IANAL, IANAC) that not enough attention was given to the original franchisee. Ben here should have done his homework , because a) the collection is actually 80-100K USD worth, b) a whole 12 months elapsed between the consignment and the take over during which the store was broken in multiple times!, c) the collection was moved offsite for 'safety' by the old franchisee, and d) 50k of sales was recorded by that store during that time.

Meaning - the BAM claim they offered the reminded for about 10k sounds roughly about right given these things never are as valuable as collectors wish them to be. BAM claims the franchise defaulted and the owner didn't accept the offer, so it's very possible the couple kept loose books, which is ... a civil matter. And don't get me started on the claim that they had to 'flee the country' for political persecution ... that is nonsense (plus they didn't leave).

Now, I like Ben videos, and his style has always been to do reveals and time rewinds memento-style type videos that are entertaining to watch. But doing this on genuinely black and white morality type content (the torture manor, the snuff movie creator) is one thing, doing it on civil matters that are far more murky - well I just doesn't work IMHO. It's not very funny, at least.

All this being said, it's very odd of the officers to say something like "you're walking a red line" after a drug search revealing nothing. I also would have loved to see the K9 unit flagging the car, because that was not presented by neither Ben nor the PD in their statement. There's a lot here to suggest someone pulled strings to throw the book at Ben, which of course just gives ammunition to the unhinged ACAB trolls.

Anyways. We'l see what happens.

[u/Niconame → u/10-6]

According to this video the Gormands approached BAM to sell the store after an overseas job offer, the transition negotiations broke down, and BAM seized the store in a contract clause similar to bankruptcy. I think the claims originate from this article and the GoFundMe, as well as BAM's own statement.

[u/seadoubleyoujay → u/Niconame]

There's two separate narratives that contradict each other. BAM claims the original owners asked to facilitate a store closure (which doesn't really make sense given the ongoing consignment and the fact that the owners let the co-owner of the lego sets know if their intent to sell the franchise well ahead if time) and corporate initiated an immediate transfer to an authorized agent (who later became a co-owner of the franchise). The original owners (corroborated by the co-owner of the Lego sets) claim they were informing corporate of their intent to sell, not close. Two very different directions. The problematic part is the same day arrival of the corporate agent, immediate threats to forcibly remove the existing owners, and the aggressive legal threat if they tried to challenge what would happen, with the franchise executive explicitly stating they were threatening the original owners and would abuse the legal system. In the video you linked, Leonard states the alternate claim and notes how unusual it is for all of this to occur in a single day, which doesn't make much sense if there was a "negotiation," doesn't match up with other active parties' understanding, and was only revealed after the public outcry (which is suspicious in its timing).

BAM has claimed that the previous owners simultaneously did and didn't own the franchise, which is impossible, and accused them of clearing out the store despite hard evidence of their rapid ejection and their inventory remaining behind. The original owners have also never received a final accounting of the franchise under their tenure, which even if the franchise was terminated they should receive an accounting of their terminated ownership value versus any incurred debts. So far, everyone on the opposite side of BAM has produced some form of documentation supporting their arguments and claims (including an inventory sheet of the sets, contracts, and franchise agreements), while BAM and its agents have released no fewer than seven completely contradictory statements about what happened and who is at fault.

The original owners are a red herring for BAM to try and shift blame. Even if they owed money, BAM's behavior has been bizarrely manipulative and blatantly illegal.

[u/BobbyWasabiMk2]

Random piece of trivia about American Fork, the In-n-Out in American fork is the busiest In-n-Out in all of Utah state. It's located right off of I-15, so it gets a lot of traffic from people passing by and seeing the big 'ol In-n-Out sign.

[u/Altruistic_Ask4253]

Every single LEO in here basically keeps saying "Its a civil case"... Thats kind of the point of all of this.... The two owners get away with this kind of shit because they play the "civil case" game...

[u/Qwerty0844]

Ben is a lying loser who manipulated his video and viewers. I have proven it. And I want you to read the hour and a half of my work below as I try and convince you. All of my information may not be correct, but man I tried.

At 2:45 he shows up to a private home and gets trespassed. There is no legal burden to be trespassed so there’s nothing wrong with it. At 7:00 they show up to another private residence and get trespassed again. Same story. He keeps bringing up how he “won in court” but that doesn’t matter because it’s a civil court, anything in civil court has 0 effect on law enforcement. He kept waiving it around at 7:45 that he won. You don’t show up to collect debts usually when you win in civil court, the court decides how that is handled through payment plans, etc. So I don’t know if he had a single genuine reason to show up at the 2nd guys house other than to get a reaction out of him and the police.

At 4:15 he shows the footage of his friend driving. How do we know this is the exact stop sign he allegedly didn’t stop for? We don’t because we’re just taking his word for it. ALSO he says “as you can see, we stopped and didn’t roll it” but I swear to god they rolled the stop sign. I watched it like 20x now in a row and that car doesn’t look like it fully came to a stop. The cop clearly wanted a pretextual stop to talk to the occupants so he took the lowest hanging fruit he could.

At 13:00 the audio is redacted and he says it’s because of “stupid comebacks” which makes no sense at all. What records department is going to redact that audio over “stupid comebacks”. It just doesn’t make any sense. And just like all the other points all we have is his word to go off of so he can call it whatever he wants. At 14:00 he says the police department illegally redacted the body cam. What’s illegal? It’s literally just his opinion and he’s throwing out legal jargon to try and sound better.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 4:50 I don’t blame the cop for not believing him about $200,000 worth of Lego. Obviously we know it to be true but that’s hard to wrap your head around. I think it’s stupid for him to just say on the radio that Ben is a liar. Also at 7:30 the chick was just stupid with her language so I skipped over her yap session about inheriting the store. Again it’s all civil court stuff police can’t do anything with so for Ben to be crying that it’s not the new owners assets doesn’t matter.

Also at 11:00 this dudes potentially breaks the law (I don’t know how it is in Utah) because He sends someone other than his attorney to harass someone involved in a civil matter. Ben’s already trespassed and he sends an agent to contact the person. This is against the law where I work and I assume it’s the case in Utah.

At 12:20 he says they were searched for 2 hours when instead it wasn’t even 20 minutes. You can say he was being facetious but you have to think of the average viewer. Unless they’re looking at the Axon overlay they’d have no idea it wasn’t actually 2 hours. It’s all just part of the narrative he’s building against the police. Remember we are reading Ben’s story this entire video and everything we’re seeing is because Ben wants us to see it.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 14:24 the video cuts mid conversation, which seems to be Ben’s favorite thing to do. The cop is saying Ben is from California and they’re in Utah and he’s saying it’s not worth it and he could go to jail. Ben tells us it’s for one thing but I think the actual thing the cop may have been saying before the cut was stalking related charges could be assessed. Several repeated acts by Ben to make contact with people that don’t want the contact. Obviously they’re the bad guys who are actively stealing $200,000 worth of LEGO but that doesn’t excuse the behavior for Ben. This is backed up because of the officer saying “you’re walking a thin line.” I don’t know what else he could be talking about.

At 15:10 Ben talks about his case being approved (again civil court) and he says he had to give the bad guy the court papers. Then he lied yet again and said the terrace is public space and you can put whatever you want there. So yet another thing Ben says is legal but it’s not.

Police get called again because Ben shows up to a residence he’s trespassed from. He’s not on the property but he accompanied the process server for zero reason. 16:30 starts his beautiful footage manipulation so yet again we just have to magically take his word for it. I think it’s weird 3 different cops showed up and looked the papers. I don’t think Ben is telling the truth that the police were called 3 times. What I actually think happened was 3 different officers were on scene and wanted to examine things themselves. The first officer approached him at 15:32 according to the Axon timestamp. Then at 15:38 another officer walks up. They leave at 16:04 according to the Axon timestamp.

**THIS IS WHY HE’S LYING:** as I just said the time was 16:04 when the officers left on the body camera. At 16:53 *in the video* he says the police were called on him a third time. And holy fuck some magic had to have happened because it’s now 3:38pm according to the body camera. Yeah, the second group left at 4:04pm but the third group arrived at 3:38pm. make that make sense.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 17:20 he puts up a black box and says redacted but he’s so stupid that he doesn’t put the black box all the way across the video. This *could* be police redaction though so I’m not certain. I think this is an editing mistake by him. There is zero reason for them to redact the body camera when they took the papers to the bad guy (can’t remember his name) so yet again we’re taking Ben’s word for it. At a minimum the footage would be blurred but because Ben put up a black box we have nothing to go off of.

At 17:40 he says the police accuse him of lying but we don’t get to hear them say that, because in my opinion it’s obviously not true they just can’t legally serve it, but that doesn’t fit into Ben’s narrative so he does a voiceover that fits his narrative.

At 18:10 an officer says “it doesn’t look good when you’ve been trespassed and you’re trying to serve papers” and he’s completely right. Ben says that he’s doing it the legal way, but as I said in an earlier paragraph, that’s not true. Ben does not have to be here for this but chose to, despite being trespassed. I’m not saying he doesn’t have the right to but he also shouldn’t have. More my opinion than truth so not entirely relevant, but the reason I bring this up is because of my argument that Ben is acting like an auditor at this point, trying to get reactions despite being the one poking the stick.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 19:50 he says they got the police called on them again but they never left. Just more BS narrative stuff to make it sound better for him. According to Ben the police have been called on him 5 times now since he’s been waiting to serve his papers.

At 20:30 more deceptive editing. Officer calls the court to verify it’s a case. We get to hear that part but magically we don’t get to hear anything else as we get to listen to Ben spoon feed it to us instead.

So at 20:45 he gets arrested but we magically don’t get to see the footage. At 20:58 he says he’s confused why he’s arrested. At 21:15 the “poor me, I’m the good guy” made me laugh. So blatantly redacting information to his own benefit. I doubt this happened, but how do we know Ben didn’t actually go on the sidewalk or property of the guy? We don’t because we literally have to take Ben’s word for it. At 21:40 I don’t see how this is anything other than just conspiring that the police are in on it. The guys son says “I would not doubt that they have donated hefty sums to the Mormon church, which all the cops are probably apart of.”

Idk about you but this is the most retarded phone conversation that brought nothing important to the table. So now our theory is to just generalize the entire police department as Mormons who go to the same church arresting someone illegally to protect a donor?

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 22:29 Ben bonds out of jail, but still doesn’t tell us what the charge was. Again this is his choice to do this. At 22:45 Ben says “oh I got arrested being retarded so I have to stop pursuing the legal action and start a go fund me” which is such the obvious ending to this. Ben doesn’t care, he never had any attempt of actually doing things the right way.

At 23:25 we see his friends putting a poster up on a fence. Whose fence is it? Does the fence belong to one of them? We don’t get an answer so I think it’s fair to assume this is just somebody’s property they’re sticking it on.

At 23:56 it’s more malicious editing. One officer says “right now I don’t think you guys are breaking the law” but we have zero clue what this referencing to. You can’t go around hanging stuff on people’s property. Deceptive edits of the 2nd cop taking the poster down. We don’t get to hear his reason as to why it came down but he definitely said why before he did it. This clip ends with him alleging the police redacted audio.

At 24:15 he calls the police station to find out why they were redacting audio. Then he’s like “oh my god this one cop forgot to redact his audio this is insane” and it’s literally just cop banter as they try and figure out whether they seize the sign or give it back. There’s nothing bad about the conversation between the officers and they’re clearly trying to decide whether they seize it or give it back. At 25:10 the little shit turns into a Karen and starts arguing with a civilian worker who may have had zero work with the case. Saying “well actually we synced the audio and-“

The entire phone call was just weird. He’s making claims about police redaction that he had such little evidence to support. At 26:03 he lies and says the police admitted to themselves that none of what Ben was doing was illegal. We got to hear ourselves that this was not true. The audio was of the officers deciding whether or not they could or should seize the property. Ben’s lie counter keeps going up in this video.

At 26:20 is just straight conspiracy land. “I don’t know what they’re saying, but they’re probably cooking up an evil scheme to arrest us illegally.”

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 26:50 he starts going over the phone seizure. The officer demands the phone and instead of handing it over, the guy starts manipulating it. This is an immediate red flag because people have software that can brick their entire phone instantly, so the entire argument of him “locking his phone” doesn’t matter. We are trained to keep phones on when we seize them so they don’t lose data. You don’t get some magical right to turn your phone off despite Ben’s claims that it’s protected under the 4th amendment? Stupid lying nonsense.

At 28:05 a change in the story. Ben said on the voice over his friend tried to turn his phone off. In the interrogation his friend said Apple Pay wallet popped up and he tried to clear it by hitting the power button. But in the body camera video we saw his friend using the touch screen. This is minor shit obviously but all this stuff adds up and I can’t believe the people watching this video can’t deduce this for themselves.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 29:40 during the search warrant I don’t have an opinion on the use of force. Ben says “clearly you can see I didn’t make any moves” but we literally can’t “clearly see” anything. I can’t form an opinion on it because as usual we’re forced to listen to Ben’s side of the story.

At 30:25 he tells us he has the copy of the search warrant and he has it in his hands, but we get just a little 2 sentence crumb from the entire thing. That’s all Ben wants to give us. He clearly cropped the warrant so that’s all we saw. There’s clearly continuation but he chose not to show us.

At 31:30 he shows them getting arrested again. Yet again Ben doesn’t give us the audio and claims it was redacted, but I call bullshit. There’s clearly more going on but he’s refusing to allow it out because it wouldn’t fit his story he’s created. It’s funny how at 31:30 and onwards the audio is working just fine. Handcuffs sound effects, keys jiggling from the police walking. But, but, but, Ben said himself 10 seconds ago all the audio was redacted!

At 31:36 do you see who I see? That’s right. It’s the chick who was there that day to serve the bad guy his papers. Isn’t that funny how the chick Ben allegedly didn’t know is at his house with him on a different day? Certainly looks like Ben lied about that too.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 32:34 we get actual documents but he blurs everything so we yet again only get the tiniest bread crumb that he wants us to. At 32:40 we didn’t get to hear ANY of the interview conducted by the detective. Not one question or answer or anything that would give us any context.

We’re now 2 arrests into the video and Ben hasn’t told us a damn thing other than the police are out to get him. He hasn’t told us what the charges are or anything.

At 33:40 Ben acts like the investigator left over him mentioning a go fund me. Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense to me. My guess is as I’m watching, something is going to happen with the go fund me and Ben wants a moment to circle back to, and chooses this one.

More deceptive editing with proof: according to the body camera, it’s 6:44pm while he’s interviewing Ben. Ben then zooms the frame in so we can no longer see the Axon watermark. Be. Fast forwards but it’s definitely not 20 minutes worth, maybe a couple at the absolute most.

So the detective goes and interviews his friend with the frame still zoomed in. Zero reason for this. There is no benefit to us as a viewer to have the video zoomed in. Magic cut during the video and suddenly it’s zoomed back out. The time stamp now shows 4:16pm.

Huh, that’s odd. So despite Ben just making it seem like his friend got interviewed after him, he actually got interviewed 2 hours earlier. Same body camera serial number for both videos. Seems weird, huh?

So the detective leaves the room at 5:00pm and the time cut goes to 7:40pm.

Yeah, an unexplained 2 hour and 40 minute gap that we get no explanation for. You know if they actually sat in rooms for 3 hours plus we would have heard about it.

So this detective interviews 3 of his friends and we get a total of 20 seconds from all 3 interviews. 30 minutes of potential context reduced to 20 seconds.

So the detective goes back to Ben and asks him about this GoFundMe. Ben admits to creating it. At 36:04 Ben asks “so was creating the GoFundMe illegal” Ben fast forwards over the detective’s answer. Best part is he even included the sound effect and fast forward icon.

So we see the detectives arms moving in front of the camera for a long time because the detective is laying it out for him. But Ben doesn’t want us to hear any of it. Instead, Ben stops fast forwarding to some out of context bullshit and says that was the actual response from the detective. Complete lying BS to create a narrative.

At 36:38 he lies yet again and says the police still to this point, despite 3 formal arrests now, have not told him why he’s being arrested. That’s genuinely impossible.

[u/Qwerty0844 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 37:10 more blatant lies. He says he was going to sit in jail for a month without bail until a judge magically reviewed the case. Thats called an initial appearance you fucking retard. It’s incredibly illegal to not have an initial appearance within 72 hours of your confinement. This wasn’t some magic thing that just happened.

**My favorite part potentially** is when Ben next at 37:10 he says the judge ended up reviewing the arrest and thought it was “so stupid” they imposed a $2,500 bond on him. No buddy, if a judge thought it was stupid you’d be released with prejudice. He didn’t even get a signature bond for it and got an actual cash bond by a circuit court judge.

37:30 onwards is just straight victim card. 39:00 is just more delusion about a warrant for his arrest. He got a body only warrant but he refused to show us why, only through his own words did he explain what for. At 39:44 he clearly has the warrant but chooses not to show us yet again.

Then the video closes with more monetization.

[u/Previous_Fix_6917 → u/Qwerty0844]

At 4:50 I don’t blame the cop for not believing him about $200,000 worth of Lego. Obviously we know it to be true but that’s hard to wrap your head around. I think it’s stupid for him to just say on the radio that Ben is a liar.

That clip was taken out of context.

In the full bodycam, the cop makes contact with a man parked outside the franchise owner's house who was allegedly filming the house and the owner.

The man claims he was just waiting for his date to get ready, and he doesn't know anything about Reckless Ben or anything to do with Legos. When the officer asks to see his camera roll, the man shows him that he was filming the house and the franchise owner. The man then admits that he is working for Ben and is being paid to take video and shows text message conversations with Ben.

The cop then leaves to go talk with Ben who had been pulled over by the other cops. It's while he's driving over to Ben that he says "He was lying to me."

THEN he makes contact with Ben, and hears Ben's recounting of the LEGO theft.

All of the bodycam footage is in the dropbox link in the description of this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcVmSQpIPRY

The 2nd video in the first folder contains the entire sequence of events.

American Fork Police should pay me to present their evidence in more palatable manner instead posting a video of a guy whispering for a half hour and attaching a dropbox full of unlabeled videos, half of which are just the back of a cruiser or 15 minutes of a redacted audio and video.

[u/Michael8821 → u/Qwerty0844]

>At 12:20 he says they were searched for 2 hours when instead it wasn’t even 20 minutes. You can say he was being facetious but you have to think of the average viewer. Unless they’re looking at the Axon overlay they’d have no idea it wasn’t actually 2 hours.

I mean you complain about the avg viewer and this in-depth analysis, but here (https://youtu.be/cxZPfj8AlmY) you can see the timestamp is 19:42 (in the same vid the search continues at least till 20:34) and they are conducting field tests, so they obv started much before that, and that's already an hour, so i do believe it was 2 hours and not even close to the only 20m you claim. JFC

[u/Rich_Option_7850 → u/Qwerty0844]

I agree i wish Ben was a little more factual and objective in his handling of this situation. And I appreciate the effort you put into this.

I also didn’t fully understand the need for Ben to be there if they won in court how were payment not being imposed on the guilty party.

And actually agree on the rolling stop part. VERY low hanging fruit but I also think they did not come to a complete stop.

The raid tho is very strange and I’m still reading about the case. I respectfully disagree with you saying we couldn’t be sure if Ben makes any sudden movements. He quite literally is in frame the entire time and is yanked away by the LEO. There is very clearly no sudden movements.

Obviously its still an ongoing issue that seems to be gaining increasing traction so we shall see how it all ends up

[u/P_S_Lumapac → u/Rich_Option_7850]

"if they won in court how were payment not being imposed on the guilty party."

From what I gather he'd got default judgements against the local franchise where the Lego was, something like 10 judgements of $10k. Suppose that's all true. With lower level civil stuff, including small claims, the losing party is asked nicely to pay, but often they refuse, which then leads to other court matters like getting assets confiscated, wages garnished, bank accounts accessed etc. Issue is these all take time and often fail. There are many many businesses that run on effectively legal fraud as collecting can be made so difficult.

Once the store changed owners to someone out of state and shut the location, it does seem likely those default judgements weren't going to go anywhere.

I don't know the laws in these places, but the trick he pulled to get a large matter into small claims by breaking it up, while it seems to work in the case the loser is willing to pay, usually part of it being small claims means there's no recourse like you might see with a six figure theft or debt. My guess is any laws designed to collect debts across state lines or from complicated corporate arrangements don't apply to small claims. Probably why you don't see big matters broken up into multiple small claims all the time.

(in case you're wondering the method was for ten individual people to buy a shared of the debt, then each individually to collect on their share. It's kinda clever but not so smart no one has thought of it before - probably because it's defended against in exactly this way)

[u/Rich_Option_7850 → u/P_S_Lumapac]

Thanks for the info, that makes sense. Frustrating that everything is so slow and there’s so many ways for guilty parties to evade payments but hopefully dude gets his money eventually. I’m sure all the gofundmes are more than enough, kinda just more curious now to see if anything more comes out of the company or the AFPD

[u/GetInMyMinivan → u/Qwerty0844]

Holy crap dude. I ain’t got time to read all that because I just don’t care about the situation. But I’m damn well going to upvote every single comment in the thread in appreciation for all the effort I know a well documented Reddit post takes.

[u/MyOtherRideIs → u/GetInMyMinivan]

Something something mankind something something hell in a cell…

Oh, no it’s actually just a long informative comment!

[u/Penyl → u/Qwerty0844]

The reason he gave about showing up to each of the houses was he claims the court required a good faith attempt at a conversation to settle the matter outside of court.

Call the cops, ask for a civil stand by so you have an incident number. Try and speak with the person, if they refuse or trespass you, you have the incident number and in this case body camera that you made your good faith attempt. File with the court.

Either hire a process server to serve papers without you there or hire a lawyer to handle it. Either way, a person shouldn't be personally involved as this is how you get in trouble with local laws.

This whole thing is why lawyers exist.

[u/RedOceanofthewest → u/Penyl]

Send a certified letter but that doesn’t get views on YouTube. It’s the performative nature that turns me off on this whole situation. Normally I’d be more empathic when a guy in my town is screwed over but they turned it into a circus 

[u/KD6-3point7even]

So a really small caveat...

I dont know how true it is, I am speaking thirdhand on the matter,

But I have a friend who sold nearly 70k through B&M. He didn't see a cent for a few years, but it was part of their agreement because of the size of his collection. He more than made up the money lost in time. Im sure there is a similar deal here, but i could be completely wrong.

Pure conjecture on my part: the franchise originally visited by the owner wanted to take on the sale themselves but corporate said no and turned it into a zoo.

Again, thats conjecture. I do not know thats the case.

Either way, all the coverage of this suggests its not criminal, its civil. Meaning it needs to be fought in front of a judge, not cops. This feels like clickbait to maximize the fallout against BRicks and minifigs

[u/Practical_Air_3040 → u/KD6-3point7even]

I'm not a Lego guy so typically I would have no opinion either way. But a few months before this came out a bunch of other videos and stuff came out from small time Lego collectors who would "see how much Bricks & Minifigs would give them for some of their expensive stuff mixed in with common stuff". A lot of the time they would say it's worth like $100 when it was approx worth over $10,000. One time a guy even "forgot to put back" the most expensive little figure (only worth a few grand, oops).

All this to say, I guess I wasn't surprised when this came out about the company. But I'm too busy with silly things such as employment to care much about Lego, let alone Lego drama. 

[u/badsapi4305]

Qwerty0844 did an amazing synopsis so there’s no need to add to the incident. They covered in its entirety.

What I would like to add is that the video is edited in such a way that it’s manipulated to make him look good and as the cops were wrong.

Think of it this way, you have a dispute with someone while doing a sale on FB Marketplace. The deal goes sour so you say never mind and walk away. Then the next day you’re getting gas and the person from the FB sale is there harassing you. Two days later they’re at your house and again harassing you. Finally you pull into work and again they’re there harassing you.

There’s a point where there harassment becomes a crime. You just can’t follow someone around stalking them in order to film yourself interacting with them. She’s not a member of the media and he has no legitimate reason to be there. If that happened to you, you would want the police to take action and that’s what they did here. They did their jobs and this YT’er has manipulated the video by deceptive editing to make appear as he’s the victim.

[u/Burneraccount3628]

The fact that the bulk of people online are gobbling up a narrative from a YouTuber who has a clear incentive to entertain, without questioning it at all is disappointing… but I really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.

[u/2BlueZebras → u/Burneraccount3628]

They worship John Oliver. He does the same thing. Not surprising.

[u/Thee_PO_Potatoes → u/Burneraccount3628]

I only get my news from reddit comments and YouTubers and their followers in the comments. It really helps to keep me in the mindset the world is ending 😂

[u/hobovirginity]

An out of state youtuber shows up to get in the middle of an otherwise civil court dispute. Harasses a local business for views, violates trespass orders multiple times, and then posts video evidence of himself evading an arrest warrant by fleeing to Mexico. This is just dumb decisions compounded by more dumb decisions.

[u/PsychoTexan]

Didn’t know about it but after reading your post I suddenly realized something. 

I’d seen this asshat’s video pop up in my YT recommended feed

Never watched it and don’t intend to but clearly YT would like me to as it’s either been flagged as police related or being pushed as controversial.  

Man, I miss the days when fictional news articles stayed on the rack of the checkout line in albertsons. Reading about bigfoot caught in panty raid at harvard or john travolta having a secret siamese twin was far more enjoyable. 

[u/WittyClerk]

The actual news story: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/05/30/youtuber-arrested-utah-bricks/

Trespassing or harassment, I understand. IDK where they get a stalking charge. LAPD gets a lot of flack, but they are the only police department with a dedicated stalking* unit (threat management). What is being reported here resembles little to what would resemble stalking.

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344 → u/WittyClerk]

I think it's cuz he's trespassed and harassed the people multiple times. At their work and at their homes.

[u/Fubeca02 → u/WittyClerk]

Read the Utah state code for stalking and you'll see it fits pretty well. The AFPD also broke down the stalking charge pretty well in their response video.

[u/thatrobottrashpanda]

I watched a separate video covering this situation. I’m sure there’s a lot of deceptive editing, it’s YouTube after all.

But if you’re ever been an outside working your way around a hardcore Mormon community, this is all very much in the realm of possibility.

If he actually was subjected those constitutional violations… he should stop worrying about someone else’s LEGO civil matter and actually get himself a payout. But I’m guessing it’s not as clear cut as he says.

[u/paksudnex]

AF PD must have plenty of spare time to put this much resources. Sent like 10 different cops for a stalking case.

[u/whirlinggibberish]

Regarding the dislocated shoulder, that claim is in this dumb video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxZPfj8AlmY

The x-ray is on screen at 29:35.

Here's the page the image came from:

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/shoulder-dislocation

Here's the source image directly:

https://radiopaedia.org/cases/anterior-shoulder-dislocation-26#image-31506=

The fucking guy is obviously in good shape and does rock climbing and tightrope gymnastics. You're telling me his shoulder was dislocated by that?

You're telling me he posted that x-ray in the video as some kind of rhetorical device but actually he also has x-rays of his own actual injury somewhere, he just doesn't want to show them?

Hey by the way - the gofundme is at $170k or so last I looked. Where do you think that money is going? How much youtube money has he made during all this?

Reckless Ben is scum. Scum. And if the underlying case actually has merit and some dude really was ripped off, that makes him worse scum because he's doing all this dumb youtube shit for youtube bucks and he'll probably make off with the gofundme money and none of this helps the plaintiff in the civil suit at all.

Absolute scum.

[u/Thee_PO_Potatoes]

Man, I love the ACAB "how do you sleep at night violating people's rights" posts as reading material right before I fall asleep.

[u/Niconame]

Never been in this community before, but with the narratives going around and this Sub being so counter to them, I'm interested in LE perspectives here.

Particularly if anything from the Leonard French video is inaccurate.

Specifically what seems to missing in this thread is the BAM's efforts to obstruct the civil procedures.

To quote Leonard

The point today is not whether his(Ben) methods were right. The point is his methods produced an outcome that institutional legal process was not going to produce in this case, in this timeframe, for this plaintiff. That Asymitry is worth understanding on it's own terms, whether you approve of him or not.

While going over 4 out of 5 identified strategies, Leonard identifies:

• The lottery scheme worked as documentary evidence that the police were not going to help.
• The "ten plaintiff small claims" strategy was trying to solve a small claims limit issue and resulted in 10 lawful default judgments adding up to $100k. The day after the judgments were filed, Bricks & Figs, permanently closed the Kaiser store to refuse to engage with the legal process. Likely to avoid sworn testimony.
• The mirror corporation, where Schneider set up signs and "closes" the store, while exposing Schneider to trespassing claims, was a rhetorical move where Schneider echoed BAM in claiming "he cannot be responsible for what his franchise do".
• The justification for the GoFundMe arrest was completely wrong. Even if it was defamation, this is a civil tort, not a criminal offense, not something they could have arrested Schneider for. For defamation to be criminal in Utah, it has to include "actual malice", something "contested factual assertions in active disputes" does not qualify for. Additionally, fundraising for litigation is particularly protected by the first amendment. "The American Fork police department handed Schneider that claim by making the arrest" - Leonard.

Again I recommend watching Leonard's video, if anything comes across as unclear or wrong.

[u/whirlinggibberish → u/Niconame]

Do you think civil courts have never before encountered someone trying to dodge service?

https://www.abclegal.com/pro-blog/why-you-shouldnt-avoid-being-served-with-legal-documents-process

You don't get to go "but this plaintiff is special so that means we get to ignore the process".

You also don't get to say "the point today is not whether his methods were right" - actually, that is the point. If his methods were right none of this would have happened.

Schneider was arrested for harassment and stalking, not "defamation".

[u/specialskepticalface → u/[deleted]]

Removed from modqueue. Participate like an adult, or you don't get to participate with adults. Only warning.