The $200,000 Lego Theft that Risks an Entire Police Department

Strap in, this is going to be a wild ride.

The possibly alleged theft of a $200,000 collection of Legos has escalated into a corruption investigation into an American local police force, a national toy retailer, and a Mormon cult.

Possibly alleged is being used because parts of this have yet to finish their court process, but at least one portion of this $200,000 amount was already found for the original owner in a default judgement in small claims court for $10,000.

But this $10,000 didn’t impair the ability to get the original $200,000 because a loophole was used to get around ‘case splitting’, which would have been illegal. So, some of it is maybe still alleged, probably? 

Like I said, this is going to be a wild ride.

Here is some background and a rough timeline of the events as portrayed by the content creator ‘Reckless Ben’ (RB) with some analysis:

Background context: An old man amassed a large Lego collection worth an estimated $200,000.

Due to health complications, the old man had his son sell his collection to help pay for expenses. The son (Bryan) goes to the local store “Bricks & Minifigs” (BAF) and puts them up on consignment.

For context, a consignment agreement is a fairly common agreement in hobby store culture, the store owner stocks your property and then takes a percentage of the sale.

There are many different types of agreements with different distinctions, but the critical takeaway in this particular agreement is:

There is an explicit clause in the agreement that Bryan and his father do not relinquish ownership of the Legos until they are sold.

BAF is a well-known company in this space and is considered a trusted retailer that has incorporated consignment into their business model.

Timeline time:

1. A BAF franchise signs the consignment agreement for the estimated $200,000 Lego collection.

2. The franchise owner has a life circumstance which requires them to sell the business. Corporate head office quickly finds a new owner to sell the business to.

3. The old owner explains to the corporate representative that they have a large collection of Star Wars Legos (Ben’s) and would like to make him whole. The new owner says that this is not her (old owner) problem.

Old owner: “These are ones where he has not been paid his percentage yet and if it don’t have the tickets I won’t known how much I need to pay him”.

Corporate: “That is a business thing and not necessarily yours. He is taking on the business he takes on all that consignment”.

The old owner then calls Bryan and notifies him that she suspects the company is attempting to steal his collection.

4. Bryan calls the store back, explains to them that over half their inventory is owned by him, and the store assumes the position “I don’t know anything about that”.

5. ‘Good luck Bryan’ – Bryan goes to the store and is told “here is what is going to happen”, and then is basically told that the legal fees to get the Legos back will be more than the Legos are worth so they are just going to keep them.

6. Bryan goes to social media; the legal expense analysis is correct. A group of content creators catch wind of the story. 

Very soon after they start, the content creators receive a threat of legal action from BAF and consider pursuing the matter too risky.

7. Enter ‘Reckless Ben’ (RB). A content creator that has made their career on cult infiltration and other content that requires significant risk appetite and tolerance, picks this up and is “determined to get Bryan his Legos back”.

RB does a bunch of ground work to prep for the initial encounter with the new franchise owners. This includes reviewing legislation, prepping documents, consulting with BAF head office to get clarification, etc.

One important note: RB is explicitly told by BAF head office that he needs to deal with the franchise owner. (RB will soon get stuck in administrative limbo where both entities insist he needs to deal with the other).

8. RB consults the franchise owner and when he asks about Bryan’s Star Wars Legos is immediately told “you can go ahead and leave now”. 

*Analysis: In general, on private property an individual can be asked to leave at any time for any reason. If they refuse they can be charged with trespassing. This is not absolute and there are exceptions to this, but it usually involves a legal override, often with police presence.

9. RB and Bryan are both “trespassed for life” meaning they cannot go back to this store ever or risk being arrested. The police consider the Lego theft to be a civil matter and do not pursue it further.

*Analysis: Based on the video this response from the police is fairly standard. The trespass is something directly in front of them that they can deal with and are well versed in, while the potential civil theft matter is complicated. Having said that, most Canadian police I know would have taken both parties comments more seriously and at a minimum would have gotten a more involved statement from RB.

There could be more context not included in the video’s footage, but purely based on the footage the officer does not appear to be exercising sufficient due-diligence.

10. It is indicated that the new store owner wants to position the issue as a civil and non-criminal matter, so RB gets to work on figuring out how to force the local police to investigate.

11. A significant amount of entertaining legal shenanigans begins.

RB incorporates a company “We steal from Old People” (WSFOP) with the slogan “Bricks and Minifigs”. Here is the BAF logo and the RB company beside each other:

RB also creates franchise agreements for WSFOP franchises so when they do things the parent company can escape liability. The BAF CEO is on video reacting to this particular matter.

RB also uses a previous religion they founded titled: “Church of Scientology Sucks”. This allows RB to hold a legal lottery of Bryan’s Legos. The idea is that when someone wins the lottery and goes to collect the Legos from BAF, when BAF refuses to honor the winnings, they will have committed criminal theft. The police in this jurisdiction are forced to investigate lottery theft.

12. The store owner admits in a recording the Legos were stolen, and drama continues. Local police are called, local police have a fairly awkward exchange with RB, nothing really happens. 

13. RB gets their time wasted and being promised the return of the Legos.

14. Default judgement – RB has a bunch of friends take out bank loans back by credit cards to buy the Legos from Bryan in $10,000 chunks. Bryan then loans the $10,000 back to the individuals who bought the Legos. These friends then serve BAF with multiple separate $10,000 small claims court claims from different individuals.

15. BAF no-shows and in at least one case RB’s friends win a default judgement.

16. RB goes with their friend to collect and BAF has permanently closed the individual franchise.

17. RB puts up a sign over the closed store sign and the story goes viral. For context here is the sign:

18. RB goes forward with the court cases. Now things are moving to suing the individuals personally because the business no longer exists. Police are called multiple times for RB trespassing and do not believe a $200,000 stolen Lego story. RB uses the police’s trespass order to justify the court filing that a good faith effort to resolve the situation was attempted. RB has multiple interactions with local police.

19. RB finds out that some of the potentially liable individuals are Mormon. RB finds their church and goes to their church to ask one their congregation to talk to them. As Mormons believe stealing is unethical, the fellow Mormon agrees to go talk to them. Soon after leaving the RB is pulled over by local law enforcement again.

*Analysis: Given the repeated interactions it is highly likely that this local department has circulated RB and his known associate’s information. It is also likely that they did not look into grand-theft-Lego much more deeply. At this point it is feasible that the police view this as a matter of harassment and a youtuber being a nuisance.

20. RB is pulled over for possession of heroin. Much of the bodycam audio was apparently redacted by the police. No drugs were found and the multiple interactions were used to get another one of the court cases approved.

*Analysis: Redaction of bodycam footage (in whole or part) can be done for a variety of reasons. It is difficult to determine if this redaction was justified as the evidence to determine that would likely be the redacted footage itself. Regardless, the positioning of this represents a reputational risk and does not look good for the police.

21. RB tries to serve papers on an individual with a legal process server. Police are called three times. The third time an officer offers to serve the papers for RB. The officer later returns and tells RB that the individual “didn’t want them”.

22. RB arrested. Related to #21, police are called a 4^th time. Bodycam footage reveals police verifying that it was a legitimate case with the court and that they are legitimate serving documents. Police then proceed to arrest RB.

*Analysis: This has now gone from a potential misunderstanding to quite strange. While the narrator of this story cannot be removed from bias, this is very difficult to justify. Why not simply serve the papers and tell RB to leave?

23. Bryan and RB do further investigation into the individuals involved. Apparently, the individuals being served, the CEO of BAF and all the police who were “treating RB unfairly” were also Mormon.

 *Analysis: A reminder that this is largely from the perspective of RB. While the initial positioning of this is that a “Mormon cult” is “protecting their own”, over half of Utah (the state where this takes place) is Mormon. While this behaviour is definitely suspicious, it is difficult to truly justify the Mormon connection beyond coincidence at this juncture.

24. RB is let out of jail and starts a GoFundMe to get Bryan’s family paid as it appears the legal system is set against them. The police show up and attempt to stop them from hanging a banner associated with the GoFundMe. The main GoFundMe title and banner are below:

One officer decides to remove the banner after the other determines they have done nothing wrong.

One of the individuals associated with RB is then arrested without any apparent relevant charges, based on the bodycam footage presented, this is portrayed as suspicious.

*Analysis: While it is possible there is some sort of other context, this does not look good. At a minimum this has now become the perception of a clear abuse of power. At this point, given the situation is going viral, a crisis communications specialist would normally be a good idea at a minimum.

26. RB contacts the police department about the redacted footage that happens immediately after timeline #25. The police explain that footage is only redacted pursuant to Utah State code.

RB gets the other officer’s footage and syncs the audio to find out what was redacted (they didn’t redact both officers’ footage). The conversation is one officer asking the other officer for justification as to what exactly was done wrong and why they took the banner down.

When confronted with this the police representative on the phone replies “mmmmmm ya we don’t do that so like I said anything that redacted is pursuant to Utah state code”. When pressed further they reply similarly “M-kay well that didn’t happen”.

*Analysis: If this is true then this is starting to get really bad. On one hand it is likely the case that the police have identified RB as a known-nuisance and are getting frustrated with him, on the other the appearance of this looks very unprofessional and potentially corrupt.

This is now becoming a serious potential risk to the local police department.

27. RB’s residence is raided by the police. The warrant includes looking for stolen Legos. They arrest RB and all his associates. No Legos are found, the bodycam audio is redacted.

28. The police charge RB, redact the footage from the accuser in they bodycam, and ‘took away his bail’. A judge reviewed the arrest, thought it did not make sense and released RB on bail.

29. Soon after RB is released on bail he is notified by a friend that a local police officer wants to inform RB that there is a warrant for his arrest. RB phones the police department and they inform him that this new warrant includes no-bail signed by a judge and that is he considered a “physical threat to the safety of the protected person”.

Since this point, there has been some back and forth with public statements from all involved. The police have released no evidence to contradict the narrative put forward by RB. In my experience, this is not surprising as police forces generally do not disclose this sort of information publicly, they tend to wait for things to play out in court.

Unfortunately, for the police, and this is the reality of much of police communications, whether or not this particular situation is rife with abuse of power, corruptions, an alleged Mormon cult, etc. the only evidence-supported narrative right now is RB’s.

Without counter-evidence or at a minimum a thorough explanation as to the police’s thought process in their actions, the public is likely to assume RB’s narrative is true.

In the event that RB’s telling of the events are accurate, then there are some serious problems in this police jurisdiction.

In the event that the police are correct in the broader context, this could become a good case study of how police forces become trapped unable to combat public statements.

Either way, here are some things the police could be doing or could have done to avoid this:

a) Be more balanced in listening to all individuals in the dispute.

b) Review their bodycam redaction policy.

c) State that they will take the allegations seriously and they will review the bodycam footage redaction.

d) Explain their reasoning behind certain actions publicly. Compromising the investigation is not required.

A final note: d) is actually attempted by the local police chief, but his public statement is consistently shown to be false in light of the bodycam footage already in the public domain.

In not providing specific explanations as to what is already in the public, this only worsens the perception for the police force.

Now the public is growing continually furious, there are calls for investigations into corruption, people want the sick old man to get his Legos, and there is growing curiosity into a supposed ‘Mormon cult’.

The majority public sentiment is that the old man should get his Legos back even if the public needs to get them “Brick-by-brick “.

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.