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Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

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Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#591

Post by superxpro12 »

conartist6 wrote: post #190
rdtsc wrote: post #140

> 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…

Honestly that pattern of actions by law enforcement was the most disturbing thing. There was a moment where they knew this person was present at a private property to serve a warrant in a legitimate lawsuit. Clearly the right and moral action for the police at that moment was to help serve the papers AND then escort the litigant from the property. They chose to behave more like mobsters than defenders of the public t…

Thats because the cops were on the mormon in-group.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#592

Post by superxpro12 »

jonlucc wrote: post #221
shadefinale wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand ownership of the Lego sets never left the Mansells. The consignment agreement states as much. Even if we take what corporate says at face value (there was no agreement, or the agreement is null, or it's an agreement that the previous owners agreed to) that still just means that the store possesses property that they do not legally own. Whether or not they legally came to possess the sets seems…

I watched a video from a lawyer who was explaining some of the legal aspects of this debacle, and this one stuck out. Basically, if the Mansells had filed a form with the Oregon Secretary of State, they would have a much simpler claim. That form basically just says "X company is holding Y merchandise that is mine for consignment". Because they (likely) didn't do that, the process for determining their ownership may b…

Consignment never transfers ownership without payment.

The payment was never provided, so the ownership never transferred. It has always been with the original owner. This isnt complicated.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#593

Post by superxpro12 »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #469
retired wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a simple audit not completely destroy this case? "How did you acquire these sets?" "Uhm... don't know they just appeared out of nowhere" Straight to jail.

[flagged]

This is a misrepresentation.... They acquired the contract that held those sets, not the sets directly. The "ownership" of the sets was with the original owner. The set owner entered into an agreement with the shop to pay them for shelf space to advertise the sets for sale.

They were essentially "on-loan" or "borrowed". At no point in time was the ownership was ever transferred to the shop. Possession != ownership

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#594

Post by ssl-3 »

gosub100 wrote: post #444
ssl-3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruined seems like very strong phrasing when nothing important has been ruined. They sell new Lego sets in stores every day. They might seem expensive for a few bags of plastic bits and some instructions, but then: They've never been cheap. A kid can still grow up playing with Lego today, just as they've always been able to. I still remember building my first new Lego widget. Set 918. It was just a small basic spacesh…

It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.

Making even vaguely consistently-repeatable injection molded parts at home is hard work.

The injection molding of a Lego brick is spooky-consistent and very precise. Bricks made 40 years ago work the same as bricks made today do.

Besides that: Cost. Maybe I need 200 1x4 bricks for some project. In the best case, I can spend days or weeks getting the process just-so and eventually smoosh out 200 good-enough bricks (all of the same color) at the cost of all that time, equipment, and some ABS pellets.

Or: 1x4 bricks are sold at $0.15 each from Lego, in any of 40 different colors. So I can just skip all of that work and buy 200 perfect bricks in whatever mixture of colors I want for $30. If I need other bricks for my project, as well, then I don't have to retool for that -- I can just add them to the order.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#595

Post by thrance »

gosub100 wrote: post #543
thrance wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like a combination of factors that make child abuse more prevalent: lack of access to the outside world (" we are in the world but not of the world "), a strict patriarchal hierarchy in the home that puts children at the bottom, endorsement by the church of physical punishments, etc.

And your source for this data? Or is this speculation?

Do you just ask questions to waste time or do you actually care about the answer? React to my other comment first.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#596

Post by mindslight »

munk-a wrote: post #189
jimnotgym wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't sieze consignment stock though?!?

"Can't" is a really bad word to use and I am not certain if "they" here are the corporation or the liquidator. If you're talking about the corporation I think that any sensible neutral party would probably come down on the side that the corporation has no entitlement to those goods. If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be u…

> If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be under consideration by the steward - I think they'd usually find that the original owner should be entitled to the goods since they're relatively non-fungible.

IANAA, but I'd say the situation is that while the goods are possessed by the franchise, but they are not owned by the franchise. Ownership title doesn't change until they're sold by the franchise to a buyer.

I could see a scenario in which the franchise contract says that BAM can automatically liquidate the franchise (and how else did BAM get immediate control of the store?), and BAM then says they've executed on that consignment contract (at perhaps not reasonable prices). But without a very well-documented paper trail that this is what they did, including actually paying the consignor the (low) proceeds of the sales, it would seem that the only other possibility here is some kind of criminal conversion.

Which points back to all of the discussion about consignment dynamics really being a red herring. The problem is a criminal conspiracy including by the police themselves, for whatever reasons that might be.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#597

Post by tetha »

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #583
nine_k wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just some shelf space Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".

I run a niche retail store and there are two sides to this. Most of our business is selling low-price, entry-level products. There's a 80-20 distribution of people getting into the hobby versus people upgrading after a couple years. Consequently most of our floor space and inventory is devoted to high margin, quick turnover, entry-level products. In my experience the floor space is less of an issue for high end produ…

Also, from the customer side, people ask at the higher end, don't they? Beyond a certain level, it's more of a search and a quest than just browsing. So you mainly have to show that you have connections for certain things. Why does this sound like drugs now?

I know this from a few friends who are deep into tabletop and boardgames, and they would regularly work with the one or two small stores around to get some special, expensive item (to help keep the shop afloat).

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#598

Post by paulddraper »

krisoft wrote: post #437
usehand wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the overall lack of information in these, they were also found to be lying in them

[flagged]

That user won't say. [1]

One discrepancy is that B&M says consignment was against their operating instructions, yet the former franchisee shared the franchise contract, which explicitly allowed it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48318473

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#600

Post by quickthrowman »

nullfield wrote: post #584
superxpro12 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah you cant just unilaterally cancel the contract in which you agreed to hold the goods for sale, and then take possession without any reimbursement. You either need to pay the sales price of the consigned items, or just give them back. If you do neither, its the same exact thing as theft. Which is what they did. They took possession of the 200k lego set with no reimbursement. Just plain ol' theft.

When this is so clearly theft, how can the police just claim “it’s a civil matter”? They seem to like that excuse, I know… but gahhh!

The police are under no obligation to provide service to specific people or businesses, only the public in general. They don’t even have to say “This is a civil matter”, they could just say “Eh, this doesn’t interest us, good luck with that.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

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