Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Absolutely, if they all belonged to the same atheist society and performed the same rituals together etc.
Do we have evidence these people did fellowship together?
Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
231–240 of 704 posts
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should watch the two videos if you haven't because it's full of jewels. The kind of conversations and plays recorded point to a pattern. This is not their first time doing something shady, they think they can get away with it, and they greatly underestimated Ben determination and resources. "are you stupid?", "you stole them", "i swear to god i'll return them if you send me first a false apology/confession" are s…
I'm not doubting the claims at all. I simply don't understand why a massive company would shoot themselves in the foot over something relatively small.
After consuming a lot of media around this, reading the former store owners' lawsuit filing, and discussing with a couple lawyers in my life, I think the business is in severe trouble. The decisions they make are that of a teetering company clawing to stay afloat. For example, the former owners' lawsuit says that BAM franchising let it's business registration lapse. Between that and the many many actions that indicate they don't have any lawyers in the loop at any step, I conclude that they must not be able to pay one.
Also, and I know it isn't incredibly rare, but it stuck out to me, the store was owned by corporate before it was sold to the then-manager (who is now suing corporate) for $65k, despite saying that it costs upward of $200k to start a franchise. I couldn't make the numbers make sense, personally. Why would they sell a corporate store for 1/3 of the value?
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#233One surprising thing I learned over time from news articles is that "won a judgment for $x from person y" actually doesn't mean very much in the US. The first thing that came to mind is a parachutist site in Lodi, but this one is another one.
I suppose it is indeed as Andrew Jackson said: John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#234[flagged]
There's no moral universe where shooting somebody over money, especially this amount of money, is the correct course of action.
The legal system is supposed to take care of this kind of thing. If the legal system fails, I can certainly understand why people might take things into their own hands.
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#235I'm really confused by this blog. There seems to be a large portion of the story missing. I can't figure out the correlation between the owner losing their franchise and the rest of the story. Why did they want to steal the sets? If they're really a $400M company (whatever that means), why would they do this over (at most) $200k? I couldn't figure out what is being claimed here. I'm not saying it's not true, I just c…
It's not that hard to understand. A man gave a store merchandise on consignment, signed a contract with the store manager. The manager lost control of the store to corporate. The goods were still there, still on display and being sold. Corporate says, "this is mine now" and refuses to honor the contract. "It wasn't our name on it, says right here that the previous store manager signed this, and she's no longer with u…
But the end of the blog post says the man sued and won.
But the store closed to get out of paying.
Which makes no sense if the store was corporate-owned. So why isn't the corporation paying?
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#236> Bricks & Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff is a graduate of Brigham Young University. Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best are, by public record and documented account, members of the LDS community. When Reckless Ben's team, following the pattern of obstruction by local law enforcement, looked into the individual officers involved in these incidents, they found that multiple officers were also BYU alumni. I thought “it has to b…
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If their atheist affiliation had a pattern of this exact behaviour, that had been documented even so far as how it had corrupted the FBI.
https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/...
Why yes, 6 day old account, I would say the same in that scenario. Thanks for playing.
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#237Can anyone explain WHY a 400M company would do this? This is just bonkers. They are destroying their reputation for $200k of legos???
Keep in mind you are getting one side of the story. The company seems to be claiming that the franchisee sold the sets and (perhaps) did not pay the consignor for the sales. And that the consignor moved his sets out of the store. > That said, after ownership of the Salem store changed, we thoroughly documented and assessed current inventory. A few days later, we became aware of the previous arrangement, and compared…
Difficult to imagine why it would be declined. Did they perhaps insist on unreasonable conditions for doing so, such as fully indemnifying them in the matter? (Just wild speculation on my part since for whatever reason neither party seems interested in providing a full, clear, objective telling of events.)
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best part is when the officer takes the process server's subpoena, says he'll serve it, then walks back and says the defendant isn't accepting it while refusing to allow her to serve the subpoena. The search of his person over a call to police is a clear violation of his rights, a phone to call to police is not PC or RAS. The fact they held him for three hours will to be to his benefit in court. Arresting him for…
Part 2's corruption and civil rights violations makes Part 1 look irrelevant. A lot of the coverage on this is still about the $200k and the lego sets. Fun part to mention is the officer that takes the subpoena to the would-be defendant is the part of the 3rd set of cops that were sent to Ben's non-moving car that is on public property. The cop's bodycam discussion with the would-be defendant is also fully redacted,…
> After telling Ben that the defendant doesn't accept the subpoena (can you even refuse being served like that?)
They can't, and I'm surprised the officer wasn't aware of that. Confirm the person's ID, hand them the papers or sit them somewhere and tell them, they have been served. Process-wise, all that matters is confirmation to the court that the person is aware of and was given possession of the documents. If they don't like it and set them on fire, that's not the court or the server's problem.
I think there's also generally a process for someone avoiding being served. Ie if you can prove they're trying to avoid being served, that is per se evidence that they are aware they are being served and can be considered as served. Iirc, it's not preferred because it's way, way cleaner for the court to have a signed document but they can and will do it.
Legalities aside, this is why you'd normal hire someone to do this. The cops don't want to be involved, and especially so for YouTube drama. Hire someone completely unrelated who can show up, be completely emotionally detached and do the "I'm just trying to do my job, man" schtick. They're also much better for contested servings. If one party says the other got papers and the other denies it, there's a "he said, she said". If you hire a professional who doesn't care about the outcome of the case then it carries a lot more credibility.
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lawsuit was *from* the previous owners against the new owners that kicked them out of the store. Here's a video from the previous owners explaining their story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedmOopRTm0
I haven't watched this particular video, but I've read her 46 page suit. That's not the case that was lost. The case(s) that were lost are small claims actions made by the YouTuber and 9 of his friends, essentially. They got default judgments from the court on 10 claims each worth $10k. The previous owner's suit was just filed in March of this year, I believe. Now as for the previous question of who was at the pointy…
Oh yeah sorry, I misunderstood the suit the comment was referring to.
It is my understanding that BAM took direct ownership of the local store and therefore the small claims case was also directed against them, but at the moment I can't find where I've heard that so I'm not 100% sure.
Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
#240This YouTube video covers it with much more detail, and (imo) more entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wscQpkcwgNU
And if you want a (less entertaining but very interesting) legal analysis of the various legal tricks Ben used in this video Lawful Masses with Leonard French has just released this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ktgvoH4Mc Some of the people in this thread making very definitive claims about consignments contracts without considering this specific jurisdictions should watch it... the victims here could have h…
+1: I'm so glad I happened to watch Mr. French's video first.