Hidden True Crime - The Viral LEGO Scandal: We Put the Whole Story in Order So You Don’t Have To

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

How did a missing LEGO collection worth up to $200,000 spiral into lawsuits, arrests, police corruption allegations, and a nationwide internet firestorm? In this complete investigation, Lauren Matthias breaks down the viral Reckless Ben vs. Bricks & Minifigs saga from beginning to end—covering Bryan Mansell’s missing Star Wars LEGO collection, the role of Bricks & Minifigs, shocking bodycam footage from American Fork Police, accusations of insider relationships, Mormon community connections, civil rights concerns, Coffeezilla’s investigation, and the legal battles now unfolding across multiple states. Was this simply a business dispute fueled by poor recordkeeping, or does the evidence point to something much bigger? From missing LEGO and default judgments to arrests, lawsuits, GoFundMes, and allegations of corruption, this is the complete story everyone is talking about. And by the end of this episode, you may find yourself asking the same question millions of viewers are asking: if this much chaos can happen over LEGO, what happens when the stakes are even higher? About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Quince.com slash hidden true crime. They've done nothing but lie and make my life a living hell over this. So who's Ben? That's the bad. Ben, how's you tell you? That's good. Do you like it? I'm Cali.

Not worth it, right? Yeah, yeah. We play differently here. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Joshua Johnson contacted police and reported he was going to shoot someone. I was gonna, just gonna scare him a little bit and let him go with all I really was gonna do. Oh, really?

Is that small? The case that we are talking about today has exploded across the internet over the last few weeks. It was originally a pretty niche dispute between the Lego and collectible communities. Yeah. But now has the attention of true crime channels, yours truly, major news networks and attorneys across the country. And you are going to find out why this is such a big deal right here. Because we have actually here at Hidden True Crime and following it from the very beginning. beginning, and we are doing something that nobody else has done. We are bringing it all together.

Brick by brick, pun intended, the whole story. We have everything you need to know plus more. It's wild, guys. It all started when a YouTuber named Ruckless Ben set out to help a family recover their missing Lego collection. No big deal, right? In fact, that's actually a story made for wholesome YouTube entertainment. Let's help solve the mystery of the missing Lego collection and make a family happy. Except these weren't ordinary Lego sets. This particular collection represented one man's life savings, built over decades and filled with rare, highly valuable collectibles originally estimated to be worth around $200,000. Brian Mansell placed his elderly dad's Lego collection on consignment with a store called Bricks and Minifigs with the understanding that the set

would be sold that the family would receive a percentage of the sales. But when new owners took over this particular Bricks and Minifigs franchise location, something strange happened. The collection seemingly vanished. And instead of anybody taking accountability or responsibility, there have been people pointing the blame at others, slamming others, in arrest in Utah with some wild body cam footage we're about to talk about, conflicting stories that do not add up, questionable business practices,

and a public relations nightmare that has engulfed the bricks and mini-figs brand. So on its own, that would already be a fascinating story. But the reason this case landed on our radar goes far beyond missing Lego sets. Because while trying to help this family either recover the collection or receive compensation, Reckless Ben, that YouTuber we mentioned, who set out on his wholesome adventure to help a family find their Legos, he's unexpectedly found something else. he appears to have uncovered something much bigger. Police corruption, conflicts of interest, and disturbing conduct involving members of this community.

And when I say community, I mean specifically the Mormon or LDS community. Yeah, that's not where anyone saw this story going. But here we are. There seems to be a clear pattern here that is being exposed, brick by brick, video after video, a pattern of insiders, protecting insiders. Even when doing so comes at the expense of being honest or at the expense of taking responsibility, you know, choice and accountability, choosing the right, or even at the expense of inherent individual rights. That's why this mystery has really switched from being solely about Lego and becoming a story about power.

Because if people are willing to bend rules, ignore misconduct, or protect their own over a dispute involving rare collectibles, it raises a scary question, many scary questions, actually. What happens when the stakes are even higher? If this is how some people conduct business over missing Lego sets, what would happen in cases involving far more serious crimes? My name is Lauren Matthias, and this is hidden true crime. At the center of this whole story is an 83-year-old man named Ed Mansell. And back in the late 1990s, Ed began collecting Star Wars Lego sets. but unlike many collectors, he wasn't buying them simply for fun.

He viewed them as in investment. His plan was to hold on to them for decades and eventually use the proceeds to help pay for his grandchildren's college education. Now that's wholesome. Over the years, that collection grew into something extraordinary. By the time Ed decided to sell, the collection reportedly contained, more than 780 sealed Lego sets. and approximately 1,200 mini figures.

Some of those items were exceptionally rare. At least one individual set was estimated to be worth more than $10,000. And other mini figures, they were believed to be worth over $1,300 each. This was one of the largest sealed Star Wars Lego collections, mini collectors have ever seen. By 2023, Ed had been battling cancer. and his health was declining. So he decided it was time.

It was finally time to sell his extraordinary collection. He asked his son, Brian Mansell, to handle the sale, within the understanding that the money would ultimately go toward Ed's grandchildren's college funds. There was just one problem. Brian wasn't familiar with the Lego resale market. So in September of 2023, he walked into a local bricks and mini-final, store in Salem, Oregon, looking for help. And to understand why this becomes important later, let's just briefly set the stage about bricks and mini figs itself. Bricks and mini figs, often called

BAM, BAM for bricks and mini figs. Bam. It was founded in 2009 in Battleground, Washington. A second location opened in Can Be Oregon in 2010, and franchising officially began in 2011. The company's business model is simple. Buy, sell, and trade. Lego makes sense. Over time, the company expanded dramatically. In 2018, Ammon McNeff, serving as CEO and Matt McNeff, serving as C-O-O-Bot-Bahm franchising, and under their leadership, the brand reportedly grew from approximately 35 stores to more than 300 locations across the United States and Canada. And now its headquarters were in Utah, Utah County, owned by the brothers. Importantly, ban stores, though, remember this, they're independently owned and operated by franchisees. That distinction becomes crucial later.

So when Brian entered the Salem store to sell his dad's Lego collection, he met the store owner. Her name was Crystal Gorman, and they entered into a consignment agreement. And under this agreement, the Mansell family would retain ownership of the Lego collection while the store sold items on their behalf. And in exchange, the store would receive a 35% commission from sales. The family still technically owned the Lego collection, or at least that was their understanding. And that is also my understanding. I'll say that is what consignment means. The store does not own the Lego collection, but it will sell it for a.

percentage. And thus, Ed's collection was delivered to the store in November of 2023 on consignment. Now, to help identify which inventory belonged to the men's cells, yellow stickers were reportedly placed over the barcodes. Almost immediately, the collection became an absolute sensation. On November 7, 2023, Crystal posted a formal announcement on the store's Facebook page promoting a public display. scheduled for November 11th and November 12th. Journalists and members of the public, they were invited to attend this event. It was a very big deal. The promotional materials claimed that the collection was worth approximately, again, $200,000. That figure would later, again, become a major

talking point. According to later reporting, the $200,000 figure appears to have been a high-end visual estimate used primarily maybe for promotional purposes. After conducting more detailed research, Crystal has backtracked and reportedly concludes that the more realistic high-end valuation was somewhere between $95,000 and $100,000. But still, even at the lower estimate, this is an incredibly valuable collection. And the event attracted significant attention. Local news covered the story. Bricks and Minifax corporate promoted the story. They knew. Collectors lined up outside the store just to see it. And Ed himself attended the event. He was photographed alongside Crystal while standing beside the collection. He had spent decades building brick by brick. Now, for security reasons,

Crystal publicly stated that the collection would be stored off-site after business hours because the store had previously experienced theft. But later, once secure display cabinets and a safe were installed in the store, portions of the collection were back to being stored on site wholly, solely. For roughly the next year, things appeared to be working. Brian says that he visited the store approximately once a month to collect paper receipts and payment checks for sold inventory. While the exact amount paid is still being disputed,

Brian has stated that he received approximately $15,000 during that period. Bricks and mini-figs, however, later said that the total payments were closer to $21,000, regardless of which figure is ultimately correct. Everyone agrees that some payments were made. But there was another issue brewing beneath the surface. Bricks and mini-figs later said that this consignment agreement had never been authorized or approved by BAM corporate, as allegedly, required under franchise agreements.

According to BAM, their business model did not authorize consignment details like this. In other words, the company's position is essentially the Crystal went rogue, right? From BAM's perspective, this was not an approved corporate arrangement. However, I will say that Crystal did later provide documentation of her franchise agreement, and in it, it does say that consignment deals are allowed. So that is still up for debate. Regardless, from Brian Mansell's perspective, he entered into an agreement with the owner of a bricks and mini-fig store, turned over nearly an entire life's collection, and expected the company operating under that brand to honor it. The competing views sort of are at the center of like this entire controversy, essentially.

And then everything changed in late 2024. Because that October, Crystal contacted ban corporate support and inquired about closing her store, according to Crystal. And also according to Crystal, she was planning to move out of the United States because her husband had received a publishing opportunity in Europe. Well, Crystal later told CBC News that she believed corporate intended to buy the store back from her. My husband and I were planning on moving out of the country. I reached out to corporate to let them know, hey, this is something that's coming up in the next four to five months. She told the Bricks and Minifigs head corporation that she was planning on selling the store. So the corporation actually was able to find a buyer to buy it from her.

They let me know that they had somebody who was interested in purchasing a franchise in the area. But according to BAM corporate, there were serious financial problems with this specific store and location. The company says that at the time, Crystal owed nearly $200,000 in unpaid royalties, lease obligations, and vendor bills

rendering the business insolvent. BAM states that these financial issues triggered corporate security interests into the store's assets. We started getting calls from the landlord, letting us know that Crystal was behind on the lease payments at the location. We had also gotten a couple of notices from some of our vendor partners that bills had not been paid by the store. And so we felt pretty strongly that there was going to be a risk of her just, you know,

like attempting to file bankruptcy, doing some of these other types of things, which we've had franchisees do in the past. And that's problematic. On November 8th, 2024, Crystal reportedly contacted corporate again to discuss her move overseas. Corporate says, as an agreement was reached, she would surrender the store on November 14th, and Bam would not pursue the full amount that she allegedly owed. But other reports do paint a far different picture. According to some accounts, Crystal and her husband were effectively removed from the store under threat of police involvement. And video from November 14th shows Crystal speaking with the new incoming owners and corporate representatives about the Mansell collection.

One of these individuals present was Kai McAllister, who at the time served as director of operations and is now executive projects manager. One of the new owners named Brandon Best arrived to take over the store. Remember that name, Brandon Best. So what are the new owners? Crystal attempted to explain to Brandon that the Mansell family had not yet fully been paid for their consigned Lego collection. And in response, Kaine McAllister was heard saying, quote,

that's a business matter. Brandon will take on the business. He takes on all of that. He was going to be in town and he was going to stop by and just take a look at it. It wasn't until Brandon got there that he informed me that they were terminating my franchise agreement.

We were getting threats from Brandon and for corporate that if we didn't leave the store immediately, the police were going to be called. I told corporate I wasn't comfortable leaving that night without the inventory. I was also told I was not going to be able to stay there long enough to do that inventory. But we don't just have to take this woman's word for it. She was actually able to save all the security camera footage from that night proving that everything she just said is true. All the footage and evidence is there. In the security cam footage, it's him at the store kicking her out. In that footage, they sent us is Crystal asking him, how am I supposed to pay this guy?

These are sets he has not been paid for. These are ones that he has not been paid this percentage yet. And if I don't have any tickets, I won't know how much I need to pay. That's a business thing and not necessarily you are speaking. He's taking on the business he kicks on all that kind of time. His own corporation is sitting there on videos saying they're going to take it. So that statement has become one of the most. heavily scrutinized moments in this entire controversy because Brian Mansell later says that is not what

happened. Crystal was formally terminated that evening. She left the store and Brandon secured the building and obtained the keys. And according to Crystal, there were also two months of missing sales receipts from approximately August through October, which had not yet been provided to Brian. Well, the next scheduled payment was reportedly due on November 15th. Brian soon learned that Crystal was gone and new owners had taken over. He visited the store multiple times, carrying copies of his contract and inventory records. So what happened next is where these stories all go down different paths, all diverge. Because according to Brian Mansell, the new operators told him they did not recognize the agreement.

He also noticed that much of the collection was no longer on display. So he called police. And police officers, they classified the situation as a civil matter rather than a criminal theft investigation. Because Lagos, never mind it's someone's entire life savings. They saw this as civil, a business matter, Lagos. Well, Bricks and mini-figs later issued a statement saying that when Brian arrived after the ownership transition, the new owners had no knowledge of the consignment agreement. The company also reiterated that the agreement had never been authorized by corporate.

But again, Brian saw things very differently. In a statement later provided to the collecting weekly podcast, he said, quote, essentially they took over the store, stole our items, and don't think we have the time or resources to do anything about it. Brian alleges that the takeover, the collection was never returned, and he was never fully compensated. He further alleges that the identifying yellow stickers were removed from the set. So those yellow stickers removed from the sets. There were also reports that a U-Haul truck moved some of the inventory to another bricks and mini-figs location in Eugene, Oregon. Remember that, a U-Haul truck, which is a store in Eugene that was also a inventory.

associated with the new owners of this Salem organ store, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. So exactly how much Lego remained inside the Salem store at the time of the transition remains heavily disputed and an issue that we will be discussing later. Stay with me. But Brian, Brian Mansell later became convinced that corporate had sort of this pattern of seizing struggling stores and taking control of inventory. Yikes, if true, right? And at one point, Brian reportedly had someone purchase one of his own sets from the store after he had been told his inventory had been removed. Interesting, right? Okay. So to Brian, Mansell, this appears to prove that at least some of his Legos were still being sold at other stores. He continued contacting police. He was not giving up. This is his children's college education. This is a life savings of his bother. So he contacts police. He contacts Bam corporate. He contacts attorneys, but nothing's changed.

The police, once again, classify this dispute as civil rather than criminal. So eventually, Brian was trespassed from the Salem store. On November 22nd, 2024, Brian sent certified mail formally terminating the consignment agreement with Crystal's LLC and cited missed payments and refusal to allow inventory inspection. Meanwhile, another development would later emerge. So, according to reports, sometime in late November or early December 2024, Brandon Best and Josh Johnson discovered approximately 25 Star Wars sets inside a closed backroom closet. Those sets were reportedly offered back to Brian. However, Brian did not accept the offer. 25 sets. It was nothing compared to what he was actually missing. So the controversy

continued into 2025. Here we are, 2025. And from November 24 through April 2025, Brian exchanged messages with BAM corporate representatives and company attorneys, but still no resolution. No resolutions reached. In April 2025, Brian finally, finally in April, found a platform willing to discuss the case publicly. And he appeared on the collecting weekly podcast on April 16th, 2020, where he shared his version of the events. Inventory spreadsheets, receipts, and ring footage. These were all talked about during those appearances, and this story slowly begins spreading through the Lego collecting community, right? But according to Brian, public attention was difficult to kind of sustain. Then April,

2025 still collecting weekly, reportedly backs away from their coverage quickly after receiving legal threats from Bricks and Minifix. So they were threatening legal action against us, you know, Brick and Minifix, which is a pretty big company who probably has way more resources than we could, you know, really put up a fight against. So then came another unexpected discovery. Something I don't talk about a lot is what happens after we, we finish recording because covering these cases, you don't just turn it off. There are nights where my body is exhausted. I'm ready for bed, but my brain is still going, replaying everything. I've always struggled with sleep. That's no secret. I've shared about my insomnia here.

And for a while, I had this nightly ritual with Beam Dream that was really intentional. This year got busy, really busy. Late nights turned into researching, writing, keeping up with everything and honestly I stop prioritizing sleep. I skip the ritual and I felt it. So I have been trying to get back to myself and that starts with how I end my day. I have brought beam dream back into my routine and it's becoming that signal again. The day is over. That's what it means. I'll make a cup. Sometimes I'll put a little bit of hot milk or oat milk in it. Just sit for a few minutes. No phone, no notes, just letting my body catch up. What I love is that it doesn't knock me out. It just helps me slowed down and fall asleep naturally. It's made with things like magnesium and althianine,

rishi mushroom. It's low calorie, 15 to 20 calories with no sugar, no dairy, no gluten. I've noticed I'm falling to sleep a lot faster. I'm not waking up in the middle of the night and I actually wake up feeling rested, which everyone is happy about because as a mom and a wife, that matters. I need energy, I need patience that starts with sleep. For me, this isn't a quick fix. It's just a small nightly rhythm that helps me wind down and improve everything else in my life. So if you've been struggling with sleep too, you can check it out at shopbeam.com slash true crime and use code true crime for up to 30% off your first order. I've linked it below. The QR code is on the screen. And honestly, if anything, maybe this is just a reminder, even a few minutes at night to slow down, get rid of those screens.

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Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. In December 2025, Crystal reportedly found a small portion of the collection still at her house. The items included approximately 230 mini figures, around a dozen smaller sets, and one highly valuable cloud city set reportedly worth more than $10,000. She returned those items to Brian. Crystal has stated that the 230 mini figures were not included on any spreadsheet tracking inventory. That's a problem. Terrible record keeping. Even after that discovery, however, a substantial amount of the original collection still remains unaccounted for. Where is it? And that is where a YouTuber that we've already brought up to you known as Reckless Ben enters this story. Enter Reckless Ben. So his real name is Benjamin Schneider. Better known online as Reckless Ben. And he became interested in the and sale family situation. Again, in 2025, it was early 2025. And according to Ben, he viewed the case

as an extraordinary example of injustice. He told ABC4, quote, I just thought it was such a crazy level of injustice that went on. So then on May 21st, 2026, Ben uploads a video titled, I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of Lego. The video exploded online, and it has accumulated millions of views. And suddenly, what had once been a niche dispute within this Lego community becomes mainstream news. Because once Reckless Ben enters the picture, and once he starts investigating, the controversy surrounding bricks and mini figs becomes about something much bigger than a missing Lego collection. Yeah. And before we keep going into what happened when Ben launched his investigation, because,

whoa, I do want to, again, set the stage and explain more about who reckless Ben actually is, Benjamin Schneider, long before his growing YouTube career took off. Ben was already making a name for himself in the world of slacklining while studying engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He began documenting the slacklining adventures and other extreme activities online, gradually building an audience drawn to sort of this fearlessness he had, this personality of absolute no fear, unconventional stunts in 2018. He's just 22 years old. And Ben, he founded a company called Ascending Slack. lines. A company specializes in slacklining equipment. His skills continue to gain attention.

And in 2021, he appeared in a televised competition where he actually breaks the world record for the most flips performed on a slack line in 60 seconds. Yeah, that's no joke. Not only did he break the existing record, but at age 27, he doubled it. Then in 2024, Ben makes headlines again after filming himself walking a tight rope between two unfinished towers at oceanwide plaza in Los Angeles. Yeah, the stunt drew a lot of attention, including the attention of the Los Angeles Police Department, who investigated and ultimately led to the video of this stunt being removed from YouTube. So these certainly high-risk attention-grabbing stunts did help build his public persona. Ben's YouTube channel, then it eventually evolves. It involves into something much different.

Investigative content. So one of his earliest investigative style videos appears to date back about six years ago, and it is titled, I Stormed Area 51 and led the Raid with a plunger. And while there was certainly a heavy dose of humor involved in this, clearly, you can see that from the headline. This formula of sort of like mixing investigative, real investigations into sort of entertainment and satire and creativity, sometimes outright absurdity. We'll talk about some really absurd things. It sort of has this, it works incredibly well for reckless Ben. So at the time, Ben claimed he wanted to uncover the truth about the aliens, but the video also showcased his talent for turning unusual investigations into, again,

like genuinely entertaining content. So that same year, Ben begins one of his most ambitious projects, yeah, his most well-known project, well, maybe until Legos came along, but his most ambitious project, infiltrating the Church of Scientology. So he poses as someone interested in joining. He and his team go undercover to attend private events and document the organizations inner workings. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very, very special announcement.

Ben Schneider has just joined the C organization. Yay! Well done, Ben. I went forward to the next billion years with you guys. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Oh, thanks so much. I'm now an official Scientologist.

Go see your own. We're going to be together the next billion year Scientology. You and me. It's now officially a part of the Sea Ord. And now it's time to party. My spy glasses die against. Now I'm just a full stealth mode with my phone. So their efforts eventually led to the creation of Scientology sucks.

No, like Scientology sucks. That's in quotes, that is an officially recognized religious organization in California and Oregon. And it was intended as a protest against the church. is Scientology. It was, it is official. Ben and his group later turned their attention, though after they did this to McKamey Manor and its founder Russ McCamey. Marketed as an extreme haunted house, McKinney Manor has long been sort of the subject of controversy with critics arguing that it crosses the line from entertainment into sort of psychological and physical torture under this guise of consent. That's an entire story in itself, though. But by this point,

a pattern, I think you can see it with reckless Ben. Ben is drawn to investigating cults, to controversial organizations. He's drawn to investigating questionable business practices and individuals operating in sort of these like gray areas or legal ethical areas. again, his videos, they combine serious, true investigative work, but sort of like this elaborate storytelling with humor and creativity. It's informative, it's entertaining, it's made for YouTube. And that brings us to the Lego case. So at first glance, helping an elderly man recover a missing Lego collection, it might seem maybe out of place compared to investigations evolving scientology or psychologically, you know, damaging haunted houses. But what's allegations of a

powerful business and questionable practices and a deep community influence began to surface, the story became exactly the kind of mystery Ben is known for pursuing? And as if things weren't already complicated enough, this company also appears to have significant ties to the LDS Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day State. I mean, the CEO's name is Ammon. Ammon is a book of Mormon prophet. And by the way, Reckless Ben, you keep pronouncing it, amen. It's Ammon.

The headquarters are now located in Orham, Utah, in Utah County, a well-known LDS populated area. But nevertheless, that's all we really need to say there. With that background out of the way, let's dive into Ben's investigation. So in the first video of the series, Ben explained that Brian Mansell had reached out to him for help getting his dad's Lego collection back. And honestly, one of the saddest parts of this story is that Brian's father, who was battling cancer at the time, didn't even know everything that was happening behind the scenes. Can you imagine? Brian was trying to shield his dad from all of this during an already incredibly difficult time because he simply

did not need any more stress while sick. Brian also hinted that he believed local law enforcement may have been helping cover up what the company was doing with the Mensell family's collection, which immediately caught Ben's attention, a police cover up. Reckless Ben is on it. Brian explained that he had entered into a consignment agreement with the former owner of the Salem Bricks and Minifig store, Crystal Gorman. But about a year later, Crystal's husband then received that job opportunity overseas

and the family was preparing to move. Crystal later told Ben that she had informed corporate about the move. And Crystal also says that corporate said they already knew someone who might be interested in buying the franchise. She was told someone would be coming in town to look at the Salem organ location. But then Crystal also says that that is not what happened at all. Instead, when they arrived, she says corporate informed her that they were terminating. her franchise agreement essentially seizing the store from her right then and there. She told the Bricks and Minifigs head corporation that she was planning on selling the store.

So the corporation actually was able to find a buyer to buy it from her. They let me know that they had somebody who was interested in purchasing a franchise in the area. He was going to be in town and he was going to stop by and just take a look at it. It wasn't until Brandon got there that he informed, that they were terminating my franchise agreement. We were getting threats from Brandon and from corporate that if we didn't leave the store immediately, the police were going to be called.

I told corporate I wasn't comfortable leaving that night without the inventory. I was also told I was not going to be able to stay there long enough to do that inventory. But we don't just have to take this woman's word for it. She was actually able to save all the security camera footage from that night proving that everything she just said is true. All the footage and evidence is there.

And the security cam footage, security cam footage it's him at the store kicking her out in that footage they sent us is crystal asking him how am i supposed to pay this guy these are sets he has not been paid for these are ones that haven't he has not been paid his percentage yet and if i don't have any tickets i won't know how much i need to pay that that's a business thing and not necessarily you are just taking on the business he kicks on all that kind of time his own corporation is sitting there on video of saying they're going to take it. So in that footage, we can actually see the new owners

who had just walked in and taken over the store saying they would be assuming all of the business, including the assignments. That's important because after Crystal tells Brian what happened, Brian called the store to ask what was going to happen to the remaining Star Wars inventory that still belonged to his family. And according to Brian, the new owners told him they had no idea what he was talking about.

Yeah. I called the store and I said, what happened to Kristen? He goes, well, that's kind of a private matter, but the corporation's taken over the store. There's something I can do to help you with. They said, well, yeah, I am the owner of about half your store's inventory. All those vintage Star Wars sets you have and there are ours. And he goes, huh, I don't know anything about that. Well, you better get to learn about it because I have a contract.

I have photo evidence, video evidence. like that is our collection. So I went down at the store, brought a copy of the contract. We're like, you need to let me in back and let me see the sets that you still have. All you have to do is let me in back. We can go that route or we can go to court. And the guy just looks at me, crosses his arms and goes, let me tell you what's going to happen.

If we go to court, we're going to drag this thing out so long and you're going to end up spending so much more money than your collection is ever worth or what you ever would have gotten on it, then it ain't worth it, man. So if that's the route you want to go. And I go, that's really the route you want to go, rather than just letting me walk in there and he goes, nope. What am I to do at that point? So as you can see from this clip, that clip we just watched,

the new owners of this bricks and minifix store did not seem interested in working with Brian or even acknowledging the consignment agreement that he had with Crystal for the Lego collection. Maybe they thought he'd simply, cut his losses and move on. Maybe they assumed the Mansell family didn't have the money to fight this in court. We don't know. But whatever the reason, Reckless Ben decided to make it his mission to either get the Lego back or make sure the Mansell family was compensated. So Ben, Ben,

Ben gets in his car, picked up some friends and drove 16 hours to the Bricks and Minifig store. And when he got there, he tried the most straight. forward approach possible. He simply walked into the store and asked for the Lego. But of course, it's not going to be that easy. Right. So as soon as Ben brought up the Manself Family Star Wars collection, the store manager Amanda threatened to call police for harassment. And while she's on the phone with one of the new owners, Josh Johnson, immediately begins calling Ben names and insulting him for trying to discuss the contract that supposedly showed the Star Wars inventory belonged to the Mansells. Eventually, the owner of the store called in and asked if you could talk to me.

Are you the owner of the Brickson Mini Fig store? Yeah, why? What you got? So, basically, I wanted to get some of the Legos back that you guys still have. I think I'm looking for the, like, the clone turbo tank. Why do you think you would be entitled to our inventory? Well, at least I confirmed the Legos are still here. The only thing is the owner's claiming that he's the owner of these Lego sets. I mean, it's pretty stupid of them to say that, because,

considering I'm literally holding a copy of a contract he made with the store that said that this Lego Star Wars collection is not the store's property. It's the family's property. The contract makes all of this very clear, so I want to give him one more chance to answer a little bit better. Well, I just want to get it back to my friend. He said he couldn't get it back, so I was just wondering if I could just come and pick him up. You guys will have him, right? I think your friend would be entitled to our inventory. What's his? He owns the Legos. Huh? He doesn't own the Legos. Yeah, we have a contract. He does a...

No, bro, are you an idiot? Are you stupid? Josh, the police have shown him right. And not long after that interaction, local police arrived. Officers told Ben that the Lego dispute was a civil matter that would have to be resolved in court. Same old, same old. They also informed him that he had been trespassed from the store for life and was never allowed to return to that bricks and mini-figs location. And during all of this, the manager, Amanda, repeatedly tells Ben, that this wasn't a store issue at all. According to Amanda, it was a corporate issue.

And Reckless Ben needed to speak with corporate. So that's exactly what Ben did. He heads to Orham, Utah, and speaks to corporate. But that didn't go much better. When Ben arrives at that bricks and mini-figs corporate headquarters. That's an Orham, Utah, CEO Ammon McNeff. He actually comes outside to speak with Ben. But according to Ben, Amman basically denies everything. He even denies that there's ever, that there's a deal or was ever a deal with the Menzels. He denies that the company had any of the Star Wars Lego. And according to Ben, it was just simply deny, deny, deny. Figg's CEO, the guy who runs the entire company, Gammon McNeff. He personally came out to talk to us. So what's going on?

So you guys are holding some of our Legos? No, we're not. You're not? No. Is that a lie? No. That's a lie. You did take the Legos. No. You, so we have, our attorneys have visited, like, again, so who's let, like...

Brian Mansell. Okay, and who is that? He's a guy who had a bunch of, he had like two of them to them. thousand dollars worth of the Legos in your guys' store? No. It did happen, yeah. It does happen. No, we did not.

Yeah, because his logos were in the store and you guys took them. I know you think lying to us right now is kind of like helping it out. I'm not lying to you. Well, look, we both know you're lying, but... No, we don't know that. So, I showed him some social media posts his own company made that are still up that claims that these are Brian Man sells Lego sets. And these Lego sets that they're still holding on to are worth $200,000.

All of these claims are from his own company. We just caught the CEO of the entire company red-handed in a lie. Yeah, it's crazy to me that even the CEO is in on this cover-up. But anyways, now that we just caught the CEO in this lie, I wanted to let him know that it's going to be much easier if he just gives us the legos back now. If you just want to give it back now, it's going to be a lot easier for you guys, you know? I think you guys would prefer the easy way. The hard way, I don't think you guys are really going to like it.

No, okay. But we're getting back either way, so it's like you can, you. either. So you can leave, if you come back here, we will call the cops. So you don't want to do the easy way? So you're threatening me. What you are doing right now is- So catching you guys in illegal activity, that's illegal on me.

And just like at the Salem organ store, Ammon eventually also threatens to call police if Ben doesn't leave the Orham, Utah property. And at this point, Ammon tells Ben that this wasn't a corporate issue. This isn't a corporate issue at all. Instead, he said Ben needed to work it out with the franchise owners because it was a franchise matter. Hmm, wait a minute. The store had just told Ben the exact opposite. The store said it was corporate's problem. Corporate is now saying it was a store's problem. Basically, everyone seems to be passing the buck, right? So Ben decides to contact the Salem store owners directly, Brandon Best and Josh Johnson. Ben was able to get Josh's number first, but when they spoke on the phone, again, Josh suddenly acted like he had no idea what Ben was even talking about.

I don't know what Legos you're talking about, dude. What Lego, what are you talking about? I think one of them's called like the Super Trooper set, I think the, we got, what else is there. I don't know what you're talking about. Keep going. You don't? Since Josh was pretending to not remember

any of the Star Wars sets that make up half of his store's inventory, I decided to send him over a picture of the contract to stores in. What contract is it? I didn't sign a contract. I didn't sign that agreement. I didn't agree to anything in that. And now I finally understand the legal loophole that Josh is using to get away with this. It's probably the stupidest loophole I've ever heard in my entire life. Josh is claiming that it's not his name on the contract, it's the previous owners. Which makes no sense because in the security camera footage,

he tells the previous owner that he's going to be the one taking the one taking the previous owner He's going to be the one taking over the contract now. He's taking on the business he kicks on all that. He's not something. I guess this is some sort of just contract loophole he's trying to use to steal the world's largest Lego Star Wars collection. In order for me to be under contract, I have to sign something. Or you had to take it over from the previous owner, right? Nope, that's not how the...

Yeah, it is. It is? So... If that's how the law works, then sue me for it. You don't just want to give the Legos back? Like... ...you arrested for harassment. Do you feel threatened right now?

Yeah. I was surprised at how much the owner wanted us to sue him. He wants this because Brian already tried to sue him and it didn't work. We've been to a couple attorneys and they basically spelled it out saying, here's the path that's going to happen if you go down each of these routes. They're now in Spain, so we're getting into that whole international thing just to have... ...and injunction on the story. to have them go back and prove what they're sold and not.

That's like $60,000 to $70,000. Yeah, bricks and mini figs knows that Brian and his dad don't have nearly enough resources to sue a company as big as bricks and mini figs. He's like, we're gonna keep these. You're gonna walk away from this, you're not coming back. And if you choose to sue us, we will drag this out in court till it is well past

what this collection is worth. So not only does Josh appear to taunt them, and tell them to sue, knowing the men's cell family may not have the resources to do that, but he immediately starts threatening to call law enforcement again, again for harassment. At this point in the video, Ben and his team tried a number of different things to get bricks and mini-figs attention, but nothing seemed to work. Honestly, it felt like Bam was simply hoping the entire situation would go away. That's how I see it.

Just blame the other guy and tell it's just this cycle and there's nothing left. the Mencel family can do and it goes away. And Reckless Ben goes away too, right? But that's not what happened because Reckless Ben doesn't just go away. There were several more phone calls between Ben and Josh. And in one of those conversations, Josh finally admitted to having the Mansell Lego inventory and said he would give it back. When Brian first came in, we identified anything that was on that list that would have been his that Amanda didn't sell and we set it aside. And it's still sitting there. We're happy to give you your stuff back.

I just don't want any more damage to the store. I guess Josh has finally realized that whatever he's going through right now will literally never end for him unless he gives the Legos back. I'm happy to give you the inventory. It's only bringing me harm because you guys are doing wacky-do crap trying to attack us. Nope, it looks like we won. Brian is finally getting his Legos back. But that also never happened.

In another conversation, Josh told Ben that if Brian Menzel apologized to the store and removed his negative reviews online, then he would return the Lego. He even swore to God that this is what he would do. But Ben and Brian both believe this could be a trap because if Brian apologized, it could later be using court to argue that the store hadn't actually done anything wrong. Josh also told Ben that he needed to go to the Salem store and apologize to the manager, Amanda, who had he had allegedly, harassed. The problem was that Ben had already been trespassed from the property. So if he showed up again, there was a real chance, a very real chance, the police would be called. And according to Ben, that is exactly what happened. As soon as he arrived at the store to give the apology that Josh had requested he do, Amanda called the police. Hi, Amanda. How's it going? We came to make peace

and we talked to Josh. He told us to come back and make peace with you. It's okay? It turns out I was right. This was a trap. Bricks and mini figs doesn't care about giving us the Legos back. They just want to get us arrested. There was a gentleman who was trespassed off the property maybe four or five days ago

and he was literally standing right here in the store in front of me. Before officers arrived, Ben left the store and called Josh back and it, Seems Josh may have realized his plan to get Ben arrested wasn't going to work because he suddenly agreed to meet up and return the Lego. Let's cross Amanda off that checklist. Let's get this done. And now that our work here is done, we decided to head back to Los Angeles. But as you can probably guess, that didn't happen either.

Ben continued contacting both Josh Johnson and Brandon Best, the Salem store owners, day after day. They allegedly kept pushing back when the Lego, would be returned tomorrow, later this week, tomorrow, next week, tomorrow, and eventually, according to Ben, they stopped answering his calls altogether. And this went on for more than a month. Then, finally, when they did respond again, they were right back to square one. This time, though, Josh completely changed his story and claimed there had never been any Star Wars Lego there to begin with when they took over the store.

When we took over that store, there was nothing in that store. The shots were empty. Josh's story has now completely changed. Now he's saying, even if I'm able to make peace with Amanda, they still won't be able to give me the Legos back because they never even had the Legos to begin with. Well, if Josh is telling the truth, then why did Josh say this to us last time? I mean, what stuff of ours would we be giving back if none of our stuff was even ever in his store?

They're like, what about this? I'm happy to go open that stupid cupboard and you can have all the sets in there. I want to give them back to it. I'm happy to give you the inventory. Get the inventory to Brian. I'll give them back. I'm not gonna screw you. You have my word.

That's not who I am. I promise you, I swear to God. I promise you on everything. I mean, Josh is on video swearing to God and on everything he'll give us the Legos back. But now for some reason, he never even had the Legos. This makes no sense. Dude, the shelves were empty.

So I decided to remind him of all of these examples where he claims they do have Brian Legos in the store still. And this was his response. Fuck you, I never said that. Yeah, you did. I don't give it to the law. The court, so you're saying that,

so you're saying, so basically what you're saying is I'm wrong, but you can sue me for it is what you're saying. So you know you're wrong, so you know that you stole the Legos then. Let's go to court then. Okay, let's do it. Okay, that's how you want. Yeah. You really want that.

I mean, I don't, I would like to just get the Legos then. I mean, I don't, I would like to just get the Legos then. but if that's what you want, it seems like this is what you want. I'm giving you every out that I can, but... Dang. Don't go down there out. It doesn't really matter because... I just want to get the Legos back.

They're Brian's Legos giving back. It's pretty easy. It's kind of funny that this entire video, Josh has just been begging me to sue him. Tell me! But the second I agree to it, his attitude completely changes. It's almost like Josh doesn't want me to sue him, and the only reason he's saying that is because he knows that

by saying it, he can get away with his crimes. But now that Josh thinks that there's a chance I might actually sue him, he's getting scared. In fact, he said if I do sue him, he's going to tell the world that I'm the one that stole the Legos. Dang. You can fuck yourself. Dang. You stole them, bitch. I stole the Legos?

Yeah, you're fucking teeth. Dang. Okay. You can shut the fuck up. At that point, it became clear that Josh wasn't simply going to hand the Lego back. So Ben got creative. He came up with a plan to sue bricks and mini figs in small claims court. The problem was that small claims court is just that small claims. Small claims court only allows lawsuits up to $10,000. So they devised a strategy. Brian would essentially divide portions of the Star Wars collection among 10 different people.

Now on paper, those people now had ownership interests in the Lego. that still physically remained with bricks and mini-fix. And the idea was that if the company refused to return the sets, it wouldn't just be one person claiming damages. It would be 10 separate individuals. After filing the 10 lawsuits, it's unclear whether BAM or more specifically Josh and Brandon believe the lawsuits weren't legitimate or simply chose to ignore them. I'm not sure. Either way, they never responded. So Ben contacted the court and asked what happens next. What happened next. And the court lets Ben know that because the defendants failed to respond, the cases are moved into what's known as default judgment. In other words, Ben, reckless Ben and the other plaintiffs

automatically won, at least on paper they won. Since they didn't respond, you can move forward with a motion for default judgment. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Yes, since Bricks and mini-figs didn't respond. Looks like we win by default. Congratulations, you won the court case. Wait, what? They really thought it was vague. All they had to do was collect the money. But as you can probably imagine by now, that wasn't what happened either. When Ben showed back up to the bricks and minifigs location to collect the money from the default judgments, he was shocked to find out that the store had been shut down. Like completely shut down. Plot twist. Just one day after the default judgments were filed, the store was gone. Poof. Yeah, just like that. And that, of course,

created a huge problem because now there was no longer a business there to hold liable. The store that had allegedly been holding the men sell family's Lego collection simply no longer existed. But Ben wasn't about to let the store quietly disappear and fly under the radar. So he and his team printed out a large banner and hung it outside the closed store. And the banner reads, permanently closed. We stole a family's life savings. They sued. We lost.

By closing the store, we get out of having to pay the family what we owe them, end quote. So now obviously, that was Ben's opinion of what? happened. And even though the store was now closed, it still didn't actually solve the problem. The Men's Self family was still without their Lego collection and they still had not been compensated. However, what the sign did do was generate a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot of discourse online, primarily in the Lego community trying to figure out what was going on. And with all of this new publicity surrounding the case, Bricks and minifigs finally released one of its its first public statements addressing the controversy. The company said, in part, that it did not

condone exploiting older adults or vulnerable people and argued that important facts had been lost through edited social media clips and videos. The statement also said the alleged consignment agreement was a private arrangement made at the Salem store and that Bricks and Minifix corporate was not a party to that agreement. According to the company, corporate never signed, never approved or authorized this arrangement. And consignment agreements were actually prohibited under franchise rules. Of course, you know, we've seen a contract from Crystal that says otherwise, but the company argued that franchises operate independently and that the franchisor

does not automatically inherit responsibility for unauthorized agreements made by local owners. Okay. Bricks and mini-figs also stated that they had repeatedly asked for the original. documents and complete record saying that social media videos were not a substitute for legal documentation. The statement went on to say that any legitimate claims should be handled through proper legal channels and that stores have the right to trespass individuals who engage in disruptive conduct or harassment. And then the company closed by reiterating that corporate was not a party to the Salem consignment agreement and encouraged people to wait for all the facts before

accepting rumors as truth. Now, reading that statement, though, there were a few things that stood out to me. For example, the company said, corporate did not sign, approve, or authorize this arrangement. In fact, such consignment deals are expressly prohibited under our franchise agreements. But again, I pointed this out to me, that actually raises even more questions, because if corporate never approved the consignment agreement, then why would the new owners have the right to keep property that didn't belong to them, right? And if they didn't agree to the deal, that's one thing, but the Lego still belonged to the Mansell family. So why not simply return it? If a collection had just been returned from the beginning, it seems like none of this would have

escalated to this point. And throughout the recordings, there were multiple instances where people appeared to acknowledge that the Mencel collection existed, right? But now, this fresh, new position seemed to be that because the consignment agreement wasn't authorized, the company had no responsibility. And since the Salem store was now closed, you know, that's, that's it. That's it. Case closed. The statement, though, also said any legitimate claims should be resolved through the proper legal channels where facts can be fairly evaluated fairly, where facts can be evaluated fairly, end quote. And so that's, that's exactly. exactly what Ben and the men cells tried to do, right?

They filed lawsuits and small claims courts. And then when bricks and mini-figs didn't respond, those cases moved into default judgment. And then shortly afterwards, the store closes. Boof, gone. So the company also stated, quote, we have repeatedly asked for original documents, end quote.

But according to Ben and Brian, they attempted multiple times to provide, provide contracts and documentation, only to be removed from the stores, right? Threatened with trespassing or told to leave. So now whether everyone agrees on what exactly was provided and when is still a bit disputed. But after all of this, things would take an even stranger turn. Because now that Brandon Best and Josh Johnson had allegedly failed to pay the judgment,

Ben decided to file lawsuits against them personally rather than against the bricks and mini-figs business itself. And this is where this story goes back to Utah. So we were in Utah and Oregon, Utah at the headquarters of bricks and mini-figs. Then we're in Oregon, back in Oregon at the Salem-Organ store. But now we're back to Utah, specifically American Fork, Utah. And Reckless Ben, he gives an introduction to American Fork, Utah. He calls it a relatively small community where a lot of people know each other. And I would concur with that description. I've been to American Fork many times. And why is he going to American Fork? Because that is where Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best live. Although they owned the store in Salem, Oregon, their permanent residence is in American Fork, Utah. So before Ben, Reckless Ben,

files these lawsuits against Joshua and Brandon, the Salem store owners in American Fork, Utah, Utah law requires an attempt to resolve the dispute outside of court first. So by this point, both men had blocked Ben's phone number. So he decided to try speaking with them in person. Ben first went to Brandon Bess House in American Fork. He told Brandon, that since the store had closed and the inventory was supposedly going back to corporate anyway, he asked if Brandon and Josh would simply return the Mansell family's Lego collection. And if so, he would drop the lawsuits. But according to Reckless Ben, Brandon, Best just sort of stood there silently and said nothing.

Hello. Hey, how's it going? Hello? Hey, well, I was wondering if you'd be down to pay us for the lawsuit that we won. Kind of seems like Brandon doesn't want to have this good faith conversation to resolve this problem outside of court. And I gave them plenty of time to speak. I guess if you don't want to talk, I'll just talk. So you guys told us to take you to court. We went to court and we won. We know you closed down the store to avoid paying us.

So we could just sue you guys personally and do the whole thing again. We would obviously win again. But then, the police showed up. The police showed up and again for some reason they are really trying to protect these criminals. He didn't steal anything. He inherited the store from somebody. No, he stole $200,000. How do you know this? Because I've been spending the last three months in the case and I won in court. He inherited the store. He's being blamed for everything that the previous owner did.

Well, that's a lot. So we... Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He's still trying to clean up the mess from the previous owner and now he's catching a blame for it and he's just trying to clean up the mess from the previous owner. No. Him saying that it's the previous owner, that's a lie and we had like we already proved this in court. Okay. If you come back and step foot on this property, you're going to go to jail. So Ben then decides to try to talk to Josh Johnson instead. But before Ben could even get out of the car at Josh Johnson's house, Josh had already called the police. Ben and his team say they had not even

exited the vehicle yet when officers arrived. Three police officers showed up at the scene. So at that point, Ben and his team decided to simply drive off and stay out of the way. After all, from their perspective, they didn't even know whether the police response had anything to do with them, but a few minutes later, they noticed a police car following behind them. Ben can even be heard telling the driver, who was his friend Tyler, to make sure and obey every traffic loss. So they wouldn't get pulled over. And according to Ben, Tyler came to a complete stop at a stop sign. And then moments later, the officer activated his lights and initiated a traffic stop. Three cop cars? Oh my God.

There's why's the three cop cars his house? We didn't even walk up to his house yet. The cops are following us. What the heck? That's so crazy, dude. Obey every traffic. Oh, shoot. Ben later alleged that the stop was unlawful. According to the officer, the reason for the stop was that Tyler failed to properly stop at the stop sign. But Ben disputed that claim and argued that the stop had been planned, regardless of whether a traffic violation had occurred. In other words, that police had planned to stop them, no matter a traffic violation. And that allegation would later also become sort of this.

major part of this controversy. And much of that controversy centered around police body camera footage obtained by a YouTube channel called the Civil Rights Lawyer. So, according to reports, the American Fork Police Department intended to release redacted footage to the public, right, of this, that's through the Freedom of Information Act, FOIAs. However, they allegedly also uploaded a folder containing unredacted footage by mistake. The civil rights lawyer reportedly downloaded the files before the department realized the mistake and remove them. So as a result, people were able to view footage

that was not originally intended for public release. The police department later released a statement asking that people only use the redacted versions of the footage, but by then, I mean, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle, right? Copies of the unredacted files, they had hardly been downloaded and shared. So Ben says that it was within this unredacted footage that viewers could hear a phone call between Josh Johnson and police before the traffic stop even occurred. And during that phone call with Josh and police, Josh reportedly gave officers his version of events regarding the Mansell collection.

and the consignment dispute. So according to Reckless Ben's interpretation of this call, Josh portrayed Reckless Ben as someone attempting to harass or extort him for money. And Ben, Ben strongly disputes that characterization. He says that's not true. However, one thing that really stood out during this initial conversation was how many times Josh brought up that he and former co-owner, Brandon Best, had been missionary partners, or, are missionary companions. And they talked about church multiple times. Yeah, it's honestly to hear it.

They were missionary companions. LDS brothers, elders, take a listen. What's the name of your business partner? Brandon Best. Brandon Best. Common spelling? Yeah. Okay.

Gotcha. And he's weird, Jake, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best. That's all right. Oh, really? Oh, that's cool. Josh mentions church several times, including that his business partner was currently at church and that he was actually on his way to speak at church at the time that this happened, which caused him to be off guard. And he seems to be making sure that this officer was well aware of the fact that both he

and his business partner are Mormons. Now, look, obviously, people talk about their religion all the time, and people can talk about it with police. But some of those listening to this call felt like Josh was intentionally making sure that the officers knew that they were members of the Church of Jesus Christ, the Latter-day Saints. So in other words, some people watching this are interpreting this call in a very subtle way of saying, hey, by the way, we're part of the same community. and whether that's what Josh intended or not to do, viewers definitely notice it and viewers can decide whether or not he intended it. But people certainly noticed, including many of you. And it was during this very conversation, this sort of bro talk, that Ben and Tyler drove to his

house to try to speak with Josh. So that's actually why police showed up so quickly. So Josh, it makes sense. Josh was informed the officer that the harassers were already back at his house. He was on the phone with police at that moment. So then when officers arrived, Josh can be seen pointing toward Ben's vehicle and telling police to follow and stop it. It's turning left right there. That's right there.

That's right there. That's right there. He's turning there. See, he's going to go pick up those two girls. See if you can get a stop on it. I talked to that kid. That car, as soon as I started walking over there, going around the block. So after the officer pulls Ben and Tyler over, he tells them that he's only going to issue a warning for the alleged stop sign violation.

But take a look and tell me if you think they stopped or not. at this stop sign. As you can see, we didn't even do a rolling stop. We fully stopped at the stop sign. So this is an illegal traffic stop. So regardless, according to the civil rights lawyer, that's where this traffic stop should have ended. Once the warning had been issued,

there was no longer any lawful reason to continue detaining them. But instead, the officer told Ben and Tyler that they needed to remain there because another officer wanted to speak with them. At that point, the alleged stop sign violation, even if legitimate, can no longer support the further detention of Tyler and Ben. When the officer said that he's giving Tyler a warning, at that point, the traffic stop is over,

and they should have been free to leave. Any additional or prolonged detention must be supported by additional reasonable suspicion of some other crime or violation. Just because Officer Tonga wants to speak with Tyler or Ben does not justify detaining Tyler or Ben. Officer Tonga said you're involved in some other incident that he's got to talk to you about. Interesting. No. Sorry, what? Is what purple canyon?

No. We don't know what it's about. Yeah, we don't know what's about. He just said, oh. Is it okay if I film for like just my safety? Yeah, we're filming too. Okay, cool. You can film what you want.

What's the other incident? We have no idea. He did, he's like around the corner, but he's like, oh, he's going to come talk with you. With me? Yeah, I couldn't tell you what's going on. Don't have a clue what's going on. So Ben and Tyler were then asked to wait for Officer Tonga, who just so happened to be the same officer that Josh had been speaking to on the

the phone moments earlier about the entire Lego dispute. And so when Officer Tonga finally approached the vehicle, the very first thing he asked for was Ben, reckless Ben. So at that moment, Ben and his team realized something. This traffic stop wasn't really about a stop sign. It was about the Lego situation. Ben attempted to explain why he was there and what was happening with the lawsuits. But instead, officers informed him that Josh was trespassing him from his property and that if he returned, he could be arrested. And remember, according to Ben, he had never even gotten out of the car. So Officer Tonga did tell Ben that he was free to stand on public sidewalks, record or film because those are public spaces. He also advised them that civil matters should

remain civil. So here's the thing, right? He called in. People were filming his property. He got a package delivered today. Right? And I already spoke to somebody else. He was filming him. I have the footage. I have the text messages. Right. Let's let civil problems remain simple. Right. And let it just stay in court. Okay.

The irony, according to Ben, that was what he was actually trying to do. Again, under Utah law, Ben says that he was required to attempt to resolve the dispute outside of court before proceeding with litigation. But no matter how much Ben tried explaining the background

of the Lego dispute, why he was there or how he was attempting to follow the legal process, the officers didn't seem interested in discussing any of it. Their main concern appeared to be making sure he stayed off of Josh's property. However, as a civil rights lawyer pointed out, there was generally nothing illegal about walking up to someone's front door and engaging in sort of what's commonly called a knock and talk. Of course, the homeowner doesn't have to answer the door. They don't have to speak with anyone. And they can absolutely ask someone to leave. It's their property. But simply knocking on a door isn't typically a crime. And other viewers, they found it ironic that members of the LDS community would object to door to door considering missionary work often involves going door to door. Speaking with strangers, not just that, but Brandon and Joshua are literally ragging. or at least talking about how they were once missionary companions. So anyway, according to Reckless Ben's version, he says that Josh, Josh Johnson, was upset

that YouTubers were filming in public and might attempt to knock on his door to speak with him. Neither of those things are genuinely illegal. Here's what happened. Josh is outside in the street and he points out the car that Ben is allegedly in. Hyundai, that's right there. That makes a Mexican queer. Is that car? Then we see a nearby police cruiser, then speed off to go pull over Ben's car. That obviously must be Officer Richardson.

Officer Tongo then says, over the radio, see if you can get a stop on that. He says this over the radio to Richardson as Richardson speeds towards where Ben's car is driving. See if you can get a stop on it. We then see on Officer Richardson's dash cam, Tyler's car, stopping at a stop sign. I'm sure to thumbs up there. 5 J-482 traffic. What's up my man? What's going?

Good, how are you? Good. My name's Officer Richardson with Ameriport Police. The reason I stopped you is the stop sign. You didn't come to quickly stop at it? I didn't? No. He's using his blinker and he's very carefully and properly making a right-hand turn.

Is there any universe where any reasonable police officer would be concerned with this driving that we see and then be prompted to go perform a traffic stop for the reason of not stopping at a stop sign? No. The stop not stop. never would have happened had Officer Tonga not directed Officer Richardson to go stop Tyler and Ben's car. At the time that decision was made to stop the car, the alleged traffic violation hadn't even occurred yet. The reason that the traffic stop was made was actually admitted over the police officer's unredacted radio. He's just saying that they were recording, so there's not some criminal that they were doing. Just get the 28 for it. Should be good. What does that mean? Well, 1028 under their

police code apparently means the check of a vehicle ownership slash registration information. So they admitted that nothing criminal was known to have occurred, but that they just wanted to identify who was the registered owner of the vehicle. That's it. Meanwhile, Josh Johnson is basically directing these cops outside his house, telling them what to do. And they appear to be complying, despite the fact that no illegal activity has even been alleged. Meanwhile, at the traffic stop, Officer Richardson with the American Fork Police Department approaches the car that was being driven by Tyler Shaw with reckless Ben in the rear seat. He approaches Tyler and requests his ID.

At this point, he does not request Ben's ID, but he doesn't need to. As Richardson walks back to his cruiser to run Tyler's ID and the vehicle registration, he says over his radio, 1084. I'm told that 1084 and you take. County Police Code means, I have visitors present. Be careful what you say over the radio. Though it also could have just meant that he was confirming Ben's presence in the car to the officers who were still with Josh Johnson. So the footage indicates that Tyler's vehicle was stopped due to Ben being in the car and not the alleged stop sign violation. These codes are by no means

uniform throughout the country. At this point, Tyler and Ben are detained and therefore the Fourth Amendment is implicated and reasonable suspicion must exist. for the detention to be justified. For a lawful traffic stop, an officer needs specific objective facts indicating that a crime or violation has occurred. There must be observable evidence that justifies the stop. No hunches are allowed, no vague feelings, no unsupported intuition.

Here, a stop sign violation had it occurred, would be sufficient reasonable suspicion for a routine traffic stop. But if it did not occur, which is likely given the video footage here, then some other observable evidence, is required. The suspicion that reckless Ben may be in the car is not going to be sufficient unless they have some other independent basis to detain or arrest reckless Ben. The officer who detained Tyler and Ben, Officer Richardson, admittedly did not possess such information. The footage shows that he was just told to stop Tyler's car and so he stopped Tyler's car.

See if you can get a stop on it. He had no information providing any lawful reason to stop the car. he admits this several times to Tyler and Ben during the detention. Officer Tonga said you're involved in some other incident that he's got to talk to you about. We don't know what it's about. Wait, what's the other incident? We have no idea. He's like around the corner, but he's like, oh, he's going to come talk with you. With me?

Yeah, I couldn't tell you what's going on. Don't have a clue what's going on. Therefore, the only possible lawful basis to detain Tyler and Ben would be if Officer Tonga had acquired evidence that some crime or violation occurred to support this, order to have that car stopped. This is where you look at information that was given to the officers by the person complaining that sets the events in motion.

In this case, it was Josh Johnson. But in other cases, it could just be any Karen calling 911. Right after Officer Tonga finished speaking with Ben and Tyler, one of the first things he did was call Josh. And during that phone call, he informed Josh that Ben had been trespassed from the property and then relayed details of what Ben and Tyler had said during the stop.

So to some viewers, this is a lot of the time. made it appear as though the officer was absolutely working closely with Josh throughout this entire encounter. And based on the audio, Josh did not seem happy that Ben and Tyler had not been arrested yet, to say the least. The conversation then went to discussing possible criminal charges right then and there, anything, criminal charges that might apply, like reaching for any possible criminal charges. He's pushing Officer Tonga to charge and arrest him. And Tonga sort of spitballs with Josh about possible criminal charges that they could use to arrest Ben. Who's this?

This is Officer Tonga. Hi. So Ben, Rickus Ben's been blowing my phone up. I think he can you call me from private numbers too, so I didn't know if you were him or if you were a cop. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. About how many times has he called you? Let me look.

One, two, three, four, five. six right in a row. And I'm trying to just be at sacrament meeting. Gotcha. Yeah. I, um, were any of those unblocked numbers? Yeah, all of them but one. One was, did you try calling me?

Uh, yes. Okay, so then five, I think. Let me count. Um, so one, two, three, four, then you at 222 and then five. Okay, got you. So what I would do is either block the numbers or message prior to blocking the numbers of I don't want any more contact. I'll contact. Just refer him to your lawyer.

If there needs to be contact, they don't need to be contacting you. And if it continues, then there will be a problem. So Provo apparently has a warrant for him. I don't know if you, when you had him, if you looked up, have he had any warrants in Utah County? Because I guess the prosecutor, prosecutors are Utah County prosecutor for things he's done in Provo. Gotcha.

Let me take a look real quick. There was a detective Durey or Duras that just got promoted to be a detective that's on the case. Okay, I'm going to put you on hold for two seconds. Well, I do a few records checks, okay? Thank you. Awesome, thank you. So it does look like he has an active warrant, but unfortunately it isn't serviceable,

as in the jail wouldn't take on that, on the charges that he has a warrant for. Got it. So what would they do? What good is the warrant? Usually, It's just if they may contact, it's advised to take care of their warrant. It's due to a space issue right now.

So hopefully it gets resolved soon. But for the time being, they're only taking on certain charges and above. And the charges that he has don't fall into that category. Got it. Okay. Well, good to know. I just texted them. I said, don't text me, don't call me, don't come to my house.

I'll press charges for harassment. Yep, that's great. And then just go ahead and block the number. And then if you continue to, if he gets in contact with you by another number and you're able to confirm it's him and record the line, then that would help out law enforcement a lot in terms of just verifying that it is Ben. Yeah, I mean, what constitutes harassment here? So just telling somebody that,

so I can even provide you with the code. And... They discussed the possibility of charging him with electronic surveillance harassment. But Josh is disappointed to hear that it's only a misdemeanor. So you've got to go pretty far to get harassment, right? So it would fall under electronic communications harassment. And so, like, doxing somebody's information online,

which could be a concern with him being a YouTuber, that would be an electronic communications harassment. as well as we if you tell somebody that they can't contact you and then they repeatedly try to continue to contact you then that also becomes electronic communications harassment right is that like a misdemeanor correct oh okay not a felony correct got it all right then Josh says something about going back to church and fulfilling his calling once again implying to the officer that he's a Mormon, unlike reckless bin. All right, well, hopefully this is the end of it.

I can go back to church and go fulfill my calling and have a peaceful day. I hope you do as well. And I would just, if you do have encounters with him in the public, obviously he's going to be recording. It wouldn't be a bad idea to do the same. Just with we get what people send us without a subpoena, right? I'm not going to go into somebody's phone without a warrant or a subpoena to get footage. This is the start of me and Reckless is Ben's text if you want to just read.

Yeah. Are you okay if I photograph these? Yeah, go for it. The footage could be edited and have missing parts to it. So again, footage can also be one-sided. Yeah, well he, he's forged, like, so the manager up there, he forged her signature on a contract. I'm trying to get her to write checks. I mean, they've done some serious, that's in Oregon.

They've done some serious stuff to harass people. Gotcha. Jim. And it sucks that there's, there's individuals that this is their job and that's what they choose to do. Yeah. And it just, it makes it, it makes the job that much more just difficult because it's, they, they skirt the line.

They skirt the line very closely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they do. And so, yeah, like I said, if you have contact or if he shows back up and he's trying to make contact with you, then please call in and we'll have an officer respond. Unfortunately, for reckless Ben and his team, this would not be the last time that they were pulled over. And after reviewing more footage, even the civil rights lawyer began suggesting that there may have been signs of favoritism. or insider relationships influencing these events. At first I was skeptical of the whole Mormon conspiracy side of this whole thing,

but after the release of the unredacted footage, it actually looks to be a legitimate part of this story. And it may explain why all of this happened in Utah, whereas it didn't happen this way in Oregon. And Ben's part one video in Oregon, while the cops did appear to be covering up the Lego theft allegations, in that they refused to help in any way, they also didn't actively misuse their authority to retaliate against Ben and violate his rights.

They just said perhaps correctly, I don't know, that it was a confusing business dispute, and they didn't feel authorized to attempt to decide that themselves, and they tried to keep the peace by enforcing trespassing complaints. That is exactly what should have happened at worst in the Utah portion of Ben's exploits. They should have said, don't go on to Josh's property, or else you'll get arrested for trespassing. And then if he did do that, arrest him for trespassing. And they should have said to Josh, Josh, you're being a Karen.

Just because some kids from YouTube showed up at your door with a box of rubber ducks and they're filming you from public locations where they have a right to be, you don't get to have them seized by the police and interrogated and then arrested just because that would help make you feel safe because no crimes were committed, at least not yet. Don't go outside if you don't want to or don't answer the door if you don't want to. If somebody comes on your property, that's different. Tell them to leave, and if they don't, we can arrest them. Freedom is scary, Josh, just because kids are doing things that scare you.

If they're not breaking the law, you don't get to have the police department go and seize them illegally and try to scare them away for you. But instead, these cops seem to be acting as Josh's personal police force, tasked with ensuring that Josh is no longer scared of a bunch of YouTube kids. Why else is this happening other than the Mormon connection? Officer Tonga, who by the way, started this whole thing with his direct phone call to Josh, which already reeks of a special relationship, admitted that he was going to treat Ben differently because this is Utah. Ben, how's Utah? That's good.

Do you like it? In the days to come, where the incidents progressively become way worse, there would be other admissions by the American Fork Police Department that this was a targeted campaign to scare Ben out of Utah, thereby protecting fellow Mormons. Remember, Tyler Shaw is actually a resident of American Fork, Utah. He lives just down the road from Josh. But he's not a Mormon. So he got the same treatment as Ben.

So it wasn't just about protecting local residents from this crazy YouTube kid from California. Tyler was actually a local resident, and they did basically the opposite of protect him. And even now, they are still, Tyler told me, following him around his own town in Utah, like they're trying to intimidate or scare him. In the next few days, both Tyler and Ben would have even worse interactions with the American Fork Police Department, including multiple swatting type incidents where they were illegally searched and even arrested. We now know how those happened because the unredacted conversations between Josh, his business

associates, and the American Fork Police Department have now been released. And they show that this isn't just a conspiracy theory, but that this bizarre and troubling relationship exist between these guys and these police officers, which caused Ben and Tyler to get the Utah treatment that was threatened and ultimately received. Here, this is only the first incident on day one in Utah, and we've already documented multiple constitutional violations. Officers filmed themselves performing an illegal detention of Tyler and Ben for a period of over 30 minutes while they've fished for evidence, issued veiled threats, attempted to intimidate Ben, and to help Josh all in the absence of the required, reasonable suspicion that some crime or violation had occurred.

As he explained, the interactions that follow become even more concerning. Not long after the first traffic stop, Ben and Tyler were pulled over again. This time, officers reportedly claimed they had suspicion that there might be heroin in the vehicle. Yeah, heroin. Heroin in the vehicle. This officer is going to conduct the search of your person because I'm going to have you substance in the vehicle. After two hours of searching the car, obviously they found no drugs. So he explained to the car. He went by and found no drugs. I explained to the police that we didn't

have drugs and the reality of the situation is is that Bricks and Mini Figs is so desperate at this point that they're willing to do anything to get us arrested so they don't have to pay for the property they stole. And the police was arguing back with just some of the worst comebacks I've ever heard, which is why I think the police actually redacted this audio on this clip, because if they kept the audio in, then the world would get to see how stupid the American Fork Police Department is. But anyways, even though we were passing every single drug test they gave us, they were still not going to let us go until we told them where the drugs were.

Your eyes, for example, right? There's a construction which is dilated, and then not. So I haven't been looking at it. I'll show. Go ahead and look at him. Oh, look at you?

Yep. You do see it? It's crazy. I have no idea because I've never done any drugs in my life. I don't do drugs. I don't do alcohol. I've never done any of that in my life.

I'm willing to do any drug tests. Like, I'm very cooperative. I don't understand what you're seeing in my eyes. I'm going to have a discussion with this officer. And then the police department illegally redacted this conversation too. My guess is that they acknowledge that it's very obvious we don't have drugs on us, but that we're going to try and pressure us into giving some type of false confession anyways. I'm not sure if you're mind to me or not, to be honest.

I'm willing to take any drug test you want. I'm walking very dangerous line, which you can get you. end up a long time. You get in jail and you talk when you're from Calvert. Not worth it, right? Yeah, yeah. We play differently here. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. I'm willing to cooperate with you guys and do anything you want me to because I'm not hiding anything. I can promise you that, I promise. We weren't giving the police a false confession like they wanted, so eventually I guess they just got tired and let us go. We'll let you guys go now, but you're walking in a thin line, just be mindful of that. I think that makes sense. Well, we just heard it right there. Quote, we play differently here.

That's honestly a seriously concerning statement. And as you'll see, this police department definitely plays different. But that being said, of course, no heroin was found in the car. So then after Ben is eventually able to show the court that he had attempted to resolve the dispute with Josh Brandon outside of court without success, his case was allowed to move forward. The court issued papers that now had to be formally served. But there was a problem Ben had already been trespassed from Josh's property, right? And it seemed unlikely that Josh would simply answer the door for a process server.

I do agree with that. So Ben comes up with another plan. He creates a sign featuring a photo of Josh that reads, here we go. I stole a man's life savings, and the idea was simple, right? So if this sign is placed on public property visible from Josh's home, maybe Josh would come outside to look at it or remove it, and the process server could legally serve Josh with the court papers. So Ben sat in a car nearby with a process server waiting. But according to Ben, the plan failed almost immediately. A police officer arrived, positioned his vehicle in a way that blocked the sign, then went over and spoke

with Josh before approaching Ben and the process server. And thanks to the unredacted body camera footage, viewers were later able to hear what Josh told officers to get them involved once again. The footage starts with me going to Josh's house so I can serve him his legal court papers. Josh knows that if he goes to court with me, he's going to lose. So instead, a much easier option is he calls the police on me to prevent me from start His name is Ben Schneider. He's stalking my house. Will you come to my house please and come get them? I'm not gonna have stalkers.

Are they there right now? Yeah, they're on the side of the house. Kind of, one of the dispatchers made a no here saying that you were gonna shoot someone. I'm done with this. Officer, can you please help me and my family and Nick this stop? Yeah, absolutely. She had a consignment deal with a guy named Brian Mansow. A year and a half almost almost two years, she had this consignment deal with him and she never paid him. So right away, Josh is lying to the police, which we can easily verify with all of the metadata time stamped pictures

that show that the Lego sets were in the store when Josh took it over. He's hired this YouTuber. His name is Ben Schneider. He's a reckless Ben. They sent people insane. They're going to murder our manager. I'm done. Ben repeatedly explained that they were not trespassing, that they were on public property and that the process server was simply trying to serve court documents. He explained this to multiple officers multiple times. And according to Reckless Ben, Josh remained inside his home while repeatedly calling police despite Ben not engaging in any illegal activity. Eventually, one officer asked to see the court papers that Ben was attempting to serve.

The officer then offered to deliver the papers to Josh himself. Ben thought this sounded like a great idea and agreed. few minutes later, however, the officer returned with the papers and informed Ben that Josh had refused to accept them, which honestly probably isn't surprising. Most people don't exactly get excited about being served with court papers. She is a process server and she's trying to serve you papers. She's not a process server. Okay. Get the papers. Have you, they're fake? They're fake. You're okay if I bring those over to you? Absolutely. They're fake. You guys see those papers? Yeah. So this is what you're trying to serve them with?

Yes. I wish we could just send him an email. I wish we could just send him a phone call or the court could send it to him, but this is what we are required to do from the United States court. So we're just following the instructions that we got from me.

He thinks if I just call the cops on, I mean, he can get away with it, but we're showing him, like, we're not going to let him go away with his crime, so. Okay. You okay if I give these bakers to them? Yeah, for sure. Okay, hang tight.

Are you okay if she just gives you the papers so we can just get everything? You look at the papers. I've talked to the Kaiser Police Department. There's no, there's nothing filed. So no, I'm not accepting service. Okay. Absolutely not.

It's fake. It's not real. That's completely fine. That's, you have that right? Yeah. Literally, all this police officer has to do is be like, you are served. And then he doesn't even have to accept him. He can literally just drop them.

But as long as you say, you are served, that counts as illegal serving. So why doesn't this cop just do that? Like, this whole thing could be solved in literally three seconds. Like, I'll time it. You've been served. Then the situation became even stranger. According to Ben, the officer stated that he didn't believe the court documents were legitimate because they didn't have a judge's signature.

He does not want the paper. He's not one of the papers? Here's that back for you. Yeah, the police told me that they can't serve the papers for me because I'm lying to them and these aren't even real court papers. I'm not sure what this is. I've never seen something like that, to be honest with you. These are court papers.

Okay. It doesn't have a judge's name or anything like that on it? Because it hasn't gotten to the judge yet. So this is serving him and then we'll go to the court and then the judge will be there. So the judge doesn't get involved until we're in court. I see saying that you guys are not wrong with you. Because he wants us arrested so he doesn't have to go to court. It doesn't look good when you've been trespassed.

Yeah. Well, I think it looks exactly how we're supposed to do it legally. This is the legal way to do it. Well, we have two or three incidents. Yeah, well first, so their incidents because he's lying to you guys. He's making them incidents. We came to do a good faith conversation, which is required by the courts before you can get a court case approved. So we did that. We called the cops on us. He lied to you guys saying that we had heroin on us. And we did a three-hour search of the car yesterday. We found no heroin in the car.

He's going to make up any lie he can to get us arrested. We are doing things to leave a way, the correct way. The reason he's hiding in his house is because he's the criminal. If something doesn't look good, it doesn't look good for him, not for us. Go the legal process, find an actual process server. She is an actual process server. And what is your guys' relationship? I just met her today. Well, maybe just have someone not affiliated with you.

That's her, yeah, she's... Yeah, I just barely not, yeah. That's why she's here, we have no relationship, and that is who... She is the exact person that you're describing. I always thought that the police were supposed to remain unbiased, and if they were going to take a side, they definitely shouldn't take the side of the criminal. But I guess I was wrong. However, I'm not doing anything illegal. I'm literally just following the instructions of the court, so the police can't stop me. Okay, I'm going to erase your dick. Okay, see ya.

Now, whether that understanding of court paperwork was legally accurate, that's sort of this separate question entirely. But from Ben's perspective, it was yet another example of officers appearing skeptical of his side of the story while readily, readily accepting Josh's versions of events without question. Well, even after an officer confirmed for the third time that Ben and the process server were not doing anything illegal, just a few minutes later, Josh called police again. At this point, it really appeared that Josh was sitting inside his house becoming increasingly frustrated that Ben was not being arrested. So this time, an officer asked to see the court papers again and actually called the court to verify whether they were legitimate or fake.

And according to the officer, the papers were real. Trying to speak with someone to verify if a case is, just verify if the case is real. Yeah, looks like a real small claims case in our court. Okay, thank you for your help. That's all. Thank you. I think this phone call was the breaking point for the police. I was rubbing his chin.

The police couldn't handle the fact that I was right and they were wrong. But despite the papers being real and despite multiple officers acknowledging that Ben wasn't doing anything illegal, despite officers attempting to serve the papers to Josh, things escalated anyway. According to Ben, Josh continued pushing for action to be taken. And eventually, police arrest Ben. Hold on. All right. What do you want and done today? Besides, obviously talk to...

As much as you humanly possible can. I can screen charges. I'm open to screening charges through our attorney. Yeah. Instead of serving these court papers, like the police officer promised me he would. This officer would rather screen all possible charges for me to see what random stuff they can make up about me. I'm gonna go talk with him, give him this paper back, since you do not want this. Can I peek at it?

What was that? Can I peek at it? It kind of puts me in a little bit of a bind. It's fake. There's no lawsuit in this. Okay. So anyway, I'm going to give this back to him and trespass. Because here's the thing.

Like, think about this logically. Do you think a process server would show up with a guy that's been harassing a YouTuber to serve papers in Utah? Josh knows that if he gets served these papers, it's going to be really bad for him. And at this point, it seems like he's willing to make up any story he can to get us arrested before he gets served these papers. They sent the lady in and the lady's like, oh, I'm gonna murder you to Amanda, the manager. And now, Josh has just committed a felony.

Lying to the police officers about a false threat I made to get me arrested is super duper illegal. He called the store a billion times, threatened the employees. I don't know what to do, man. Um, so did you call the police again? I just don't know what to do, man. I'm done with these guys. We're ready and willing to arrest these individuals for Utah, you know, like Utah statutes for cyber bullying and, like, digital stocking because they're using electronic means for, you know, communication and important their stocking. Oh, it's digital stocking, not stocking, stocking?

It's all of the above. Okay, got it. But because they're continuing to use, you know, like additional tactics and other things like that, thinking that they're being queued. and whatnot. We can't continue so somebody has to be arrested to show that they can't continue to do this. No, we're just kind of wondering what you want to do. As much as we human possibly can. He's going to submit to have a screen for charges with our prosecutors, right, with our city prosecutors.

He is very adamant that he wants to serve you with papers, okay? That's fake. Like, letting them go cannot be. cannot be an option here, guys. Like, there's got to be something for cyberstalking, bullying, like, like, all of the different things. Like, there's got to be something to, to arrest them and send a message that this is not appropriate.

This is not okay. I've been agreeance with you. Again, that's why we're kind of working through this right now. Officers approached the car once again and this time instructed Ben to step out of the vehicle. He was then placed under arrest. I was confused on what I was being arrested for. I mean, the same police officers that arrested me gave me permission to do exactly what I was doing. You can film from the sidewalk wherever it's public, right?

But you can't go on that property if you do, you'll be charged, okay? Okay, yeah, for sure. I got arrested for just doing what the police told me to do. What's even more confusing is the police are supposed to be the good guys. Why are they arresting an innocent person to protect an evil criminal? Well, back when I was still waiting in the car to serve Josh, I got a phone call. And this call was from Brian to collector's son who got all their stuff stolen.

And he has a theory of what might be going on here. Yeah, the cops down there are definitely all in with the Mormon community and being the bricks and many figs is part of that and worth millions. I would not doubt that they have donated hefty sums to the Mormon church, of which all the cops are probably a part of. Yeah, Brandon Best, Joshua Johnson, and Amen, the CEO, or all super Mormon. Like the CEO even went to the Mormon University.

And when I looked up all the police officers who were treating me unfairly, they were all Mormon too. And they take care of their own, man. They are like a huge clan that takes care of each other. And instead of trying to get rid of the few bad people

who are making Mormonism look bad, they're for some reason choosing to protect these criminals. But eventually, I got released from jail. Out of jail now. From that clip, you can actually hear Ben realizing for the first time. He says that many of the people involved in this situation, many of the people involved in this situation appeared to be members of the LDS Church and began questioning whether insiders were helping insiders. Reckless Ben believed that regardless of whether

he had broken any laws, he was going to be arrested anyway. I love you. I love you. There we go. I love you. I love you. I love America. After being released on bail, Ben decided that maybe the safest and most effective way to help the Mansel family recover their losses was to start a GoFundMe.

His thinking was that if enough people learned about what had happened, perhaps the public would want to help the men cells recover some of the money they had lost without requiring more confrontations with Bam, more confrontations with Josh or Brandon. and to help promote the fundraiser, Ben and his team created a large banner and got permission from a home owner in Josh's neighborhood to hang it on their fence. That's important, by the way, because this was not public property. This was a privately owned fence, right? Which is where people can hang what they want to hang.

According to Ben, they had the owner's permission to use. the fence. But before they had even finished hanging the banner, police arrived and cut it down. What we're doing is we're going to get a bunch of publicity to get basically all this money back for this family. You know, we're not going to do the lawsuit anymore. We're just going to do this go fund me. We've already got it started. It can run into some defamation stuff. Again, the police were thinking of any technicality they can think of to protect their Mormon friend. Look at your stalking code.

See if it's that. If it's not, we're going to look at disorderly. it's not disorderly, then we're going to look at the city ordinance. But after going through every law they could think of, it turns out that hanging this sign on a fence and then taking a picture of it for Instagram is not illegal. In fact, what the group is doing is actually protected under the First Amendment, freedom of speech. So one of the police officers let the group know that they were okay to keep doing this. Right now, I don't think you guys were going to walk. But this other police officer

wasn't able to accept this reality. We're going to take it down. Ben argued that officers had no right to remove the sign. After all, simply because someone dislikes a message doesn't necessarily mean they can remove private property from someone else's land. That's freedom of speech. And yeah, that is very, very true. You can't just remove a message you don't like from someone's private property, freedom of speech. Wanting answers, Ben later requested the body camera footage from this interaction. And according to Ben, that's when, he uncovered what he viewed as another troubling part of the story. He alleged that even employees within the court system appeared to be over redacting footage

and records in ways that raised questions about transparency and honesty and the freedom of information act, the FOIA, over redacting. And then for the rest of this footage, the police redacted all of the audio. So I caught up the police station to find out why. All the redactions are done pursuant to the Utah State Code. We don't redact things just because we feel like it or, you know, just because something looks funny. Everything is redacted pursuant to Utah State Code. And other than that, I can't really delve into any more detail.

But the police made a mistake. They accidentally forgot to mute this police officer's audio. So when you sync the two clips together, I can actually hear what they're saying here. Is it or get up? Is it any official? Is it a disorder? conduct? Why? Is he upset about it? I mean, I guess, but that's not. Yeah, this police officer is right. Just because this might make Josh upset does not make this

poster illegal. So, I decided to let the police department know that some of the redactions they made aren't exactly what they're claiming they are. I think you guys might have accidentally forgot to redact another clip that was at the same time. And when I synced the two clips together, I was able to see what they were saying, like what the redaction was. And he was talking about how what we're doing actually isn't illegal and how the police officer might be wrong. And so it wasn't about protecting a victim. It wasn't any personal information. And so I was wondering, it seems like there might be a lot of stuff like that that got redacted, maybe to protect the police officers, not to protect the victims, if that makes sense. And so. Yeah, we don't do that.

So like I said, anything that's redacted is pursuant to Utah State Code. I can tell because when I sync the two clips together, I'm actually able to see that that's what the redaction was. Okay, well, that didn't happen. That definitely didn't happen? No, I don't do that, Ben. I follow the Utah State Code, like I just said. Okay. Uh, oh. I don't know. It seems like the police department redacted this entire conversation because right here the police are actually admitting to themselves that none of this is illegal, but they're still going to try to arrest us anyways. It seems like the only reason they're getting rid of this audio is to protect the police officers from getting fired.

Now, even though many of the police recordings were heavily redacted, we know that unredacted footage was later accidentally released. I can't believe that happened. I really can't. Like, can't put the genie back in the box. And Reckless Ben says that the footage made it appear as though officers were actively trying to find a reason to arrest his. group again. And that's, that's a frightening, definitely something that is concerning, right, actively finding a reason to arrest his group again. And this brings us to one of the most

alarming encounters in this entire saga. Not long after the sign incident, the signs taken down, multiple police officers show up at Reckless Ben's Airbnb with guns drawn. Yeah, here you go. Redding Park Police Department, make yourself known. Search one. Stand up. Stand outside. Everybody.

Move like that. You understand me? Don't move like that. Okay? Yeah. This cop pulled my arm so far back. It dislocated my shoulder. He claims it's because I was attempting to make an escape or something.

Don't move like that. You understand me? Don't move like that. Don't move quick. Everybody just chill. But if we go back a little bit, you can see I was being completely still when he grabbed me. And I actually made zero quick movements. This police officer is just straight up lying so he can give me a serious injury. And honestly, when you watch the footage, it looks like the kind of response you might expect during a violent felony arrest or a dangerous search warrant.

officers had firearms pointed at people inside. According to Ben, during the arrest, one officer forcibly pulled his arms behind his back and dislocated his shoulder. The officer reportedly claimed that Ben had made a sudden movement, but Ben later pointed to video footage that he says shows he wasn't moving at all and argues that this amounted to excessive force. Ben later included a stock image in his video showing what a dislocated. shoulder it can look like. But the American Fork Police would later point to that image and suggest that Ben had been misleading his viewers. We'll come back to that later. So regardless, everyone inside the Airbnb was detained. And the reason police were able to conduct this search was because they had obtained a search warrant. Yeah, a search warrant for stolen Legos. Remember in Oregon how they repeatedly said this was a civil matter and now we're in Utah and now there's guns drawn and a search warrant for stolen Lego? stolen Legos. And strange because now all of a sudden the search warrant for stolen Legos is in Ben's Airbnb. What? Yeah. So according

to the warrant, police were searching reckless Ben's Airbnb for stolen Lego sets. Make it make sense. Is this a case of Darvo? Darvo deny accuse and reverse victim

offender. Well, let's try to make it make sense. Yeah, I think it's some Darvo here. Because earlier in the story, Josh Johnson, the one Salem store owner, had actually threatened that that's exactly what he was going to claim to do. He was going to claim that Ben had stolen the Lego. Should have seen this coming. Josh did threaten me in the last video that if I go out and actually try to sue him, he's going to come out and say that I'm the one that stole the Legos. Okay, let's do it. You fuck you, man. You stole him, bitch. I stole the Legos?

Yeah, you're a fucking thief. Dang. Okay. Okay. You can shut the fuck up. That's your fucking choice. Ben eventually obtained a copy of the actual warrant. And according to Ben, it does specifically list stolen Lego as the one and only thing the officers were searching for.

Wow. Regardless if that's truly the basis for the warrant, because it is shocking if that is the basis for the warrant, missing Legos, many people online have questioned whether such a heavily armed response was necessary. Because when you see officers arriving with rifles drawn over Legos, I mean, it definitely raises concerns about how quickly situations like this can escalate with law enforcement involvement. We've all seen cases where misunderstandings, mistakes were split second decisions and tragically. Thankfully, that did not happen here. And after searching the Airbnb, police did not locate any stolen Lego. Yet, despite that, officers still detained everyone present inside the home. Ben says that some of those individuals weren't even named in the warrant and had no connection to the alleged Lego investigation. Ben was the only person listed on the warrant,

meaning all the other people present in the home shouldn't have even been arrested or detained once they confirmed that they had been in custody. How many did you get? You got bail? We got five. I know. Including Ben Schneider?

Yes. Sweet. That's good. Next, we got some unredacted footage of me using the bathroom. Unlike Ben's previous arrest, this time police reportedly requested that he remained in jail without bail for up to a month while awaiting court.

Well, at the police department, Ben decided he had nothing to hide. So he sat down with the detective and walked him through the entire story. He explained the mansell collection, the consignment dispute, the lawsuits, and how the whole situation

had spiraled into police involvement. I wish we could just send him an email, like show up the court this day. That would be so easy for us. But this is how the law works. Like, that's not my fault. Like, I don't make the law. If I made the law,

send him an email and they're like he doesn't want your papers you just have to figure out civilly I'm like this is the simple method you know like to do it civilly you have to serve like well then just sue them then I'm like that's what we're doing like like you see how this is a circle I am very interested on Josh aside the story because I think he said not so good heroin in the car or something and they did like a three hour search on our car obviously no heroin so I don't know what Josh is telling them to that we're doing suing him is not working for us.

So let's do a GoFundMe. Right after I mentioned this GoFundMe, the investigator wanted to leave the room. Being tight here and then I'll be back with you, okay? But after Ben mentioned the GoFundMe during his interview, the detective then went around speaking to the other people who had been detained. So Ben says that it seemed like what he was doing at that moment, like investigators were trying to figure out whether the GoFundMe had been reckless Ben.

idea from the beginning. That was like this moment, this thing that they were trying to figure out. None of the people interviewed actually said that it was Ben's idea. But Reckless Ben says that the detective, he ultimately decided that the GoFundMe itself, the GoFundMe itself was enough to justify another arrest because the fundraiser mentioned Josh Johnson allegedly stealing the Lego, which police, police say, violated the conditions of Ben's existing case. We're going to book you back into the jail, okay? The creation of the GoFundMe, right? We're blasting this person all over saying, hey, he's... So creating the GoFundMe was a legal?

When I asked the detective how creating a GoFundMe was probable cause to send me to jail, this was his response. A lot of this stuff, you may have to just get an attorney and just and fight it in the criminal side of court, right? Okay, should I... Yep. Go ahead and stand up. I got an officer right here that's gonna... He has cuffs for you.

We'll also be able to hear Josh's side of the story, because I think he's said a lot of lies to you guys. It'll be, and I never talked to Josh, but it'll be documented in the report as well. Okay, thank you so much. But the detective was lying. The police have illegally redacted every single claim Josh has made about me, and when I finally go to court,

I'm gonna be completely blind to what I'm even being charged for. So while police had originally requested that Ben be held without bail, a judge ultimately denied that request and Ben was released pending future court proceedings. And according to Reckless Ben, that wasn't the end of it. Of course not. So not long afterward, another officer reportedly showed up at Reckless Ben's house looking for him and informed his roommate that there was a new warrant out for his arrest. Ben called the police department to ask, what was going on? So according to Ben, all they would say was that the judge had deemed him a physical threat to Josh and had signed a no bail warrant, no bail. But they wouldn't explain exactly what crime he had supposedly committed. So later, Ben says, he learned why he had allegedly been labeled as a threat.

He says he discovered evidence that people associated with the case had been making threats while pretending to be him. So what did Ben do next? He went to Mexico. I'm in Mexico now and the American police have no authority here. And while Ben was in Mexico, the American Fork Police Department released its own video responding to the controversy that has now gone viral online. At this point, Ben's series had exploded across YouTube and the police clearly wanted to tell their side of the story. The video was presented by the police chief who addressed several of the allegations that had been circulating online. The American Fork Police Department has responded to the video I made about them. I am the chief of police for the American Fork Police Department. I'd like to address the

members of our American Fork in Cedar Hills community regarding some videos currently circulating on social media. So now I will offer a response to their response. There's a lot of new information in this response that I've been wanting to get for a long time. So We'll go over that first. One of the main questions in my video was, why did I get swatted for stealing the Legos when this wasn't a mystery to the police officers and they knew that I didn't steal the Legos that Josh stole the Legos. He basically stole a $200,000 collection of Star Wars Legos.

But still, why did they raid my house for stealing the Legos when there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that Josh stole the Legos? When I requested the body cam footage of this to try to find the answers myself, They redacted everything, and they claimed it was to protect the victims. However, one of my friends set up a GoPro as we were getting swatted, and we caught the entire conversation on camera. For three months, the police department's answer has been, this redaction is important because it protects Josh, the victim of this case.

However, we can clearly see that the police are looking for Legos, and they saw no Legos. And they redacted this because they were embarrassed that they made such a stupid decision to swat the wrong person. They were so embarrassed of swatting my house for stealing the Legos that in all the police reports, it is completely redacted. The police department wants this information hidden so bad that they're willing to break the law

to hide this from everyone. The only reason I know about it is because the receipt I got the night I was released from jail and my friend's GoPro that was recording. So even though I've been asking them for three months why I got swatted, they finally came up with an answer, which is the Airbnb host told them that I stole the Legos.

During contact with the Airbnb owner, the owner reported overhearing conversations about possible stolen Legos. Specifically, officers wrote in the search warrant affidavit, the homeowner also disclosed that he could hear multiple individuals inside the residents speaking about possibly stolen Lego toys they had taken. Based on that information, officers added.

a request within the search warrant affidavit seeking authorization to also search for and seize possible stolen property, including Lego merchandise. Fourth District Judge Roger W. Griffin reviewed and approved the search warrant. I always like giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I will take the police officer's word on this, but something fishy is going on here, and everything can just be cleared up if you unredacted the audio and let everyone see the truth. Also, after we got raided and the police police officers found no Legos, all of this footage has been redacted too. And my guess is if the police unredacted this footage, we will find out the answers once and for all.

So in that clip, the chief explained that police received information from the Airbnb host claiming they had overheard conversations about stolen Lego. Now, even if that claim were true, many of us question whether a heavily armed police response was appropriate for allegations involving stolen Lego. And later, after unredacted footage was released, some of you noted that the Airbnb host appeared to have a prior relationship with officers involved in the case. Oh, it's very convenient. You remember we were doing hydro with the guy with the Deagle?

Remember when we did Hydro with the guy with the Desert Eagle? Yeah. This is his Airbnb. He's in my truck right now. Ben and others have pointed to that as another example of what they believe was insider relationships, inside a relationships infecting this investigation in Utah, American Fork, Utah. The chief also addressed the use of force during Ben's arrest, including the incident involving Ben's shoulder. While we were getting swatted, one of the police officers decided to injure me for

absolutely no reason. He claims it's because I was trying to make a fast movement. Don't move like that. You understand me? Don't move like that. When we replay the footage, you can clearly see I was not making. any fast movements. However, the police department has an answer to this. During Snyder's detention, Lieutenant Addison took hold of Snyder's right arm. Lieutenant Adamson later reported that he felt Snyder tense his arm, at which point Adamson moved Snyder's right arm behind his back to place him into custody. The police department has made it clear. I did not, in fact, make any quick movements like the police officer claims I did. So the police officer was lying, but not fully, because I did tense my arm.

However, he lunges at me extremely fast before he even touches me. So how could he even know that I was tensing my arm before he even grabs me? That doesn't make any sense. There's only one solution. This police officer has psychic powers, and he could tell that my arm was tensing up before grabbing me. However, this makes no sense because if the police officer did truly have psychic powers, he would have known that we were not the thieves, Josh and Brom. Brandon were the thieves. So this can't be the case either. I'm trying to have an open mind with

these different possibilities of what this could be, but literally the only outcome left is that this police officer injured me for no reason. However, the police have another response to this of why I must be lying. In the x-ray image displayed by Mr. Snyder in that video, a small L is visible in the upper right-hand corner of the x-ray. The L indicates the image is that of the left shoulder. The video shows Lieutenant Adamson handling Schneider's right arm during the arrest. Yes, the stock footage I used to show what a dislocated shoulder is, an image that's clearly not mine, because I didn't go to the hospital. I went to jail, so how could I have taken this picture? But anyways, the stock image I used is of a left shoulder when my shoulder that got

injured was my right shoulder. When I was editing this, I like to think highly of my audience that they would have known that this was a stock image, and I wouldn't have to spoon-feed every tiny detail to my audience. But now I realize that there's another portion of my audience called the American Fork Police Department that maybe I do have to spoon-feed my every single piece of information too. So I'm going to use this as constructive criticism, and in every single episode going forward now,

now that I know that the American Fork Police Department's watching, I will be forced to spoon-feed every single detail. Next, the chief defended the first traffic stop and stated that Ben's friend Tyler had failed to stop at a stop sign, which would have given officers legal justification for the stop. Reckless Ben disputes that version of events. He points to dash cam footage that he says clearly shows Tyler stopping at the sign. And those of you watching that are critical of the police response, you've argued that later body camera footage suggests the officers did intend to. to stop the vehicle, regardless of any traffic violation, so that they could speak with Ben about Josh Johnson's trespass request. Richardson initiated a traffic stop on the vehicle for failing to stop before the stop line

at a stop sign and failing to stop completely at that stop sign. The chief of police looked at this video and said, we ran a stop sign. And now he's using that to say, this was a legal traffic stop. The police officers did nothing wrong. The chief also addressed the incident involving service of court papers at Josh's residence. According to the chief, Josh had called police to tell them that he might shoot someone. Joshua Johnson contacted police and reported he was going to shoot someone as a result of the ongoing harassment. Multiple officers immediately responded to the area. Josh was so scared of going to court that he would rather shoot us than accept these court papers.

Josh's logic here is that if he can murder the process server and if he can murder me, then he can get away with his crimes because there'll be no one to sue him in court. However, sadly for Josh, murder is illegal. And now he just admitted his plans to the police officers. The American Fork Police should at least be arresting Josh for trying to use murder as a way to get out of court. But sadly, for some reason, they arrested me instead. I'm trying to find you back. Am I being arrested?

Really? Yeah. The statement, my goodness. A lot of you with eyebrows raised after this statement, because if someone is threatening violence, many are asking why the focus continually remained on arresting Ben, rather than investigating those statements, rather than investigating like, any evidence. Why not make this much more than a he said, she said, and just simply, investigate the accusations, investigate the evidence. The chief also acknowledged that officers contacted the court to verify whether Ben's court papers were legitimate. And according to recordings released later, we do hear the court clerk confirmed that the papers were valid and that Josh still needed to be served. However, the chief said in his

statement that the papers had already been served, which is another claim that reckless Ben disputes. Officer Sumbot contacted the Marion County Circuit Court in Oregon to verify the legitimacy of the paperwork. The court confirmed that the case was indeed legitimate, but that papers had already been served and no hearing date had yet been scheduled. The police department said the reason they arrested me and not Josh this day is because they called to confirm if this was a real court case and they said it was real. However, the papers have already been served. and now I'm doing this solely to get YouTube content. And if that's true, I would like to see footage of it. They released all the raw footage,

and that part doesn't seem to be in the raw footage. It's already been to court, or are you allowed to tell me kind of where they're at with the case? Okay, so the defendant needs to be served with papers before the case will, I guess, start. Yes. Okay. Okay, thank you for your help.

That's all for today. Thank you. No problem. Okay, bye. Right here, the police officer admits that it is March 10th. On March 10th, 2026. However, you can see here that Josh doesn't get served until three days later, March 13th. So how could Josh have already been served on March 10th if he didn't get served until March 13th, unless Josh is a time traveler?

There's only one way to clear this all up. American Fork Police Department. Show me the time machine. Ultimately, the chief maintained that Ben's actions constituted stalking behavior, which police said was the basis for his arrest. So now they say that I have done all the check marks which constitute stocking.

Let's go through them. The individual commits stalking. If the individual intentionally or knowingly engages in a course of conduct, directed out a specific indebted at a specific indebt So yes, I did do an action that was targeted at a specific individual, but that's what was required by the court if I want to take someone to court. If someone steals your stuff and you go through the legal process to take them to court, it is not considered stalking. I have a right as an American to sue him.

Is reckless as to whether that course of conduct would cause a reasonable person to fear for the individual's own safety or the safety of another. The second checkmark is that if a right... reasonable person would be scared. The police are claiming that since this action made Josh scared, this checkmark is complete. However, they've completely forgotten about the term reasonable. As we can see, Josh is not a reasonable person. This is someone who multiple times has tried to silence someone by accusing them of being on heroin. Here's the crazy thing. They told me that they took over that location because the owners were using the location to fund their heroin addiction. What? Yeah, and that's how they took it over and saying they had like a pigeon in there that was

crapping all over the Legos and it smelled bad, all this stuff. This is someone who threatened to murder me just for trying to serve in papers. This is not a reasonable person. It is not reasonable to threaten to murder someone just for serving papers. A reasonable person would accept the papers so that second checkbox does not meet the requirements. I even tried explaining this to one of the police officers early on, What the law says is if the average person would feel unsafe by our behaviors. So I think he's feeling unreasonably unsafe. A reasonable person would not feel unsafe in the situation. Well, I can say the same thing.

I feel unsafe trying to conduct business with him and he calls the police on me to hide. I feel unsafe because of that. Because we had a three-hour search in our car. He said we had heroin in our car yesterday. We had a three-hour search on our car. That makes me feel unsafe. I think that's reasonable for me to feel unsafe. It's not reasonable for him to feel unsafe.

So Josh is actually the one who said he was going to murder me if I take him to court. But now I'm the one that's being looked into for threatening to murder Josh. How does this make any sense? Mr. Johnson alleged that Mansell had hired Benjamin Snyder to harass, stock, vandalize the store, threatened to murder, the manager of the store. Now let's go to the heroin claim. We got pulled over by the police and they claimed that we had heroin on us. Most of this footage is redacted, so again, there's a big mystery of what happened.

Kenwheel come together and convince the American Fork Police Department to unredact this so we can find out the truth. The chief also attempted to explain the second traffic stop, the one that resulted in officers searching Ben and Tyler's vehicle for heroin. However, what the police is claiming now is that they did not get a call saying that we had heroin on us. Instead, they could just tell from the second we pulled over that our eyes were glossy. During the interaction, Officer Frotten indicated he believed Shaw's eyes appeared glossy and expressed concern regarding possible impairment. If we look back on the raw footage, this is what the police officer said. His first interaction with us was like. Good with these guys being able to drive?

Yeah, I think so I didn't see anything clear as day with Tyler that I noticed. What's the goal of? Right now, yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna scare him a little bit and let him go with all I really was gonna do. We have charges, are we just tired of them being annoying? It seems hard to take what the chief of police is saying seriously, because so far, almost everything he said is a lie. So the only way we can actually find out the truth is if we unredact everything. We already know the victim's name is Joshua Johnson. Why do we have to keep that protected?

His name is already out there. None of these redactions are protecting anything except for the police. So from that response video, it's clear that police were standing by their actions and disputing many of Ben's claims. And while many listeners and viewers watching this were waiting for Ben to release the next installment of his series and explain, you know, things further. Something unexpected happened. Ben uploaded a much shorter video explaining that he could no longer discuss the situation publicly. And just to clarify, when Ben refers to a mystery company in this video, he's referring to Bam.

At this point, Ben appears to believe that he cannot legally identify them by name or he risks getting in more trouble. Episode three is finally finished after crazy all-nighters and basically destroying my health, but I can't post it or I will go to jail. And not only that, I will also immediately lose my lawsuit of $300,000. And the go-fund me we made for Brian will go straight to this mystery company that I am no longer allowed to talk about. They sent court papers to my email, which I guess a judge approved for them that this was a valid form of service. And so now that I'm officially served, I cannot even mention this company or I will be in jail and everything. Normally I would be like, screw the big guy telling me what to do.

I'm going to do what's morally right. But in this situation, if I do that, then all my friends get screwed with this lawsuit and we lose all the GoFundMe money we raised, like immediately. So I am no longer allowed to even mention this mystery company. My personal opinion is that this is unfair because this order was put on me because this company was telling the court that I was making bomb threats. I was planning on murdering the manager and employees, which obviously I didn't do, and you can see that in the footage. The only problem is I was not given a chance to share my side.

the court just heard their perspective, not mine. So because I wasn't able to share my side, I am now no longer allowed to talk about them. And it looks like this might be it. So yeah. After that, even more YouTube creators and podcasters start getting involved. Because now it appears to many people that Ben has effectively been silenced.

Attorneys, true crime creators, civil rights channels, and even Lego-focused YouTubers begin covering this case. And as coverage grew, so did criticism of bricks and mini-figs and the American Fork Police response. Soon, creators began examining Ben's actual criminal charges.

So Ben was charged in Utah's fourth district court with stalking, a class A misdemeanor, and targeted residential picketing, a class B misdemeanor. A temporary order had been issued issued as well by 4th District Judge Tony Graff Jr. in a civil defamation lawsuit filed by bricks and mini-figs. A hearing was scheduled for June 30th, where the judge will reconsider the order after hearing from both sides.

That's good. Reconsider after hearing from both sides. Good. Sounds good. As the initial order had been issued after only hearing from bricks and mini-figs. Ben was also charged in Provo Justice Court with disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor, and trespassing, a Class B misdemeanor based on his interaction with Amin at the Bricks and Minifigs corporate office in Orem, Utah. Meanwhile, Bricks and Minifigs announced that it had severed ties with Brandon Best and Josh Johnson, the owners of the Salem Organ franchises, the residents of American Fork, companions. However, the legal battles did not stop their guys. No, they didn't. The company has continued pursuing legal action not only against Ben, but also against Brian Mansell. So according to reports, Brian Mansell is currently included in a lawsuit seeking approximately $1.3 million. The lawsuit includes allegations of defamation, extortion, and civil Rico, claiming that Ben and his associates operated as a coordinated enterprise to harass the

business and its franchisees. So that brings us now to where this case stands today. And I can tell you this case has been covered by hundreds of channels. But one of the most helpful videos that I've personally seen came from YouTuber CoffeeZilla, who often refers to himself as the internet detective, CoffeeZilla. Interestingly, CoffeeZilla's goal was very similar to Reckless Ben's original goal. Find the missing Lego. Solve the mystery. Because at the end of the day, that's really how this whole story got started, right? There's been plenty of distractions, distracting us from the original reason for this story. But really, at the end of the day, this is about missing Lego.

So where did the Mansell family's collection go? Why wasn't it simply returned? Why close an entire franchise location instead of resolving the dispute? And who, if anyone, is ultimately responsible? So Stephen, from Coffeyzilla, Stevens, his name, Coffee Zilla, he begins his video by laying out the timeline. but he was actually able to speak directly to several key figures in this case and hear their perspectives firsthand as well. I love it. I sat down and I was like, let's let's hear this.

So Stephen explained that Brandon Best and Josh Johnson operated a sister Bricks and mini-fix location in Eugene Oregon. As we know, they were also the individuals who took over the Salem location after Crystal Gorman's franchise was terminated. And according to the timeline, it was on that very night, November 14th, 2024, when Brandon arrived at the Salem store that the mystery of the missing Lego truly began. The moment Brandon arrived. Bricks and minifigs later issued a statement saying, quote, after taking over the store, we discovered a small number of sets valued between $2,000 and $5,000 that could possibly be related to Mr. Mensell's collection, end quote.

But according to the inventory records and estimates that would later surface, there should have been many times that amount present, right? Many times that amount. So the obvious question became, where did the rest of this collection go? Stephen Coffey-Zilla replayed a clip of CEO Ammon McNeff, flatly denying that bricks and minifigs ever had possession of the missing Lego. So what's going on? So you guys are holding some of our Legos? No, we're not. You're not?

No. Is that a lie? No. That's a lie. You did take the Legos. No. So we have, our attorneys have visited, like, again, so who's let, let, Brian Mansell. Okay.

And who is that? He's a guy who had a bunch of, he had like $200,000 worth of the Legos in your guys in store. No. Never happened. And that's when Stephen realized something. If he could determine exactly what was physically insured. the Salem store on November 14th, 2024, he might finally solve the mystery. So from the beginning, the two sides told dramatically different stories, right? The Gorman's maintained that most

of Brian Mensell's unsold Star Wars collection was still inside the Salem store on the night of the takeover. Meanwhile, Ammon McNeff and Matt McNeff argues something very different. Corporate claim they discovered only about $2,000 and to $5,000 worth of Lego. It could be linked to Brian's collection after taking over the store. Later estimates from corporate suggested there may have been only $13,000 to $15,000 worth of Star Wars inventory in total. And that's where kind of a huge problem emerges, right? Because if Brian's remaining collection should have been worth roughly $82,000, where had it gone? Where is it? Ammon clarified, that Ammon, the CEO Ammon clarified that he believed much of the Mansell collection,

had actually been stored off-site, and he pointed to one of Crystal's original Facebook posts about the collection. Remember the promotional materials which mentioned off-site storage for security reasons? Remember that? This Lego collection will be stored off-site for security reasons. Well, Crystal provides extra additional context to this. According to Crystal, the collection was only stored off-site temporarily because the store had experienced. to break-ins. Once safes were installed inside the store, she says the collection was moved back on site, never moved back off again. The McNeff brothers also said that they had concerns about Crystal's financial situation. According to the McNeffs, and what I mean is, again, CEO Ammon and his brother

who bought minifigs, according to them and their concerns about Crystal, she had fallen behind on lease payments. They worried she might file bankruptcy or leave with invanvenile. that was not hers. And it was because of those concerns with Crystal that corporate had people secretly visit the store and take photographs of the inventory weeks before the takeover. And this, this is where things get really interesting. So both sides claimed they had photographic evidence proving the other side was lying. Eventually, both sides agreed to show Stephen coffee zill of their evidence, corporate produced photographs taken by Brandon Best

on November 14th, 20204, documenting the store during the takeover. Compared to photographs taken weeks earlier in October, the shelves appeared noticeably emptier. So corporate argued that these photos proved much of the collection was already gone before the takeover occurred. But then the Gorman's, remember Crystal Gorman?

The Gorman's produced over 200 photographs of their own. And they explained that because the store had experienced thefts in the past, many of the expensive Star Wars sets were displayed during the day and then locked again inside safes at night in the back. So Stephen carefully reviewed all of the photographs and discovered something important. Mini Lego sets visible in the Gorman's photographs were not present in Brandon's photographic inventory. So when Stephen compared specific set numbers, even Amman, CEO Amman, acknowledged that some of the sets shown in the Gorman's photos were missing from corporates records.

Is this a case of, did y'all see Star Wars sets in the back? Did y'all not see the Star Wars sets in the back? Did he take, not in the back, but specifically in a safe? Like there were a bunch of Star Wars sets in a safe. Did Brandon see those? Has there been talk of those? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, my understanding is that he took pictures of everything,

and all those photos I showed you of the Star Wars were all the photos, was literally all the Star Wars inventory in the store. Yeah, the McNeffs say all of the photos should be with Brandon of all the Star Wars items. And to be fair to them, they showed me a lot more pictures and even showed me a spreadsheet of all the Star Wars sets in the store the night Brandon took it over. And it valued to about like $5,000 to $10,000 or so. But then I had to ask,

Sorry, here's another kind of set. Okay. Do you think y'all have all of these? Very likely. Okay. Again, I'd be surprised if we didn't. But then I couldn't help myself. I started to bring up some of Crystal's photos to see if they matched up.

Have you seen this before? Uh, not that I recall. Do you see that? Yep. So do you see it's in like some kind of like a safe thing? I don't know if you can see the sides there. Looks like a bookshelf to me, but sure. Okay, sure.

Yeah, yeah. So I think the important thing is making sure that all of these are in the inventory for Mansell. Sure. Sure. That's cool. 75041? Yep. The Bolter droid.

75169. 169 I'm not seeing. So there may be... Okay. So there's one that is not on our list. Let's try this. 10 240? Nope, not seeing that one either.

What about 9-493? I don't see that one either. So maybe those were locked at the time, and Brandon did not get those pictures. All right, that's kind of a problem because the Gorman's had over 200 photos of this store. I definitely knew looking at these photos, there's a lot more Legos in the Gorman's photos

by quite a lot that Brandon's photos just didn't show. But corporate didn't really see it that way. But still, in the grand scheme of things, we're not talking again 10 times the amount of sets here. I don't know. I haven't shown all the photos yet. I don't know exactly how much. If there's a calculable figure that we can look at and say, great, this is what was there,

I promise you, it's not $100,000 worth of Lego. And so where's the rest of it? He got me. I don't know. That suggested Brandon's photographs may not have captured everything that was physically inside the store on November 14th. And then the U-Haul. Let's talk about the U-Haul. There was the U-Haul.

And honestly, this may be one of the strangest parts of the entire story. Crystal claimed that Brandon arrived at the store for that takeover, Brandon Best, with a large U-Haul truck on the night of the takeover. A U-Haul, huh? I wonder what that's for. Well, Matt McNeff, Ammon's brother, the McNeff brothers, the own the company, initially, they denied this entirely, this U-Haul thing, insisting that Brandon Best had arrived in a rental car. There was no U-Haul.

So when Brandon came to the store that night, he was driving a U-Haul truck. Now, in typical fashion, this was immediately disputed. Brandon showed up to the Salem store. in a rental car. When he came to get the keys from Crystal, he was there in a rental car, not in a U-Haul. It wasn't until after he told me he was taking the keys and locking me out that I really kind of paid attention

in the fact that he had a large, not the small, the large U-Haul truck. Then a former employee from another Bricks and mini-fix location, the Eugene store, owned by also Branden Best and Josh Johnson, came forward with an explosive allegation. And that employee claimed that Brandon had showed up to their store with a U-Haulful of Lego, including Star Wars sets, and allegedly told employees that Crystal had stolen the rest and fled the country. The former employee started in 2024, and I was working under the old manager Brian and then he sold the store to Brandon S. and Josh.

What store was this? Bricks and mini figs, where? Okay, now what did you see that made you want to talk to me? I saw a reckless event's YouTube video about Salem's from closing down because I was talking to my employer's about the situation of Salem. And we were told through other employees that it was just a bad area to work in. It was like haunted, if you will, it was going around. But after seeing the video of Reckless Ben, we exposed them. And it makes a lot more sense with what we dealt with with Brandon and Josh. Like, oh, Crystal, stole Lego sets and bolted out of the country.

Who says that? Brandon, Brandon Best told us. He was dropping off all the Lego sets to us that night. There was a bunch of used Lego sets. That's like Saran Wrap. They had Star Wars. See? There is just a lot of stock. It was like a medium-sized U-haul truck. Wait, wait. They brought a U-Haul truck.

Yeah, from Salem. Only to Eugene. And to Eugene. And it had a bunch of Star Wars sets on it? Because Star Wars sets, like everything. He had a bunch of new stuff too. Wait, when, and, and, and was this when they took over the store from Crystal? I believe so, yes. Yes. Because he said that Crystal stole Legos in left the country. While he has a U-Haul of Legos? Yeah.

Interesting. Weird. And he said, we're just going to hold on to this stuff. Let me tell corporate tell us where we got to distribute it. And we're like, oh, well, it would make more sense if we could take it because we're kind of struggling with, you know, the product and put on the shelves. Naturally, that raised some serious questions. Wow. What a bombshell, right?

Was some of the missing collection transported? in the U-Haul, the night of the takeover? I mean, that's where my mind goes, but I don't know. I don't know. Stephen, Coffey-Zillow, Stephen, starts going through photographs from November 14th, frame by frame. And then he made a surprising discovery. After zooming in and adjusting the brightness on one image, he sees what appeared to be a U-Haul truck that is parked outside the store. that directly contradicted earlier claims that no U-Haul had been there the night of the takeover, that it was just a rental car. No, he's seen what looks to be a U-Haul. And when confronted with the photograph, the explanation suddenly changes CEO Amin. Amin CEO then acknowledges,

oh, a U-Haul had in fact been there. But then Amin claims it was being used to transport a camper trailer, not Lego. So last night, I talked with Matt McNeff. I brought up this question of the U-Haul. He told me emphatically there was no U-Haul. Y'all came to me this morning. You said, hey, we looked into it. There actually was a U-Haul there that night.

Can you clear up what that's about? So there's actually two different things that are going on here, just to help you understand. So, and I don't know if you want this particularly, not on the record, but we do know of a discreet. former employee that worked at another location that back on the 24th of October there was a U-Haul that went to a storage unit in Salem for another previous franchisee you know like for a different situation that we had just you know

gone through some things and he he had had a previously you know like hey I have some inventory that I didn't turn over it I was supposed to it's at this storage location can you know you guys can come pick it up And so Brandon was sent on that day to pick up with a U-Haul inventory that then he moved down. But that was October 24th. So when we're talking about this ex-employee, you're saying they are conflating the October 24th event of the U-Haul coming up to Eugene with St. Legos with some time after November 14th, after the store takeover. Is that correct?

my understanding that? Yes. Now, to be fair, Stephen, Coffey's dealer Stephen, acknowledges that the timeline made it difficult to prove that any theft had ever occurred. But still, this whole U-Haul situation is starting to get really sketchy. I also wanted to play you this clip

with Crystal Gorman's husband giving his thoughts on the U-Haul situation. Take a listen. I want to add this detail that didn't get into coffee's video because I think it's important to understand. The night BAM took our store, we were promised an inventory. Buy BAM, not by Brandon, by corporate, not a franchisee. Now, the BAM representative told us that Brandon would be doing the inventory,

but we've all since learned, Brandon and Josh had been told in advance that they would be able to buy the store. We know this because Josh told it to the police who accidentally leaked their body cam footage. So Bam entrusted one of the people they'd offered the store to to tell them what it was worth. We've never received that itemized inventory. The franchise agreement gives us the opportunity to challenge that inventory by demanding a third-party evaluator of everything in the store. Of course we wouldn't have accepted their inventory if Brandon was claiming the Mansell sets weren't there.

And then they would have had to provide a third-party inventory, which would have either revealed everything inside the store or would have immediately conflicted with the photo evidence. So everything about the missing sets could have come to light at the time if BAM had simply followed their own franchise agreement. And they cannot claim they didn't know they had an obligation to provide us a complete inventory because they promised us one on the phone. that night and it's in the agreement they wrote and signed. Again, we now know the guy they'd sent to the store was someone they'd already promised the store to. Do you think he had any incentive to produce an accurate inventory of what he would have to later pay for the store? Or to deflate the value of the assets to save himself money? I leave that to you and a court to decide.

But we do know he showed up in a giant rented U-Haul truck. Anyway, at this point in his video, Stephen undertook what was probably, in my opinion, the most important part of his investigation, using internal inventory spreadsheets, point-of-sale records. Over 200 photographs, video footage, and consignment documents he attempted to reconstruct what had actually had. happened to Brian's collection. And the findings, they were surprising. Records showed that approximately $24,000 worth of Brian's Lego had been sold through the store. Brian had received about $17,000, which roughly matched the percentage that he was supposed to receive under the consignment agreement. Okay, so fair. But then, Stephen then covered something much bigger. The store's point of sale system showed approximately $51,000 in sales that appeared to match Brian's collection.

And that created another major discrepancy. If over $50,000 worth of Lego had been sold, why had Brian only been compensated based on roughly $24,000 in sales? Wow, quite the discrepancy. So more had been sold, $50,000 worth of Lego. Wow. Well, Stevens' conclusion, after everything is that record keeping was likely and complete or inaccurate. And another major discovery involved layaway transactions. So records showed that somewhere between $15,000 and $25,000 worth of Lego had been placed on layaway. Employees and other franchise owners reportedly told Stephen that this amount of layaway was highly unusual for bricks and mini-fig store.

Crystal explained that because Brian's collection contained rare and expensive, sets, customers would frequently place items on layaway, cancel them, and then place them on layaway again. And while that explanation may account for some discrepancies, it also made the inventory trail far more complicated, right? But after reviewing every available photograph and matching visible sets to Brian's inventory, Stephen estimated that approximately $21,000 worth of Brian's Lego can be positively identified inside the store on November 14th the day of the takeover. That directly contradicted corporate's original claim that only $2,000 to $5,000 worth was there. However, even after accounting for those sets, some inventory still remains missing,

still unexplained. So after reviewing all of the evidence, Stephen reached a conclusion. that looked very different for the public narrative many people have been hearing online. Stephen concludes that there likely was not a massive $200,000 Lego theft. Instead, he found evidence of poor record keeping and complete inventory tracking off-site storage, unusual layaway practices, side transactions, and unpaid consignment proceeds. Stephen estimated that only about $10,000 to $20,000 worth of Lego remains truly unaccounted for. I think we can all agree. There's a lot of weird stuff here on all sides, abnormal stuff.

Sure, maybe you can chalk some of this up to bad record keeping between the U-Haul, the layaways, the $20,000 in Lego sets, that corporate called $2,000 to $5,000 that was there that night, the off-book deals. But even if we can't, like, fully know 100% percent. you know, what these weird things were about, I think they tell a story of what actually happened to Brian's collection. In a way, multiple people, I think, are kind of right, kind of wrong. The Gormans were correct that more of that collection was there that night of the takeover than previously thought.

But corporate also alleged that some of it was offsite, and that appears to be partly true, although some of that is disputed and it looks like, you know, way more of the collection was sold and layawayed than Brian was paid for. But all in all, there's a lot less. missing than many people think, especially if your starting number is $200,000. I estimated, and I must emphasize, estimated with bad records that there's only about $10,000 to $20,000 in Lego that isn't explained by one of these sources. This isn't to say Brian's been fully compensated.

And this is where I'll give my own opinion. After following this case for weeks, what stands out to me isn't missing Lego. it's blame everywhere. At almost every turn, responsibility seems to move somewhere else. The former store owner blames corporate. Corporate blames the franchise owner. The franchise owners blame the former owner. Police appear to focus on the people raising questions rather than fully addressing the questions themselves. Whether you agree with reckless Ben's tactics or not, you know, there are varying opinions on his tactics. One thing becomes difficult to ignore, which is sort of this repeated pattern. Psychologists sometimes refer to this tactic as Darvo. Darvo stands for

deny, attack, and reverse victim offender. And it's a dynamic where attention shifts away from the original complaint and toward the person making the complaint. And throughout the person, throughout this story, that's the part I keep coming back to. The question started very simply, what happened to Brian Mensell's father's Lego collection? Yet somehow the conversation became about Brian. And then it became about Crystal. And then it became about reckless Ben. And then it became about YouTubers. And then about GoFundMe's. And then it became about signs and then about arrests. And somewhere along the way, the original question seemed to get lost. Now, am I saying that there's some grand conspiracy in Utah County? No. But I am saying there

appears to be a culture. I think that's fair to say. A culture, at least in some of these cases, where people in positions of authority are sometimes too willing to accept the narrative of the people they already know, trust, or the people they identify with. Maybe that's religion, right? Maybe it's business relationships. Maybe it's friendships. Maybe it's simply human nature. I don't know. But I do know this. Trust should never replace investigation. Relationships should never replace evidence. And power should never replace accountability. Because if we can all agree on one thing, it should be this. The person with the most power in a dispute should not automatically be the most believable person in the dispute. Evidence should decide that. Never status. Connections should not decide that. Influence should not decide that. One thing should decide that.

And it's evidence. And that's why the story matters far beyond Lego. To me, it does. However, perhaps the most important conclusion that Stephen came to in his video was that Brian Mencel likely was never fully paid for his collection. According to Stephen's estimates, Brian may still be owed somewhere between $50,000 and $83,000. Stephen ultimately argued that bricks and minifigs should compensate Brian and resolve the matter rather than continue aggressive litigation against Brian, reckless Ben, and others involved in the controversy. Much of this Brian wasn't paid for that I know of. So I estimate he's still out about $50 to $83,000 for Lego he wasn't compensated for. And I think honestly that's something that Bricks and Minifigs obviously should handle and make right.

Regardless of what a franchisee does, the new one, the old one, the company behind it must stand behind their product, their service. And I can't imagine a better example of a company doing the opposite. Unfortunately, Bricks and Minifix has chosen to deflect and dodge responsibility. at most opportunities and created a really awful customer experience that has snowballed into this crazy series of events. But instead of taking accountability for that, they've taken an aggressive legal strategy, which I told them personally was a horrible idea. As of writing this, Brian Mansell is being sued for $1.3 million as part of a legal campaign

against him and Reckless Bin and any of the associates. Remember, Brian is the same guy who lost all these. Legos at Bricks and Minifix store. And I told the CEO and COO, that's ridiculous, and they should drop this. And honestly, after Stevens linked the investigation, it seems like with enough cooperation from everyone involved, it was actually possible to determine where much of the collection win and how much money may still be owed. And in many of your opinions, making sure the customer is paid fully should ultimately be the responsibility of the company. because regardless of who made mistakes along the way,

the Mansell family still appears to be missing both Lego as well as compensation. Critics argue that if Brandon Best, if Josh Johnson, if corporate leaders Amman and Matt McNep had simply worked together to go over all of the paper and the records that Kofizilla did, that Stephen did, and if they had simply worked together to resolve the dispute from the, beginning and to make sure that their customer was paid for their Lego collection, this situation may have never spiraled into lawsuits, into arrests, and this now nationwide, I would say worldwide controversy. Instead, now this case is a legal battle that is still continuing,

a legal battle that's involving police. It's involving civil law. lawsuits, it's involving criminal charges, and it's involving intense public scrutiny, when it likely could have been resolved in a more ethical and much kinder way, away from YouTube. But now that we know at least where most of the Lego collection went, or about how much money is still owed, that brings us back to one of the main reasons we wanted to cover this story in the first place. It's clearly, again, about more. more than just missing Legos. And my questions remain. My questions remain about influence, about power dynamics, and what some are calling the Mormon mafia, not my term, talk to others,

the Mormon mafia. And to be clear, again, no evidence that the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latterty Saints is involved in anything wrong here. That's not what people are saying either. certainly not what I'm saying. The concern, though, I think lies in the fact that individuals within this tight-knit community are possibly using their personal relationships and connections and religion in ways that benefit each other and get one another to trust each other more than a possible outsider. I mean, it's just a fact that several people tied to this situation do have LDS connections. BAM CEO and BAM C O, Amin and Matt McNeff, are Brigham Young University graduates. The new and now former Salem franchise owners, Brandon Best and Joshua

Johnson, have also been publicly identified as members of the LDS community and mission companions. Reports also suggest that one of the McNeff brothers and Josh Johnson previously served as missionary companions, LDS missionary companions. And through discussions online, at least nine of the officers involved are reported to be members of the LDS church and maybe even the judges working on the case. None of that proves corruption or a big civil conspiracy on its own. But I think it does add to this lingering questions about trust and connections and patterns and it certainly adds important context.

the LDS community has always been known for having very strong connections because they attend church together in congregations done as wards. They work together. They have neighborhood networks in places like Utah, those relationships. They definitely overlap within local business, law enforcement, and even local government. That's just kind of known. realistically, most people would agree it's hard to pretend that personal relationships never play a role in decisions made by people in authority. People in authority have biases too. People in authority have connections. That kind of influence exists in many systems, multiple systems, not just religious ones, not just in the LDS community. But at this case, many people point to, again, what they are seen as a pattern here from the very beginning. Police are treating victims like suspects, false reports being accepted at face value without, again, assessing evidence or investigating first.

Body camera footage being redacted in ways that favors one side. And all of a sudden, it calls one side the victim. And even reckless Ben being arrested after trying to launch a go fund meet to help recover what the men cells have lost. So it makes me wonder if the American Fork Police Department is willing to bend rules and enormous conduct or protect their own or what is familiar to them over a Lego dispute, what happens again when the stakes are higher or in cases involving far more serious crimes. could the same kind of insider dynamics influence how allegations of fraud, abuse, or even violent crimes are handled? That's an important question. I mean, honestly, we watched one Utah judge today drop charges on a BYU athlete. We'll talk about that later. But I quickly went to the Lego story to think about it. Because this whole situation, like again, this

taps into this bigger concern, I have, and many people that have been following this saga from the very beginning have about how police departments, religious organizations, and these tight-knit communities stay impartial when the people involved are sharing these strong cultural ties. And even if nothing improper happened, even if nothing happened, which let's be honest, it did. But even if it didn't. the appearance of favoritism alone can make a lot of us lose trust in authorities and trust in the people that are supposed to protect us and trust in the very institutions that are supposed to hold everyone equally accountable. At the same time, there's another bit of pushback happening in the same comment threads.

Many commenters who identify as members of the LDS faith, they are explicitly saying that these kind of allegations and generalizations, do not reflect their experience or beliefs. They say that the church's standards are clear about being honest. The church's standards are clear about honesty, accountability, rejecting theft or misconduct, following the Ten Commandments. And they argue that if individuals did act improperly, that should not be taken as representative of the entire religion, faith, institution, and making that clear. But to that, I want to say this.

In that view, I have to ask in response to this. And I get it. In response to this, does then this make those who are LDS more trustworthy and naive of people who simply say one thing and do another if these are the standards of the LDS faith and and what they teach is honesty and trustworthiness and accountability. With those who are LDS trust other LDS members more simply because they are taught about honesty and accountability at church, do those wonderful teachings in the LDS faith make honest members who follow the LES teachings more susceptible to abuse or coercive control or to just believing

the narrative rather than actually investigating the narrative and investigating the evidence? Do these teachings about honesty and accountability create even more concerning community where trust is given to other members of the church before it's earned, where trust feels more natural to those who are members of the church, members than outsiders who come in to settle a dispute? There's also another recurring point being raised that some people argue that if the LDS Church wanted to dispel rumors of insider protection or informal shielding of members, a public statement directly addressing the allegations would go further than to remain silent. Yeah, I'll just tell you, though, that's not going to happen. That's not what the church does.

If they're not going to make a statement about the Lori Ball and Chad Dayball case or Ruby, Frankie and Jody Hilderbren, they're not making a statement about this. Behind the scenes, though, there have been claims circulating that internal disciplinary action may already be taking place. That's interesting. One example is the claim that Joshua Johnson was recently removed from an LDS state high counsel position after footage of his conduct surfaced. Interesting. By now, most of you are familiar with who Josh Johnson is, the Bricks and Minifix franchise owner who is embroiled in the missing Lego controversy that Reckless Bend has brought to light. Well, the latest police footage, which was leaked and unredacted, apparently, shows Josh telling the police or stating that he was on the LDS High Council in his stake. This is interesting.

I have a source kind of close to the situation who is able to confirm that yes, he was on the High Council for about the last year and a half or so, but he has been released from that position as of June 2nd two days ago from the time that I'm taping this. This is kind of unusual on a Tuesday. these things happen formally on a Sunday, but apparently no longer a high council member, which is kind of a high up position in a local stake. Did Reckless Van get him released? I don't know if that's true or not. If it's true, it might be a good step in the right direction, but clearly more needs to be done. And this Lego story has just started to unravel a thread

from that sweater that we pull on all the time. And I suspect that that, that thread's going to continue to unravel. Only time will tell. I'm definitely following it. I'm fascinated by this story. I hope you are too. But before we end this video and this episode, I want to go over what's coming up next in this case. So reckless Ben has he posted this himself. He posted on Reddit a schedule to let everybody know what to expect. So first, he says that the hearings will be available for the public to view online, of WebEx. The hearing coming up on June 30th is the big one. It's a big deal. However, there are also, there's a new motion to expedite the June 30th hearing. So that date may change.

We'll see. This is a civil case from BAM against Ben, Brian Mansell and others, and is an evidentiary hearing for the temporary restraining order. And since the TRO was issued on an emergency basis, this is the first time BAM's claims will be scrutinized in an adversarial setting. Then on July 1st, there is a hearing for the case out of American Fork with the body camp footage. The charges are for stalking and targeted residential picketing. Okay. And on July 7th, there is a hearing for the misdemeanor case out of BAM headquarters. These charges are trespassing and disorderly conduct.

As always, we're going to be keeping up with what happens in this case moving forward and we'll bring any updates as they come. You know,