Over the last few months, a scandal has absolutely rocked families, Lego aficionados and anyone who loves justice. It’s the Bricks & Minifigs and Reckless Ben controversy — the subject of a viral YouTube investigation with millions of views. Here’s a breakdown of the LEGO scandal and the legal dispute that’s ensued.
October 1999: Ed Mansell Started Collecting LEGO Star Wars Sets
In 1999, a man named Ed Mansell started collecting LEGO Star Wars sets. Over nearly two decades, his collection grew and grew. In the end, he had roughly 780 sealed LEGO Star Wars sets and around 1,200 rare minifigures. By 2023, his collection was described by some as the world’s largest LEGO Star Wars collection and was valued at up to $200,000 (although the actual value is disputed).
Sometime in the Fall of 2023: Franchisees Purchased the Bricks & Minifigs Store
In 2023, a local Bricks & Minifigs (BAM) store had new franchise owners. Chrystal Law-Gorman and her husband Benjamin Gorman bought the Salem, Oregon, franchise of Bricks & Minifigs. Under the franchise model, franchisees pay royalties to the corporate entity. However, they remain fully responsible for daily operations, leases, and local banking. This is important because the Gormans later alleged that BAM Corporate failed to properly transfer key accounts and lease responsibilities to them. And BAM later alleged that the Gormans didn’t properly manage daily operations.
September 2023: The Mansell Family Decided to Sell Ed’s LEGOs
By 2023, Ed was 83 years old and his health had declined. The family met and decided to sell his collection, and his son Bryan Mansell took the lead. Bryan was new to the LEGO resale world when he visited the Salem-Keizer, Oregon, BAM store. But his choice of BAM as a LEGO reseller was pretty reasonable because the store generally had a positive reputation as the most reliable and safest place to resell LEGOs. He even did a trial run with the store at the Rose City Comic Con, which was held September 22-24, 2023.
The Mansell family planned to use the proceeds from sales of the sets to fund higher education for Ed’s grandchildren. They had high hopes that the sale would go smoothly and that all the work that Ed had put into his collection over the years would pay off for the next generation.
November 2023: Consignment Agreement Signed, and Mansells Started Receiving Payments
In November, Bryan was ready to act. He signed a contract with the BAM store owner Chrystal Law-Gorman and brought the LEGO Star Wars sets to her store. The contract said that he still owned the LEGO sets until they were sold on consignment. Like most consignment agreements, the store would take a percentage of the proceeds as payment.
At the time the consignment agreement was signed, Bryan said the LEGO collection was so extensive that it filled nearly all the shelves.
Throughout late 2023 and early 2024, Bryan received regular payments from BAM for sets that had been sold. He said that he received about $15,000. BAM corporate later alleged that their data showed more than $52,000 in sales during the same time period.
November 2024: The Franchise Collapses and Corporate Steps In
On November 8, 2024, the Gormans informed BAM Corporate that the store was insolvent, citing nearly $200,000 in unpaid royalties, lease debts, and vendor obligations. Six days later, BAM Corporate removed the Gormans from the franchise and transferred control to two new franchisees — Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson.
The facts are disputed, of course, but the Mansell family alleges that their consignment inventory remained inside the building when Corporate transferred ownership. Chrystal reported that the new owners just walked in and forced her to leave. Security footage allegedly caught her telling Brandon that Bryan’s consignment inventory remained inside and did not belong to the store. What’s more, video evidence showed Brandon arriving at the store with a U-Haul truck, although this was later disputed.
Bandon and Josh’s account was different. They said that little Star Wars LEGO inventory was left in the store when they took possession. They claimed they had offered to return what little remained to Bryan, but he refused.
Late 2024: The New Owners Said They Didn’t Know Anything About the Star Wars Sets
When Bryan arrived at the store in late November to collect payment, he claimed that the new owners denied knowing anything about the consignment agreement. Allegedly, they wouldn’t let Bryan look in the back for his items and threatened that any attempt at litigation would cost more in legal fees than the collection was worth. When Bryan called the local police, they refused to help —saying that the conflict was a civil matter and not a criminal one.
2025: Reckless Ben Starts an Investigation
Bryan was unsure what to do next. He told his story on the Collecting Weekly podcast and also reached out to an independent documentary YouTuber named Benjamin Schneider, who is known online as Reckless Ben. Ben gathered records and tried to trace the missing assets. In April 2025, Ben even traveled to Utah to confront BAM’s corporate offices. Unfortunately, the encounter resulted in misdemeanor charges for trespassing and disorderly conduct.
2026: The Investigation Goes Public — Arrests, Online Chaos and Intensifying Legal Action
Reckless Ben eventually published his investigation videos on May 21, 2026, and the footage was so entertaining that it quickly went viral. Ben organized lottery-style raffles and even created a mock rival business called We Steal From Old People with the tagline “If you’re old, we will definitely steal from you.” Millions of people became highly invested in the conflict.
In one incident, an actor dressed up as a UPS driver went to new BAM franchise owner Joshua Johnson’s house. Josh called the police. And the police arrested Reckless Ben on charges of stalking, trespassing, and targeted residential picketing. People online started making allegations about a conspiracy with a Mormon Mafia because Josh’s father held a senior position in The Latter-day Saints church.
Reckless Ben later claimed in his videos that he missed a court date and fled to Mexico around late March, asserting that a no‑bail warrant had been issued; Utah authorities have since said there was no active warrant for him at that time. However, the police have since contradicted his story, saying that there were no active warrants for him in Utah.
Also on March 27, Chrystal Gorman and her husband filed a lawsuit against BAM Corporate, alleging wrongful termination of the franchise agreement, wrongful seizure of store assets and inventory, breach of contract, fraud in the inducement, conversion and defamation.
May 2026: BAM Corporate Takes Legal Action
Reckless Ben and the Gormans released some additional materials, too, which led to BAM Corporate filing a motion to compel arbitration and, on May 28, securing a temporary restraining order (TRO) and temporary injunction/gag order that limited public commentary about the matter.
They also filed a RICO lawsuit (under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) that named Reckless Ben, Bryan and others as part of an organized scheme of people who commit crimes such as threats and extortion. If BAM is successful, it could recover three times the damages it actually suffered.
Also in May, BAM submitted a formal complaint to Patreon requesting removal of Reckless Ben’s page and attaching the TRO and motion for a preliminary injunction. However, Patreon’s CEO Jack Conte released a public video siding with Bryan and Reckless Ben.
June 2026: BAM Parts Ways With Brandon and Josh
By June 2026, things had not settled down in the least. It turned out that police body-cam and dash-cam footage of Reckless Ben’s arrest, posted online by hackers, revealed inconsistencies between what viewers saw and the official reports. Crowdfunding efforts for Bryan had exceeded more than a half a million dollars. And BAM Corporate dissolved the Salem-Keizer franchise location altogether, cutting ties with Brandon and Josh completely.
In a public statement released on Jun 4, 2026, BAM Corporate and CEO Ammon McNeff talked in detail about what they know, including that “Evidence shows there were three sets of books being managed by the previous owner Ms. Law/Gorman, regarding the collection, all with different accounts of what was sold and more reliable high-end market values for the entire collection, which is more accurately estimated at $95,000 to $100,000.”
On June 10, a Utah court upheld the TRO restricting Reckless Ben’s public statements, effectively silencing him. On June 11, an investigative Journalist called Coffeezilla published an analysis of the financial records, which said that the LEGO Star Wars sets were never worth $200,000, and that the real value was, in fact, closer to $100,000.
A preliminary injunction hearing on June 30 resulted in removal of the matter to federal court, but the federal court has not yet ruled on the motion. The removal to federal court could affect the case in several ways. It will definitely affect the timeline, but it may affect the outcome too. Some attorneys believe that federal judges are better equipped to handle more complex commercial litigation and may apply procedural rules more predictably.
July 2026: Legal Proceedings Continue
So, what’s next? There’s a lot going on. There’s the civil action between Reckless Ben and BAM. There’s the civil case against BAM by Chrystal Law-Gorman and her husband. Reckless Ben is also scheduled to attend hearings related to the criminal charges he faces. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
