The Standup with ThePrimeagen - The $100,000 LEGO Heist

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

[Sponsor] Linear helps teams track issues, manage projects, collaborate on docs, and ship products - and the crazy thing is their software is actually fast and a joy to use. Learn more: https://trm.sh/linear [Description] A family trusted a massive Star Wars LEGO collection to a local Bricks & Minifigs store. Then the collection vanished. What started as a dispute over missing LEGOs turned into one of the strangest internet investigations in recent memory—featuring corporate drama, police involvement, lawsuits, undercover stunts, and a YouTuber determined to uncover the truth. In this episode, we break down the wild story behind the missing LEGO collection and how it spiraled far beyond anyone expected. [Hosts/Guests] Prime: https://thestanduppod.com/contributor/theprimeagen Teej: https://thestanduppod.com/contributor/teej-dv Trash: https://thestanduppod.com/contributor/trash Casey: https://thestanduppod.com/contributor/cmuratori [Partners] Linear: https://trm.sh/linear Sentry: https://trm.sh/sentry [Socials] x.com/thestanduppod instagram.com/thestanduppod tiktok.com/@thestanduppod facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573286173150 [Other Places to find us] Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/01A062kejnXFkJE01bjN5J RSS: thestanduppod.com/feed.xml Clips: @TheStandupPodClips Website: thestanduppod.com

I actually have something that I'm, I'm kind of stealing someone's thunder today, and I apologize in advance to trash. But I have a snack. Whoa. Oh. Only I've ever seen you eat food. Snack time. Snack time.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. See, here's the thing. I was at the farmer's market like this weekend. and like I was going there to get some beef jerky because I'd gotten some like the two weeks prior

and it was really, really good. And I'm like, I have to go back and get some of this stuff. So I went there to get the beef jerky. And so I'm like, give me like a butt. Like I need like a bunch of bags of this stuff. And they were like, do you mind if we take a picture and post it on Instagram because we're trying to get better at social media? That's what they said.

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, Actually, I can do one. I can do one better. Like, I can mention this jerky on snack time if you want. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Does this mean Casey has a snack sponsor before trash? Dude, I don't know if they would sponsor me. I could ask.

And that that, I feel like trash would just be in shambles at that point. I wouldn't do that to him. I'm waiting until Yom Earth comes to their senses and realizes that they have been selling millions and millions of bags of gummy bears or whatever it is because of trash, and that they should kick him some at least free yummer at a minimum. Well, I'm curious, is the beef turkey, like, is it super dry or kind of chewy? So this, let me, let me just, I swear this is completely unsolicited. I just absolutely love this stuff.

It's called Kobo, K-H-O-B-O. It's this. It's just a local Seattle thing. It's not, like, I don't think they're, like, you can get it shipped, I think, from their website, but they don't, it's not like in stores or anything. Um, is it what? Is it pretentious? Uh,

pretentious. I think you could be. It's like, when I eat the snack, am I better than somebody else? It's kind of like a nice, spicy, like, it tastes really freaking good. That's why I like it. It's like, I'll show you a piece. I'm watching at the website right now. Um, I don't know if it's probably not, there are probably more pretentious jerks

jerks you can get. But it's got like all the, really good seasoning on it. You probably can't see that because of the light, but it's really freaking tasty. It's so good. We ended up eating the whole bag every time. Do you like me some Vietnamese flavors? Yeah, get the spicy. I like the spicy one. Is it a spicy really spicy? I'm not a spicy guy. I think buffalo sauce is spicy. It's not particularly spicy in the like hot sense, although I'm probably the wrong one to ask because I kind of lost my spice tolerance. Like, I kind of like nowadays I can't tell how hot things are because too many years of being

Thai food. I don't understand people eat spices. I just feel like if I do eat spicy, I'm just like drinking water the whole time. It's a muscle, trash. You get better at it. Well, it's kind of like... I am slowly getting better because I do like spicy chips that aren't too spicy. So I'm like slowly up in it.

Oh man, I don't know. Trash, wake up with a little bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos every morning to freshen your breath. So that's my limit. That's where I'm at. Flaming hot Cheetos is like my, uh, that's my level right there. Trash, go even further beyond. Wait, wait, that's my That went over my head.

What does that be? Isn't that from an anime? Am I mistaken? Oh, are you talking about My Hero Academia? There isn't that the catchphrase? I vaguely remember someone saying beyond. I don't know.

So, I thought I had on there. Someone said Dragon Ball Z. I do not remember them ever saying that in Dragon Ball Z. I don't think they said. It sounds way cooler in Dragon Ball Z, whatever they say. Oh my goodness. they say it in Dragon Ball too

oh right because it go even further yeah they do say that even all right that's right good call chat good call I shouldn't doubt a chat on their anime knowledge that's true that's true I should never doubt that yeah I'm pretty excited about this because I actually follow you were you you tried to screw me because you were like

don't read about this don't learn anything about this we're going to do an episode two weeks go by and then you were like no we're doing something else today I'm like no so thank you to Teeds for saving me I want to know what this is about. Like, I want to know. I've got some good stuff for you. Okay.

I'm excited. Thank you, Tej. I have been using linear lately, and look at this. Okay, I just clicked on a ticket. It loaded. I go back. I go forward. Look at how fast this is.

I can drag them between columns absolutely creamy, smooth. I know. This is unusual. This is not what you expect from software, but this is some of the best software I've been using and I use it to track all the things I am working on. And you should too. You should try out linear at linear.

T.J. saved us all. He's going to be doing the presentation. And so I'll do the quick intro, which is today, let's y'all, welcome to the stand-up theme. Hold on. Welcome to the world's most attended stand-up. Thank you to all the interns who've decided to show up to the optional meeting today. It was a mandatory day, so I appreciate the attendance. We got a very special presentation by T.T.D.V. about bricks and minifigs. Now, here's the best part. Casey has not heard any of it. and I believe there is a small chance Casey will drop the F-bomb in surprise with how just shocking this story is.

I was embargoed. Like when you have a jury that's like sequestered, I was told not to read anything about this. And I haven't. So I know nothing. I didn't watch any videos. I didn't read any articles. I have no idea other than there was something to do with Legos or something. That's it.

So hit me. That's already tilted. Oh, my goodness, Casey. As someone who's watched 50 hours of content on this, I am never been more than that has to do with Legos, and I am so excited. So please, go. Yeah, I will not.

Also, Trash, does you also remain virginal? Did you keep your chest? We already need snack time. We already have done with the snack time. I thought many things were small thick Newton's, but apparently not. That would have been extra snack time. That's not a bad idea. Has anyone made tiny,

little tiny fig no they have trash you might be on to something all right many fig nons are a real thing that sounds good i thought they went out of business i thought this was i thought that's what the topic was yeah this is how many figs went out of business all right t jumps so ready okay let go um all right so just since uh as a quick legal disclaimer as part of the standup uh corporation we'd like to just mention that while this is an ongoing legal investigation everything here is for entertainment purposes only. Holy balls. Just in case.

Okay. So this is, it's, it's quite the saga here. We've got, we've got some slides. We've got some notes. I hope everyone brought their brown bags and enjoys our educational lunchtime that we have today. So Casey, this one's for you and also for trash. Okay.

Thank you. So. Yeah, yeah. I thought honestly trash would be able to remain on, you. you know, unsullied for the presentation. I thought he would already have watched a video by now. If it was Pokemon. If it was Pokemon,

100% would have known. That's probably why I haven't seen it. It's a Star Wars Lego thing. So here we go. We've got to go over who the main figures, if you will, are what's going on in here. Okay, pun intended. Yes. So we've got the two main guys here in, in this situation, which is Ed and Brian Mansell.

Okay. Ed, I'm pretty sure that he's old. Okay. And he's been collecting Star Wars Legos for a long, long, long, long time. And they're like all, they're in great condition. He's got all these crazy original sets. A long, long time. Were they stored in a house far, far away?

Thanks, Brian. Great. Okay. We've got a lot of material to get through at the Pima Gallery. You can keep their comments to themselves. We don't do interrupting on this podcast. Okay, so the dad's been keeping these Legos forever. He's getting a little old.

His son is going to try and sell them now so that he can help pay for some of the stuff with his dad and all this other stuff. Initially valued roughly $200,000 of Star Wars Legos, a very considerable set. Later, I'll give a little spoiler. That number is toned down a little bit. that's kind of just like an initial impression as they're walking through and sort of seeing what's going on. But roughly the headlines that you're probably going to see when you start looking around is multiple, you know, more than $100,000 worth of Lego sets, okay? Okay. And so, obviously, that's not the kind of thing that you just want to try and sell by yourself off of Craig's list one by one, etc.

Right? So Ryan reaches out to Crystal and Ben, the Gorman's, okay? the consigniors, the consigniors. However you say this word, it doesn't really matter. The consignment place, okay? So they have a bricks and mini figs location. Bricks and mini figs is not a snack time slash construction shop where they sell bricks and mini fig newtons. No, no, no.

They sell Lego bricks and mini figurines as such that are being displayed in, you know, this presentation right now. Right. and so there's a big corporate branch and then they have a bunch of franchises. So Crystal and Ben owed a franchise locally to these guys and they're selling these and they're doing things. Now we've got some villains. Hold on. We got to do a quick thing for those that don't know. A consignee is the person who owns something and sends it off to someone.

The consigner is someone who sells on behalf of the consignee taking some amount of profit and funneling the rest of the consigny. Can I ask one minor question at this point? Of course. And that is, where is this taking place? Salem, Oregon, I believe. Oh, my. So not far from me. I could have driven down to see this.

Casey, we could have some on-the-scene reporting. Maybe we can have you driving. That would be so funny. And the name of this store? Bricks and mini-figs. Bam. So that store also exists very, in my town. So another branch of that franchise.

Yeah. Another franchise. So this is a, I have seen. very large franchise. There's many places. Yeah, franchise. In fact, this is a, this story is a very big tarnish on their reputation.

A lot of people very upset across the whole organization. So this is, it's far reaching. The consequences are far reaching. You are not going to expect where the twists and turns are going to take us on this one, Casey, okay? I already, yes. Okay. So now we have some villains, some guys that are coming to take over.

It's a little complicated. I don't really want to go into the back. story of exactly how they do is, but they're going to take over the franchise from the Gormons. Okay. So we got some new people running the franchise here, which are branded best and Joshua Johnson. Okay. Next up, we have reckless Ben. This guy's a YouTuber. We're going to explain a little bit more about him later. Okay. We love YouTubers here. Okay. We are YouTubers here. We love, and this channel, we love YouTubers. We got to put her biases out on the table here. Okay. Casey. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're,

We're looking out for our own here. We're looking out for our own. True. Exactly, exactly. Good job, huge. And we're going to be later introduced to BAM corporate. That's the McNabb brothers. They're vampires here.

You're going to see why a little bit later. And importantly, the American Fork Police, I think that's like the small town that it actually is near or whatever. It's the police department. Okay. They're, of course, going to be involved in this as well. American Fork is the name of the town? In Utah.

But this is insane. This isn't Salem, Oregon, but the police forces in Utah. It gets very confusing. I love it. It's very confusing. Okay. I have a confession. Okay, trash.

Go for it. When we showed the figurines for Ed and Brian, I'm so out of my element, I thought those were the actual name of those figurines in the picture. And I was like, oh, my gosh, they have names? Like, I had no idea. No, we just thought it would be more. And then like, like, you know, 30 seconds, I was like, oh, these aren't. Okay. Okay.

I was so confused. It's a good point. I was like, I didn't know they had like actual names. I was blown away. No, it's just more fun for us to use Lego figurines throughout. So, okay, so here's where we're going to start getting introduced to what's the actual drama. Okay, so we're just trying to do a little bit of scene setting here and where we get to the ground. So the Manzelles, right, in Oregon, Brian Manzell consigns his father's massive Star Wars Lego collection to this Bricks and Minifix store.

Okay. estimated maybe between 150 to 200 initially, later maybe paired down to closer to 100k. Of course, for collectibles like this, on any given day, you're going to have a huge range of what these could possibly sell for. So 100 to 200K worth of Legos gets put on consignment, okay? And Crystal accepts the inventory and dispersed about $20,000 over the following year as they're selling some of the Legos. Okay, so this, okay, so this. set is being sold off in parts. It's not being like auctioned off or something like this where you get the whole set. So some of the Legos have been sold. Correct. $20,000 has been paid before

we start the shenanigans. Exactly. And so remember, this is initially with the Gorman's, okay? And then as we mentioned, here comes corporate in early 2026. Okay. Crystal Gorman, the original owner of the Bricks and Minifigs franchise has a planned relocation and so they abruptly are terminating their contract and the control is seized from the Salem store. Okay?

There's a bunch of other complications going on in parallel with this to this day of Gorman filing lawsuits complaining or claiming she was expelled without warning or compensation under threat of police intervention. So just even initially,

things are getting a little crazy for a Lego store. Are there grounds for this? Did they not pay a franchise? Was there any allegations? Or they literally just took over the store? That is currently unknown. There's some.

Yes. And like actively still being disputed. And I think they have a currently ongoing lawsuit and they're not sharing everything about all of those details for the legal reasons. As I said, this is why this is an entertainment thing. We're doing our best with the information that we've got. So we don't know on this podcast. We don't know why this happened. We just know that it happened.

Correct. Yep. Okay. Yes. There was claimed a debt and the original owner said they were going to do some sort of moving or something like that. And then that's all the information we've been reported. Regardless of that's accurate, we don't know. There comes a takeover of the Gorman's version, right?

So now Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson, unfortunately not Jack Johnson. That'd be sick. Lock down the store. Okay? All right. Too soon. They refused to return. RIP.

Too soon. Sorry. It's a really long time. At this point, I'm also like, before we get into the actual drama, I'm also wondering what, like, what kind of, why would you pay for franchise rights to something that is just, I have a store with a bunch of Legos in it? Like, what does you need? What do you need corporate? Like, what is corporate doing for you? It's not like McDonald's where they're like, here's the recipes, here's the friator.

will ship you a ton of lard every month. Like, it's just a store with Legos in it. What do you need corporate for? It's all like Google SEO. Like there's a trust behind the brand or there was trust behind the brand. There's all those things that kind of like all come together. The brand is better than being by yourself. And without having a corporate branch, Casey, you can't blame them when things go wrong.

That's my assumption. We're going to see as a very key part of what happens later. Okay. All right. So corporate seizes the store. It is now being sort of in. limbo because presumably corporate doesn't run their own stores normally. Right.

So if we go back to the players here, we've got the BAM corporate. That's the McNeff brothers. Right here, we've got Brandon, Best, and Joshua Johnson. They're coming in to run the store. Okay. And so now these newly installed corporate operators, Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson, locked down the store.

And this is where things, this is where the controversy begins. They do not return the remaining unsold sets to the Mansell family. Okay? And they say, hey, these are just ours now. Or and or at various different times, these sets don't exist. So depending on the day and depending on when they're getting asked and who's asking them, there is a mix between these are our sets. We own them.

they don't exist. Okay. So they come in, the big baddies here, and they kick out these guys. Boom. They're gone. Animations are great. Thank you, trash. I appreciate that. Okay. And now it's just them here. And the main cells are like, what's happening? Where's my Legos? I really want them back. So the next logical action, of course, is Bricks and Minifix says, oh, our bad. Here's your Legos. But instead, what do they do? They trespass them from the store and say if they come back ever again, you're going straight to jail. They give them the straight to jail card. Okay.

Okay. So now at this point, this has been going on for a while, and the main cells are like, okay, I'm not sure what to do now because we can't do anything. I'm really stressed out.

I'm really stressed. What can we do? That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money to take care of my like terminally ill father that he's trying to take care of. Wait, the father is terminally ill? Oh, yes.

I didn't mention that, did I? Did I not mention that? No. I don't recall. Making that up. Yes, you technically did. You guys just didn't pick it up.

He said that he's selling, in part of selling the Lego set is also to pay for the father's medical bills. The father is dying. Yes. And this corporation, which it basically exists entirely on branding, is like, I think we should, I think we should confiscate $80,000 at a minimum of, a dying man's Lego collection because if anything will endear us to our customer base

is to have like an old man's last words be, where are my Legos? And their son be like, I don't know, bricks and mini figs stole them from us. And kicked us out of the store. Casey, I cannot believe how spot on you are, right? Okay. You have no idea.

Okay. Okay. This is insane already, but sure. Right. Even if it just ended here and then they were like, our bad, eventually they gave the money. It would still be kind of a crazy news story, but it gets much worse, okay? So Mansell leaves, of course, because he's worried about going to jail. He's like, that would really suck.

It would suck to be in jail while my dad's dying and I can't take care of him. So now he's trying to figure out what to do next. Uh-huh. At this point, bricks and mini fakes says, guys, we didn't do anything wrong. We're the good guys here. Okay, we're the good guys. And they said through various times, they say, hey, and this, once again, do you have to, if we want, if you want to dig very deep into this, you can go read some of the original contracts. And you can, they are saying, we don't allow consignment.

But as far as I can tell, I've seen the contracts. there's a spot that says franchisees are allowed to do consignment. So there's this corporate corporate is saying, no, we don't know about it, blah, blah, blah. That's not our fault. Go talk to the franchisees. The franchisees are saying, no, no, no, it's corporate problem. You've got to go talk to them. It was from a previous thing.

That's not our stuff. They're just doing the blame game. They're doing the blame game to each other. And everyone's saying, we did the good stuff, right? We did the good stuff. Okay. And they said, oh, maybe only a small segment. of it was physically found on site

and that actually it was originally the Gormans and they just lied about the sales. So corporate's trying to blame it on the previous people basically and saying it's all their fault. Now, I assume we don't know this detail, but I'll just ask anyway. As of this point in the story before, like when they got

kicked out of the store and told that they can't come back, at that time, could they physically see that the Legos were still there? Or was it unclear whether? And in fact, Casey, there is literally a video recording of them discussing it with the franchisee, the new franchisees of saying, hey, we have stuff on consignment that you need to make sure you take care of because it was a huge part of some of their inventory and whatnot. So they actually have video of that happening. And the Legos are in the video.

Some of them, yes, but also they're saying like they're in the store at the time this is happening. saying like, hey, I want to be able to take care of the stuff that we have on consignment. And they're like, you don't worry about it. Get out of here. Okay. Oh. So bricks and mini figs says we didn't do anything wrong.

And, but unfortunately, the money is just missing. We don't know where it is, right? So that's the big problem here. So at this point, are the rest, either somebody sold all the Legos or they're somewhere else. It's right there, TJ. There's like $80,000 to $100,000. just like vanished overnight in the middle of the transition. So.

But I thought the Legos were still in the store. When did the Lego disappear? I'm saying corporate is saying that they're not. Like corporate is saying those Legos don't exist. Maybe the Gorman sold them or whatever. We just literally don't even know about them. Okay. So at this point, Manzell, the original owners of the Legos,

the current owners of the Legos, really, my opinion. is basically like, I don't know what to do. I need to figure out some way of attempting this. I don't know how to do it. So what does he do? He eventually gets connected with a YouTuber, Reckless Ben. This guy is absolutely hilarious. He does the most insane unhinged videos where he goes like undercover into crazy cults.

And he infiltrates them. And he has like his own state recognized religion. What? And he has. Awesome. Well, Casey, you can just apply for one. So you can get one. That's true.

If you want. Right. So he, so basically reckless vent comes into this. He does a bunch of goofy and crazy reckless, uh, you know, stunts. In general, exposing scams that are currently going on that like are maybe semi legal to not legal types of scams, right? But he's trying to expose them and, you know, bring light to all these insane situations, right? Got it. And so he.

gets connected with Mansells and he's like, okay, let's go and figure out how to get back their money. So he goes with, you can't go with Brian, of course. Oh yes, of course Brian. Can I jump in for a quick second? There's been a couple,

there's been a couple chats saying, but isn't there like a contract or something? There is a contract. T.J said this, but you may have missed it. Corporate says, hey, we don't have the Legos. The franchisee, the place that has the Lego said, hey we don't have the Legos. They're all blaming everybody else.

Nobody knows where the Legos are. The guy who the Manzels just want their money. Reckless Ben has now been contacted and brought into the situation. There's a lot of back and forth on this that I'm trying not to get too deep into. I'm mostly want to get to the insane parts. You know, it's not uncommon for people. So far this is not insane enough. But yeah.

Oh, no, Casey. This is the simple part. This is a contract dispute. Things are about to get crazy. Okay. So Ben. says, okay, I love this. I want to try and help you.

I want to get your Legos back. This is awesome. Everybody loves Lego. So Ben arrives on the scene, tries to get the Lego back for his friend, goes to the store. The employees are like, well, we don't even know about that existing. So that doesn't even, they're just like completely denying that this has ever even been a thing, blah, blah, blah.

And they're like, well, I don't even, you know, Ben's pointing out various aspects about the Legos or the history. He brings in some paperwork to show, hey, these are the Manzelles's Legos. where are they? We haven't gotten paid for these. Let's bring these back. And so they say, you're trespassed. You can't come back here again or you're going to go to jail. If you step over to the store again, you're going to go to jail. Please get called, et cetera. It's later, of course, revealed that the store definitely knows about it because they all these crazy social media posts, not from this set of owners, but from some of the previous ones and maybe some from this about, hey, we have all these insane Lego Star Wars things,

because obviously they're trying to move an insane amount of Star Wars Legos. They are posting them and saying in those things, local family, the Mansell family, stuff like this, right? So it's like literally like they are public. Okay. Right there publicly just literally like doing the posting of saying that they know that these things are real. So we it's firmly established after Ben's there for a little bit. He's digging up old posts.

He's doing all these other things that obviously like Brian Mansell doesn't know how to do because he's just like a regular guy in the world. And reckless Ben does know how to do because that's what he does on YouTube is do these That's his whole right. That's how he makes a little. Exactly. I looked them up. He looks just like that Lego figure.

Yeah. So he goes into the store, right? And then the police come and say, excuse us. If you come back here, you're going to jail. All right. And so he leaves, obviously. So now Ben is starting to gather some intel here. And one of the big difficulties that he's.

having at this point, which we'll watch a little clip here and hopefully have some audio. But basically at this point, he's like, okay, the store manager who's in here is telling me call, you know, either the owner or call corporate. He calls corporate, gets no answer. They say like, it's definitely an us, blah, blah, blah. He's running in circles between all of these people. And he's trying to get the phone number of the actual owner of the store. What does that mean?

The franchise, the franchise owner, because the person in the store is just like, a regular employee. But in the franchise owner was the people that were installed by corporate? Exactly. Right. Yes. The people you showed at the beginning. Yes.

The vampires? Not the Gorman's, the new people. Yep. So Ben is desperately trying to find a way to contact them directly so that he can take the dispute to them. Because basically he's like, I'm getting the run around. That's all that's happening. Right.

And I'm getting trespassed everywhere I go, which really sucks. Because that makes it very difficult to bring forward my complaint. when I get trespassed from everywhere. So naturally, Casey, if you are going to try and get the phone number of the owner of a store, what would your move be? Well, I mean, I don't know that I would have gone about any of this this way. Like, I would have just immediately contacted a lawyer. For an amount that large, you would just serve, these people would just get served immediately.

Like, it doesn't matter who. It's like you just walked into the store. you'd be like the deputy serves in the papers and then they have to show up in court and then that's the end of that right uh kisi that is what you think would happen that's not what happens next okay that's what i would start that's where i would start that's where i would start the deputies part yeah so yeah trash what would by the way legal mindset and legal legal both said the same thing that's what they should have started but they did not by google look them up somehow ask around he tried that but it was kind of hidden step two what would you try. Hire some hackers to give me some information.

Oh, damn. Black hat, step one is black hat with trash. Straight to doing illegal stuff. He's wearing a black hat right now with him. There we go. Yeah. My boy, Mythos, going to figure it out. All right.

Well, it's not either of those. So let's see. Can you guys hear this? So now we have to become one with this bricks and minifigs employee. Brick by brick Brick by brick

Brick by brick Brick by brick So I'll just play this through And explain what happens So they go in as fake Lego Influencers to the store He sends a friend in They do a competition

They make the different people In the store Play a game against each other To show off their various Lego abilities Of course This is a natural thing Nice

Now they're going to get a winner Of the competition and say, wow, congratulations. You're awesome. Okay? And now they're going to take her onto an awesome prize adventure and an exciting, an exciting situation. So they're going to take her and let me, I'll just fast forward just a touch because I think

they're going to take her into the middle of the woods and have a Lego ceremony because the way that you gain people's trust. Most cults achieve this by making the new recruit seem like the most special person in the entire world. Best employee of Bricks and Minifix And they're going to have a small cult ceremony here And they're gonna, and I wish we had the audio Because they're changing brick by brick

Brick buy brick Brick by brick and it's awesome This is an employee right? It actually looks like you're about the Brickson and Minifix store. This feels like a horror feeling. I am completely, I cannot handle any of this right now. Casey, well, it's because he has a lot of experience infiltrating cult so he knows how to do cult like stuff.

cult does an initiation. Then they give you a little bit of power. And then you do a ritual together. And then you've gained their trust. So now they've, they've gained the trust of one of the employees. And now they love. Oh, this guy, that guy right there. That's the corporate guy on the right. The one with the most evil mustache of all time. So anyways, Casey. I just, I just have to mention at this point that this entire thing so far, if you, told me that this was an episode of the rehearsal or Nathan for you either of those two shows

I would be like I would just be like yeah this is exactly what Nathan Fielder does he's like he's like he came to me and told me that his Lego set had been you know had been taken by a local shop so I came up with a plan

to get it back step one gain the employee's trust right it sounds exactly like that Casey, that's literally what happens. And then the employee admits, oh, yeah, the store owners know about the stuff. They don't want to try and reimburse them. And we're really trying to get you guys put in jail. What?

Yeah. Yes. And so, so then eventually, though, they get the phone number by doing this move. Okay, Casey. So they do achieve their ultimate goal. They've brought one new person into the brick-by-brick cult. That person follows their lead. they get the phone number and now they're able to contact the owner.

And at this point, Casey, of course, they've contacted the owner. They have people saying that they know what's going on. The owner's just going to give back the Legos, right? I mean, obviously not because I think you said we had 20 slides. Because I'm on slide 8 of 20. So what happens next? We call that foreshadowing. What happens next?

He calls him, nothing works. They're not happy. They don't do anything. The owner just gets mad at him. So, Ben starts doing some other moves. He becomes a little bit more reckless. What does he do? The first thing is he makes a new brand.

He registers a new company called We Steal from Old People, which has the catchphrase, bricks and mini pigs. And he makes merch and starts selling it and wearing it around the town and doing all this other. stuff and it's just called, we steal from old people and the get phrase is bricks and mini fakes. That's amazing. This is just Nathan for you.

This is literally just Nathan for you, a long episode. That doesn't work surprisingly. They didn't turn around after that, but it does lead to some very hilarious merch. So what does he do next? He makes, instead of buy, sell, trade, he makes some things to put over top of their various things on the stores which say steel sell trade. Wow.

You know, up to a lot of hijinks in this situation. This is where probably like maybe a lawyer could have worked but they're also separately, I will say even though we're tricking out. They are, he knows how to talk to lawyers. He is talking to lawyers.

They are trying to do all of the legal things and do all this other stuff. But in the meantime, they're trying to settle this in a way that just says, hey, can you guys just give them back their Legos and we'll be all done. Okay, right? And then through all of this, they're still not getting back the stuff that they need to do. So in the UPS brank, a long time ago, Ben sent a contract from a delivery driver that the store owner signed. There's two things about it that are very funny. The first one is it says, every time you call the police on me, you owe me $5,000.

they didn't read the entire document, but in there is a secret hidden, not hit it, it's just there, it's just deep down. That says, hey, every time you call the police on me for this, you owe me $5,000. So that's the first thing. And then the second one is that they're trying really hard to serve them some papers, but they're not accepting them because he's trespass and all this other stuff.

So they're attempting to do all of this stuff. And what they keep hearing back from the police in all of this stuff is, hey, this is a civil matter. This is not a criminal matter. it's like some contract tort law shenanigans something something something blah blah blah we're it's not our job you can go settle this in court of which they are trying to do but they keep getting trespassed and all this other stuff and like getting rejected and the police being being like this isn't our business we'll see more of that coming up soon so holok can i

of course prime go for it there might be a touch of confusion ben and his team has showed up multiple times to the owners to serve them the documents and that's when they get trespassed when you say that right that's what you're trying to that comes up later they do try and go directly to his house later that's where he goes okay he goes to utah and tries to serve the papers to the owner that's later so initially they're just trying to like find a way to get them into court with this but he's also slightly worried about just getting bodied by bricks and mini figs and them having more lawyers and more money and spending forever and taking all of his time and money and he'll lose or even if he comes out on top it doesn't help them so anyways so then he says okay cool

that stinks. We can't get you guys served. They're blocking it, whatever. It's fine. Okay, so if the cops are saying that this is a civil matter, how can we turn this into a criminal matter? This is like the worst idea. Okay. So to move it out of civil court and this is a criminal...

I cannot handle how much this is a Nathan for you episode. That is exactly what would happen at this point. The police kept telling me it wasn't a civil, it wasn't a criminal matter. So I had to figure out a way to make it one. Like, oh my God, dude. Okay. So that's exactly his plan. So he says, hmm.

Okay, well then it can't be like a, you know, a contract dispute or something else. We needed to be like properly theft, right, that they're stealing from somebody instead of just this civil, civil situation. So Ben comes up with the idea of saying, well, the Mansells truly are the ones who own the Legos. So what have we created a legal lottery that let people get one of the Mansell's Legos, and they'll go collect that from Bricks and mini-figs, so that Ben doesn't have to go on there and get trespassed? And so they say, hey, we're just here to pick up one of the Mansell Star Wars Lego sets. and then if Bricks and Minifix doesn't give that to them, then it's stealing instead of a criminal case.

Because it's interfering with the results of a lottery or something like that. A consignor does not own the property. They simply house the property and that's kind of like the big ticker right there. Since then Mansell is lottering, like raffling off that item, then they're saying it's Bricks and minifix is. stealing by keeping it instead of giving it to the people. So but you're going to say, reckless Ben, how can you run a legal lottery? Gambling isn't just for regular people.

You have to have special approval for the government for that kind of thing. Right. Well, fortunately, for Ben, he owns Scientology sucks, his official religion. That's recognized by the state. And so they do a church. lottery effectively, which you can do. And they make an end. They make everyone in the park pay a dollar to enter the lottery.

And then they also pay all those people a dollar appearance fee because they're going to be in a YouTube video. And so all these people pay a dollar to enter into a lottery. Separately, of course, they're getting a dollar for an appearance fee for showing up in a YouTube video. Yep. And they do all. the real paperwork, he does like, you know, an insane amount of paperwork, does the legal lottery. He has like everything. Like, it's an actual legit state recognized lottery that follows all the rules. Every single rule. He's following all the rules, right? And so since

the Legos are still technically Brian Mansells, if Bricks and Mini Fakes doesn't give it back to the Raffle winner, criminal offense. We got them, boys. We're going to take him to criminal court. That doesn't sound accurate to me at all, but okay. Well, Casey, It's very funny. So we tried it anyways. Okay. Yeah. So they do that.

They send the people over there. They're going through the stuff. They're trying to get it. Of course, the police get called. Ben tries to explain to them, hey, this is no longer a civil case, guys. I want to press criminal charges. And basically the police are like,

that doesn't sound right. We're going to leave. And so they just. leave again. Yeah, which is exactly what I would have said. That's gone. And so the police come and they, and then, you know, they get called and blah, blah. And then instead of Briggs and mini figs getting in trouble, they think Ben ran in a legal

lottery or something and then they do a bunch of stuff to him, whatever. So then at this point, now it's just getting very, the situation gets even more complicated, okay? Because now Ben is going to say, okay, fine. apparently I can't win over here. I'm not going to be able to get these police to pay attention to me, blah, blah, blah. And so the next phase is he's going to try and go serve papers directly to the franchisee owner. As you suggested, Casey, right? Well, normally you pay a process server to do that.

You don't serve them. He does pay a process server to go do that, yes. Great. First thing that sounds logical so far. Well, to be fair, walking into the store and just being like, like, hey, can we sort this out and you guys just give the Legos back? That is a, that's a reasonable initial step, right?

Sure. Also, a reasonable second a step is to have a seance in the forest. I think that that's actually a pretty standard, reasonable second step. If I was that girl's father, I would be lecturing her if I saw this video. I'd be so pissed. I'm like, what in God's day? Why would you go until forest with these people? So mad.

I was so mad when I saw that. But they were Lego people trash. They were Lego people. It's safe. You're an influencer now. You have the same power. You can lure people into a forest. And have a Lego seance.

Trash, honestly, great point. Great point. Yeah. Yeah, I would also be bad if my daughter trusted random influencer people to pull her into a forest and burn Lego candles and smash things and yell brick by brick together. this part gets very complicated. I'm not going to say too many specifics about this part because it's very confusing to me. Prime, you'll probably,

you may have a few additional comments as well. But Ben goes to serve the Oregon franchise owner, Joshua Johnson, in his residence in the town of American Fork, Utah. Okay. And the American Fork Police Department repeatedly intervenes. They don't let him serve the papers with the process server. They block him from doing it. They have a whole bunch of other stuff. He does a freedom of information act request, I think, that is my understanding, to get a bunch of the footage released, tons of it censored. Some of it gets

accidentally leaked and released. And some very incriminating things are in the censored sections, not stuff like people's addresses, but like, hey, he's legal to do this, right? Yeah, he's legal to do this. Okay, well, that sucks. And like, so there was a bunch of things like this. Very, very, very. I'll jump in a really quick one.

They pulled him over for an illegal stop, though he stopped at the stop sign, then proceeded to search him for like three hours saying he had heroin on him and all this kind of stuff. Are you kidding me? The police really ruffled up reckless Ben. They really did a lot of things in which appeared to be bad, came to his car four separate times,

is waiting to serve somebody, saying they, you know, checking his papers, making sure his, like, service papers were legal that he had a court case. They did four times and finally got him out of there

and arrested him and all that kind of stuff. It's just, it's all crazy. They even go so far as they eventually end up raiding his Airbnb. Not a joke. Send in like a big team. It gets rated.

Supposedly it's because the Airbnb owner said, he heard a lot of, stuff about stolen Legos and so he calls the cops you can take that as you will if whatever I'm just that's so suffice to say this is suddenly getting

very out of hand the YouTuber is getting like raided in his house he's getting pulled over by the cops the process server I think gets trespassed which seems impossible because you're like that doesn't make sense how is he supposed to send some papers I don't understand

he did all the stuff he's supposed to do for a process server, whatever. Like I said, I don't want to make any particular comments about any particular pieces of this, but just suffice to say, it's getting insane. And then the thing that really makes this part of the, obviously, phase one of this went very viral because of the insane stuff Ben was doing to try and get the Legos back. This is now in phase two, makes a second video talking about what they're trying to do, serving the papers and all this other stuff.

this goes pretty wide because a bunch of the people here were all like Mormons and just nothing against Mormons got lots of good Mormon friends. We love them. We love them. But it starts to go viral because people are like, what the heck? Like all the police officers were all the people here. So then it gets really crazy. People are starting to do crazy conspiracy theories about the situation. Right?

They're starting to do like, hey, are they like covering for people? Just getting crazier and crazier here, right? And so everybody involved, the corporate executives, the new franchise owners, a bunch of the people in the American Fork Police, right? They're all LDS, which, I mean, whatever, that's common in Utah. So not, I'm not necessarily, I'm not necessarily as much on that train, but just explaining some of the online buzz of what was going on about the video is it starts getting very heated. in this like secondary thing, okay? And there's some very,

just some really bad body cam footage from the police. The cops say to him, we play differently here. This is the heroin time. Yeah, yeah. So there's just a lot of very weird body cam footage

that doesn't seem very great for the police officers or for their connections area. So I'm just getting crazy. There's like police conspiracies and like all this stuff going on here now. Following up with this, Ben gets charged with four misdemeanor charges. He gets misdemeanor charges for stalking, for picketing, for criminal trespass, and for disorderly conduct. Of course, Ben's case against all of these is basically saying like, hey, this is crazy. I'm not stalking him. I'm trying to serve him. Right? This is basically Ben's side,

but versus what he's getting charged. Right? So then this is the first round. Notice I'm saying. The first round of charges against Ben. Okay. So then what happens next? Gets arrested. So the second arrest, the judge, there's a judge-approved search warrant, which I think is my understanding that allows police to raid his Airbnb looking for his stolen Legos, they get arrested, and he's held in jail for multiple days. After that's passed or whatever he gets cleared, they didn't have the stolen Legos there, there's nothing to hold him on, whatever. He literally leaves the country and goes to Mexico.

Without the ability to bail himself out. So he couldn't even find out what he is in trouble for, and he must remain in jail the entire time. Oh my goodness. Yes. So I'm, yeah, I think that's correct. Chat can maybe fact check that because I don't have that on hand for me. there, but I think there is something along those lines.

Some stuff of that, I think, was disputed by the Utah Police Department. I don't know. So he goes to Mexico because he's like, I don't know what to do. This is where I'm going to be for a little while, so I don't get put in jail without bail for a while. During this time, the story's starting to blow up, right? So now by the time that he's gone to Mexico, now the story's kind of gone viral and all this other stuff. So he's like a little bit, maybe a little less worried, but not necessarily super not, worried, right? Because it's kind of like an insane situation here. Right. And so, um,

basically at this point, he's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to hang out in Mexico. So I'm not going to get in trouble for this, hopefully. And now things get even crazier. Because now instead of just the charges for those four misdemeanors, they're bringing a, well, first right, the police get in a bunch of trouble. People are like, what's going on. The body cam footage leaked. Some of the stuff censored that shouldn't be, whatever. Right. Then on May 30, Bricks and Mini Figs sends a RICO counter suit, which is racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations, which in my, I thought my limited legal understanding is some insane, like, thing you do against the mob or something. Like it's not really. Oh, Casey, nice. Casey knows. What's Rico?

So it, that is what it was for, but currently it's just used for any time you have like, interesting. state fraud kinds of things. Like, it's not really, like, that is what it was passed for, but it is commonly used now in these kinds of situations just because it's, like, the most convenient go-to. I'm not super familiar with it, but yeah, that's not, that's not unusual. I would imagine that if you looked like most RICO suits these days would not be, uh, I, I guess, I, I don't know how you counter Sue if you've never. never accepted service of process on the original suit, though, so that's confusing.

Oh, we forgot something from earlier, too, which Casey, you'll really like, because it's funny. They took the original guy to Small Claims Court. This already happened. To small claims court? How could you take it? How? Oh, yes, they did. They did do this.

Great question, Casey. What they did was Brian Mansell sold each of the 10,000. chunks of his Star Wars Legos, roughly. They just happened to be close to $10,000. A bunch of different separate parties. And they all eventually served or they didn't, they, they all sued. They all sued in Small Claims Court.

And the original guy said, oh, well, he thought they were just trolling. Because basically they had set it all up and done all of these things to get it ready and have it ready for Small Claims Court and did an insane amount of paperwork and all these other things, right? And so they sue in small clips court and the guy just doesn't show up because he thinks they're trolling. And so they win by default on all the claims. And then the Salem store shuts down the next day.

It's just gone. And like everything's gone. Right. That's a pretty important of the party story is left out there. I know. I can't believe that I forgot that. I know. Because that happens right.

That happens. Let me go back. That happens before he goes over to Utah. That happens in between. I forgot. That was the ending of the, the UPS prank is he does all of this stuff. I forgot that that happens.

I had it on. Okay. Oh, sorry. That's all right. All right. It's all right, man. You're doing great. So that's, there's a lot of threads to pull here to put into one slide show.

Okay, Casey. Okay. So regardless, the original store in Salem's now closed. They won in Small Claims Court in a hilarious series of events. That's very funny. And then they all, they win this. But then the store just disappears. There's nobody to even pay them.

Right. So they just close it down. It goes bankrupt out of business or something. It's all done. Now he goes to try and serve the papers in Utah. That's why he's in Utah now, right? Okay. So they start this RICO case.

Then this is where the body cam leak comes out where they're able to find all of the extra footage that wasn't censored. You'll appreciate this, Casey. The way that it was leaked, my understanding, is a public drop box link that was left on one of the YouTube channels. Nice. And the police department just had all of them. left and then reckless Ben was able to be like, hey, you guys are definitely not doing right stuff here. That's crazy.

And you should not have been able to censor this, whatever. So during this time, Ben is attempting to get like a GoFundMe or Patreon or something to try and make sure that he can like pay for everything. And of course, Bricks and Minifig triples down and they're trying to file paperwork to get that shut down. But the Patreon CEO is like, no, stuff it. I'm not going to do that.

So, so the Adrian sits up for him. And then. Yeah, they filed the DMCA, right? They filed a DMCA claim. And he said no. This is, is this a Jack,

uh, Jack Conte. Pampeamus. Pampeamus, Pampeamese, man. Okay. Yes.

So that's in, you know, sometime early June, right? So this has been escalating over the early, into early June. On June 10. So as a, Casey, this has been happening while we've been waiting.

situation was heating up while we were waiting for this. On June 10, Reckless Ben gets a legal gag order against him and he can't talk about the case publicly anymore. And that's my understanding. And that's the current situation is that a lot of these cases are still going and Ben cannot publish anything. You can see this is two weeks ago. There's almost five million views on the last one. Then in the meantime, we get an excellent coffee zilla report. If you you're interested. Coffeyzilla does a really great breakdown of this, of course. He always does a really awesome job. And he's saying some of the numbers, they don't quite add up. There's some stuff there. It's probably not $200,000, maybe closer to $100,000 to $110,000. He goes through a bunch of

the older seats. He finds a bunch of old Google documents. He does a bunch of different analysis on those. He, for some reason, the CEO of Bricks and Minifigs agrees to get on a call. with Coffeyzilla and talk to him, which is insane. And then shows that he shows that they've had access to this on a Google Sheets document that's owned by the Bricks and Minifix Corporation since 2024 showing the merchandise. So there is at least something in the Bricks and Migs system that shows the Mansell merchandise and its current status since 2024. Okay.

So they've known. So they've known or at least had re-sinceed had research. reasonable ways of knowing, like maybe if they just searched for Mansell's name in their Google Drive, they would have found out or something. And Coffeyzilla estimates probably something close to maybe $60,000 to $80,000 is remaining to be paid out, roughly. Or that's how much merch is left, maybe sold, maybe not, or whatever. Okay. He's also kind of like there's some complications and confusing things just because, of course, the people who are running bricks and mini-figs like are not. professional bookkeepers. They're just like keeping stuff at Google Docs and stuff and whatever.

So there's some difficulties and some of the things. But it becomes pretty clear after the investigation. Yeah, for sure. Even though maybe it's not, you know, $200,000 left of Legos, there's probably, you know, 60 to 80,000. So, you know, Coffee Zill gives us some new info there, tells us some stuff. And, you know, they're saying, we don't have the Legos, whatever. The numbers don't add up. That's fine. But one very interesting thing that you'll really love, Casey, is. is in the original video footage of the night where the franchisees come over and take over everything, right? There's footage of that. There's footage of that.

Coffeezilla gets a hold of the footage. They go over some of it. The original franchise owner, just an in-store camera. They've had a lot of break-ins and some other stuff, I guess, so they have an indoor camera. They have some of the stuff, security footage, things like, like a security camera. style footage, right? Okay. What they see very mysteriously outside in the shadow.

They literally do computer enhance on it, Casey, too. You would love that part of the video, but we don't have audio. You can't see it. They see outside. This is a faithful recreation of the situation. These are Legos. This is not the actual picture. I was like, this is fake.

Did you not notice that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trash, every picture has been Legos. entire time. You're following that, right? Trash, please tell me you're following that. Hey, not the YouTube videos, okay? Okay. Okay, great point. Thank you. Thank you, Trash. They see a U-Haul truck in, uh, in sort of like, in the shadows outside of here. So it just brings a lot of other, you know, suspicion. They show that the U-Haul was backed up to the store. Corporate changes their story about there being no U-Haul, etc. Okay, right? Oh, there was a story about not being a

you whole. Right. And then they're going through all of the numbers, etc. Coffeezilla does a really great summary. As far as I can tell, that's the latest situation that we have, which is that Ben is still under a RICO case. He may still have pending misdemeanor charges. I'm not sure. He's back in the United States?

I actually don't know. That's what I'm not sure because he hasn't been able to publish or talk about anything online. Prime, do you know if he's back in the U.S.? I don't know. I do not know. Yeah, my understanding. I've kept up in the last week and a half, so I don't know if there's new changes here. Right. So my understanding is he may be back in the U.S. I don't know 100% for sure because he's also getting now represented, you know, by a bunch of a bunch of lawyers were like, yo, Ben, we'll help you out with this and stuff too. Like a lot, you know, so there's a lot of things going on there. Yeah, I mean, the degree of like not doing the legal process properly that went on here sounds insane. Like absolutely insane.

Like none of that. If you can't, if someone didn't, if someone refuses service, you go back to the court and you're like, they are like preventing the process server from getting there. You would never, you'd never be like, let me go, like, I'll go park outside their house in my car. Like, that's insane. That's so, so to give a little bit more, Casey, you could, there's some things that TJ did miss.

The sheriff did go over with the papers on the, on I think the third attempt by them. he went over there and was like, hey, you got to have these papers. And the guy was like, nah, it's fake. And so he was like, okay, sheriff said, okay, I won't serve you then. Never mind, Gigi, goodbye. Have a good, have a good day. As soon as that happens, you're just, you just go back to court and you're like, here's what happened. Like, Judge, it's like, I asked the sheriff to serve them.

The sheriff refused to serve it. That's it. You don't have to be involved in the court. The judge will be like, I'm sorry, what? Well, that's where things get even more confusing because then there's some judges like you deserve to be in jail until you're hearing and there's multiple attempts at getting him in jail for the entire time until hearing. It does seem that it's a little like something is going on there. Some people, some legal things that I heard is that it's probably not going to end well for the American force of fork police that they're going to be investigated or they should be investigated. There's a lot of several things that they have done wrong in the situation.

Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying never should. have gotten to that point. Like long before any, because you only make things worse when you show up and you start lying about who you are and you create like a fake raffle and like all of those things. Like, I mean,

you just have to imagine at the end of the day when you have something like this, it's going to get looked at by a judge and or a jury. And what you would rather have is... There's a legal raffle by the way Casey, okay? Just don't dis, don't smirk reckless, Ben. It was completely legal.

It was very legal. Not a fake record. All right. I mean, I don't know the details, but I'm just saying the way it was described did not make very much sense to me. But anyway, point being, you want them to look and you want it to just look like you did exactly the steps that you were supposed to do. You went to the court. You said, I couldn't serve process, and the court will then tell you what to do. You don't then go figure out how to serve process on your own or something like that, right?

You don't want anything in your list of things you did to look bad. You want just their list to keep growing. Every time they refuse process, that's great for you. Like every time they do those things, it just piles up the things that the judge will look at and go, what is going on here and find in your favor, right? So, like, doing a bunch of stunts, I realize it's great for YouTube. So it's probably good for reckless men in the sense that this is a business for him. So sure. But in terms of, like, actually what you would want at the end of the day that sounds.

very bad because now you're just muddying the waters of who is right and who is wrong. Yeah, I will say he did, uh, like go, he did at least, you know, I didn't cover literally. It's multiple hours of, uh, of YouTube, uh, video situation. He did a lot of those things as well. So I don't want to. Yeah. We were covering, you know, it's not as exciting to say he went to the course and they told him, hey, well, you need to serve papers. He goes, I'm trying to serve papers. And they say, well, you need to serve him. Or like, you need to show good faith effort. And And the police didn't seem to care about that. So it was, you know, he's getting pulled over for turning on a stop sign.

It's just all very complicated. It did not seem like the things were flowing necessarily exactly the way that the justice system was designed to flow. But he did. Oh, they also said that some of the corporate speech, or I can't remember if it was corporate or if it was the franchisees owners, but they said they drag out the case against the mansells and definitely to. ruin them financially. There's a lot of like... Initially that was the expectation of the like initially.

I think that was Mansell initially reached out to a lawyer. They said you basically like this isn't going to go well for you. Like you'll probably, you might win, but it will not be a lot of money by the time you get finished. I think was sort of the legal, some of the legal advice that he got initially. But anyways, so there you go, Casey. That's the end. end, maybe.

We'll see what happens now. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it's the end. It sounds like that's the middle. It is, it is. The middle. So, there you go. Well, that was a very good presentation. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone. For entertainment purposes only. Lawyers, just to be clear. Well, what is happening with Brickson? minifigs the company now like oh people hate them yeah like how are they still in business

I'm gonna go to one today I got one down the street I'm gonna check it out you see what's up unfortunately a lot of people have been blaming all bricks and mini figs yeah for the individual actions of that specific franchise franchise owner

in fact there's a moist critical video Charlie as people call them video of one of the people going into a Bricks and Minifigs and actually just getting into a fist fight with somebody over the situation, just some random franchise and getting into a fist fight over it. Don't do that, guys. Don't do that.

Don't do that. It's the stupidest thing ever. I'm going in. I'm going in today. Trash. Tresh, you thought it was for, you just think you're going to get fake Newton's when you go there. Where's the food? What is this place? I can't eat Legos. So is, like, are franchisees going to stop franchising under this, presumably?

I mean, it would, it doesn't seem ethical to continue to work with a corporation that did something like this unless, unless anyone, it doesn't, it sounds like at this point, no one is actually alleging that they didn't steal, like, as far, as you're describing it anyway, it is a given that they stole these Lego, like, no one's even really seeming to dispute. that the Legos were stolen at this point, right? My understanding is they've more or less said so. It felt like in the Coffee Zilla video with the call with Coffey's Zilla. I don't know if that was your opinion problem, but. Yes. As far as I can tell, they said there's some, there's talk back and forth about,

there was so, just everything about it was crazy. Even the franchise owner, uh, said that on, he swears to God that he would give back the Legos that he has. And then he doesn't give him back. And then they bring it in like a,

a church person. That's one of reckless Ben stunts was he brought in someone from the Mormon church to like have a talk with him about not swearing to God and then not following through his actions. Are you serious? Yeah, they did that. That didn't go well either. I think that guy also got trespassed.

I mean, it was all. But the whole thing seemed insane. But I just mean like people who operate a franchise location. Right. It would seem like you would stop. Right. Like, like I feel like at,

this point, it would not be, assuming that those allegations are true, it would not be, like, or not whether they're true or not, it's more like as a person who runs a business that's about dealing with Legos and people's collectible figures and things like this, if you don't believe the allegations, that's fine. If you do believe the allegations, it wouldn't seem ethical to continue to do business with that company. That's how I would put it. Well, I guess is that there'll be some losses coming up in the Brickson minifig category where they're not going to be able to compete. You know, like they're going to probably lose some people for sure. Because I'm sure even if, I'm sure there's tons of owners who have never even heard of any of this. They just have people coming in being angry and yelling and they're just like, what is happening? What is corporate?

Like, they're probably just getting a bunch of headaches right now all discovering this. And then when the next part of the saga unfolds, it's only going to reheat up again. And they're probably going to be like, that's it. Which is correct. Like, that's actually the correct outcome if you think about it, because this is the thing that people don't like to accept about branding. Branding is, if you are signing up to be part of a brand, that means you have to accept and trust the people running that brand.

You don't just get to have the positive aspects of the brand when it's working well. When the brand then turns out to be that they made all of their mini figs and sweatshops in some, you know, country across whatever. You have to own that because that's what you did, right? Like, it is on you to either immediately cut ties with that company, which you can just be like, we didn't know, now we know we're immediately cutting ties with them. But if you stay on that train, then you are inviting that negative publicity to be protected on you because that is what branding is, right?

It doesn't only work in the positive way. It works in the negative way, and you have to be prepared to accept that if you continue to use the brand. right so that sounds like the correct outcome to me yeah that seems like what is i mean people are very upset at briggs and minifig i i think you know as far as i can tell from all the reading and everything i mean it really does seem like they took legos from an old dying guy and didn't pay him and like it's definitely going to cost them more than 80k for this whole situation yeah i mean it seems insane and a very bad It seems like an extremely bad outcome that it's very hard to imagine exactly why you would do that.

But, you know, I wasn't there and don't know the details. I only know what you presented in the slideshow. So maybe it makes more sense if you had more information. I don't know. I've only watched YouTube videos about it. So quick question. Quick question for like. So if I wanted to leave Bricks and minifig, what's like, what's the financial like situation if I leave?

bricks and minifigs and then as a franchise if you were franchising why do you have a few trash asking for a friend i'm assuming it's easier said than done to just say i'm cutting it would be hard i think to unfranchise yourself from them i imagine but i don't i don't my guess is multi-year contracts exist and they're not no one is really getting out of this easy

it's like when you buy a tesla and you have the bumper sticker that's like i bought this before i thought elon was an insane guy like that kind of you know what I mean you're like well I can't get rid of the Tesla because I can't afford another car so bumper sticker bumper sticker like I said I mean that is what business is unfortunately right it's like you have to know who you're doing business with and at some level you have to accept the consequences of their negative list now you could sue that like you could class action them right all of the bricks and minifigs owners could get like franchisees could get together and file a class action

lawsuit that's like this was incredibly damaging to this brand we have lost a lot of the value of our stores and that's on corporate and like you know you could I don't know exactly what you want to do to get up but it's like you can't just be like well you're supposed to overlook this and keep going and doing business with bricks and mini figs franchisees just because they're it's like that doesn't work that way like unfortunately that's not the that is if you if you were to accept that premise then effectively what you've done is you've allowed corporations to use franchisees as a shield for their bad behavior, which is not acceptable, right?

Like, you can't be basically saying, well, we'll just have franchisees and then we'll do all this evil stuff. And you'd be like, well, you shouldn't stop shopping at our franchisees though because they're just these poor franchisees. You know, it's like, no, like, that's completely not, like, allowed. And you have to have these things go down poorly so that corporations and people who franchise with corporations are aware of the moral hazard, right?

You can't have a get out of jail free card or the whole thing just, you know, will repeat itself over and over and over. Casey, that reminds me, I forgot. One of the things that he did was he registered a corporation and then had a bunch of his friends become franchisees of the corporation. Of course he did. And then when they were getting questions, they're like, that's a question for a corporate. And then he was like, no, you have to talk to my franchisees.

I forgot about that part after you said it. He was like, two can play it that game. This is so Nathan for you. I can't handle it. It's just Nathan for you. What last, we got to go sued because trash is off at 11. So we got to wrap this up. But the last thing I want to ask is, because I'm unfamiliar,

like obviously I was unfamiliar with all the story. I had no idea about all this. That's completely ridiculous. I'm also unfamiliar with Reckless Ben. So is this a popular YouTube channel? or was it popular before this incident? I would say... I believe it was popular beforehand, too.

Okay. He was doing well beforehand. Not like, but he massively blew up after this. So at least it was worth it for him in the publicity side, on the YouTuber side of things. Even if it's been bad, even if he is now a... Even if he has now fled bail by leaving the country, which is not a great thing to have on your record, but okay.

Right. Yeah, yeah, I'd say beforehand, he was getting some views and all that, but it definitely, you can see very, very much so, like if I were to switch up my camera. Chad says he was at like 600,000 subs before. Looks like he's averaging like 500K a video. Yeah, so if I just take my virtual cam so you guys can see too, you'll see right here that he obviously was doing well in 2024,

2023 time and then kind of a long period of not getting much for subscribers or views weren't going much and then this just gigantic spike at the end. Got it. Where he went 2508,000 subs in the last or in May 26 which is his

Worth it. You know, which is pretty much everything. Worth it, yeah. So you can see it right here. Oh no. The YouTube. Hiding out of Mexico. Worth it. Yep. Well, there you go. that was the stand-up today.

Sorry, everybody. No tech talk, just a brown bag lunch to explain the mini-fig situation. I'm in jail for the subs. I'm going to jail for the subscriber for the likes. Hopefully everybody enjoyed it. We will be back with probably some other fun brown bags at some point. I don't know what our next one's going to be. So if you have any suggestions, always leave comments, always leave things you want us to talk about or whatever.

And we will look into it. And there could be a presentation made. Yeah, we've been gone for two weeks. I traveled to Bozeman, Montana, and the internet there was literally, like, one megabit per second. Is that Montana? Is that just how Montana is? No, no, because I just went right up the place into a coffee shop, and I had, like, a gig up, gig down. It was just this place was just so very, very slow.

And then right afterwards, I went to L.A. And internet also really sucked there. Plus, we were super busy doing very, very exciting things. I got here this morning. I literally... Yeah. I literally just got off the plane. I got off the plane and I went downstairs and I set my computer back up and then did this.

I'm pretty sure he flew out last night at like midnight, right? Yeah, I did a red eye. I left 1230 California time, so 3.30 my time and then got home at like basically noon. Yeah, but guys, Casey said he was excited for this and so we had to make it happen. Yeah, now I can go watch stuff about it. I was under embargo. Oh, Casey, you're going to enjoy. you're going to enjoy it you're going to enjoy it this is nuts

all right thank you very much tege thanks tige thanks tch thanks trash thanks kacey bye bye I'm good up the day vibe coating errors on my screen terminal coffee and him

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