Here is the footage that was not previously released.

So something I noticed in the newly released footage. The CEO Ammond is on the phone talking to the police and Josh. It is on speaker phone. The whole of their release yesterday is total PR and BS.

A comment under one of the videos I think makes the most sense.

Quote:

---

The playbook is this... You franchise a location. You sign their agreement. And you open your store. You spend all the money to fill the store with inventory. The moment you fall behind on your franchise fees, corporate has loopholes in their contract which they enforce through intimidation, which they will claim gives them the right to seize your store and all the inventory you paid for. They will take your store and your inventory, and then a week later a friend of the CEO will be running it and selling off your stuff at 100% profit margins cause they didn't pay for any of it. The fact that an old mans legos were caught up in this is merely incidental. The scam is busting out struggling business owners and seizing all their inventory. They don't wanna give in on this case cause there are probably many other victims they have done this to and the liability is probably massive. The CEO is the one pulling all the strings. The "new owners" are just his puppets.

---

I wonder how the inventory transfer was handled at the time of the franchisee change.

I have kicked franchisees out many times and we always brought in 3rd party auditors to count the inventory when we seized the keys and both sides had to agree on the count before we would proceed. The inventory cost was applied to what the franchisee owed and anything we didn't want to buy they took with them. I watched one guy haul off a ton of stuff in trash bags and jam it into his car.

Was the outgoing franchisee couple present when the company took the store back? A lot of this would make more sense to me if they weren't physically present.

Waffledynamics said:

---

https://bricksandminifigs.com/blog/blog/2026/06/04/bricks-and-minifigs-salem-joshua-johnson-brandon-best-resignation/

Quote:

---

Bricks & Minifigs Parts Ways with Salem, Oregon Franchise Owners Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson

---

Quote:

---

Evidence of negligence uncovered. Bryan Mansell and Chrystal Law/Gorman jointly valued LEGO Collection at $95,000 $100,000 relating to their Unauthorized Consignment Arrangement. Corporate takes action and reaches out directly to Bryan Mansell again for informal resolution

---

Quote:

---

SALT LAKE CITY, UT June 4, 2026 Bricks & Minifigs, an authorized LEGO reseller specializing in buying, trading, and selling LEGO products, today announces the permanent closure of its Salem, Oregon store as well a mutual agreement to part ways with franchise owners Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson due to a devastating social media campaign. While fact investigation continues, BAM's current state of its investigation has uncovered significant evidence of gross negligence in how the store was previously operated by the prior owner, as well as operational gaps during the transition and the subsequent management of document recovery. More importantly, BAM leadership has personally reached out to Bryan Mansell and family to meet, to review documentation revealed in the investigation, and to come to a mutual and positive resolution.
The findings are directly related to the ongoing situation involving collector Bryan Mansell, whose father's Star Wars LEGO collection was part of an unauthorized and private consignment side-deal in the Salem location that predated Brandon and Josh's ownership of the store.

---

More in the link.

ETA: Extra juicy part:

Quote:

---

"We've been asking for documentation for a long time. We'd asked Mr. Mansell and others and did not receive enough to give us a clear picture until recently, thanks to internal and external operations assistance, and those who continue to stand with us, and we finally have enough to proceed with a resolution," said Ammon McNeff, CEO, Bricks & Minifigs. "And now that we do, Bryan, we continue our offer to sit down with you and are prepared to discuss dropping the lawsuit against you. Let's go through the spreadsheets and POS data together and ensure you are made whole monetarily and ensure that whatever Star Wars LEGO was or remains in the Salem store, whether you identify as yours or not, you can have it. We will ensure you are compensated for anything unaccounted for, including what Ms. Law/Gorman failed to compensate you for without your knowledge. We're ready when you are."

---

---

This is a white flag. Will be interesting if the plaintiffs bite, or are more interested in the chaos than the compensation.

I could see this weird ben fella with delusions of grandeur of becoming the next Mr. Beast turning the tables on himself by overplaying his hand just to keep himself in the press.

In one of the early videos the previous franchisees talk about wanting to go through the inventory and Josh et al pushed them out. IIRC they even mentioned trespassing the previous franchisees. I may be wrong about that though. But there is video of them wanting to talk about the consignment and the inventory

If true that's not good and the company dug their own grave in this mess for sure. I don't know how you can talk about money owed by a franchisee if you don't have a true and independent accounting of the inventory transferred.

AgBQ-00 said:

---

A comment under one of the videos I think makes the most sense.

Quote:

---

The playbook is this... You franchise a location. You sign their agreement. And you open your store. You spend all the money to fill the store with inventory. The moment you fall behind on your franchise fees, corporate has loopholes in their contract which they enforce through intimidation, which they will claim gives them the right to seize your store and all the inventory you paid for. They will take your store and your inventory, and then a week later a friend of the CEO will be running it and selling off your stuff at 100% profit margins cause they didn't pay for any of it. The fact that an old mans legos were caught up in this is merely incidental. The scam is busting out struggling business owners and seizing all their inventory. They don't wanna give in on this case cause there are probably many other victims they have done this to and the liability is probably massive. The CEO is the one pulling all the strings. The "new owners" are just his puppets.

---

---

This is why I always thought being a franchisee was a losing business model.

https://x.com/Die****erGUY/status/2062720900483416300/video/1?s=46

CEO gives a new interview with much of the same talking points he has said previously.

He says true value of the collection was likely closer to $100k than the $200k that was advertised to draw interest to the sale.

The old franchisee kept multiple ledgers tracking the consignment sales and they believe she underpaid Mansell.

He is sticking to his guns that this was an unauthorized consignment agreement and that the franchisee entered into an illegal agreement despite the copy of an actual franchise contract hitting the net.


IMO what you have here is a franchisee that was in financial distress about to lose their livelihood doing shady things to keep afloat and she sold parts of the collection without reporting the sales to Mansell. I don't believe that a large part of the inventory was moved off location I think she sold those pieces.

Corporate swooped in when the franchisee stopped paying their bills and did a terrible job of managing the transition. They didn't independently verify inventory on hand and when confronted by Mansell about property he owned they handled it poorly and behaved like bullies. The end result was this massive mess.

From one of the previous owners

He is right. One side's claims have stayed consistent. The other side has changed stories 5 or 6 times at least. All of the evidence is on one side of this, including documented threats and intimidation. All of that does not even take into account a corrupt PD that did no investigation and blew this into the stratosphere.

This footage is so damning. Holy crap that entire PD is rightfully cooked.

It's beautiful. https://t.co/2Z9H4Xa4lI

— Marcus Pittman (@ImKingGinger) June 5, 2026

LegalEagle discussion on the franchise turnover and the consignment. Can fast forward to 30 minutes to get to the meat of the summary. He will have a separate video on everything Reckless Ben did wrong and/or right

bonfarr said:

---

https://x.com/Die****erGUY/status/2062720900483416300/video/1?s=46

IMO what you have here is a franchisee that was in financial distress about to lose their livelihood doing shady things to keep afloat and she sold parts of the collection without reporting the sales to Mansell. I don't believe that a large part of the inventory was moved off location I think she sold those pieces.

Corporate swooped in when the franchisee stopped paying their bills and did a terrible job of managing the transition. They didn't independently verify inventory on hand and when confronted by Mansell about property he owned they handled it poorly and behaved like bullies. The end result was this massive mess.

---

The old franchisee were likely struggling... I will give you that... but I think that's about the end of it. If you watched any of the videos it becomes apparent that the corporate and new franchisee are working together and are doing everything to place blame elsewhere...

This isnt a case of "oops, we mad a mistake." They were told multiple times from multiple parties that they were in the wrong, they overtly told those parties to sue them, threatened to drag it out and increase costs, all the while ignoring and trespassing the people trying to fix this.

This wasnt an oops, it was the gameplan by corporate from the start. Best and Johnson were part of the gameplan, and are essentially working as part of corporate.

100% agree

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

Slwdsm said:

---

This wasnt an oops, it was the gameplan by corporate from the start. Best and Johnson were part of the gameplan, and are essentially working as part of corporate.

---

So store is in Oregon...
Corporate is in Utah...
New owners are in Utah (at least one of them as I recall)...
And the CEO and at least one of the owners are both Mormons...

Yea, no way Corporate and those new owners weren't in on this together.

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

---

Because you can buy/sell at BAM. It's like a clothing resale shop for LEGO. You can get new stuff or vintage stuff that someone brought in to sell.

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

---

In the case of a full set - to buy one that is out of print. For a minifig - for a rare one they can't find and/or an out of print one. Not my hobby, but I do own some Legos.

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

---

They pretty much have all the popular new sets you would find at Target or the LEGO store at pretty much the same price. In addition, they have a lot of different pre-owned sets available for resale, and you can also sell old sets to them. Sometimes my kids will take an existing set and trade it in for store credit to buy a different set. It's basically like any specialty store that caters to a specific hobby, with this hobby being LEGO. We have so many LEGOs that we call one of our bedrooms "the LEGO room".

Also, for us personally, we are supporting our friends and their locally-owned business, so whenever we are making a LEGO purchase, we try to do it at their store.

Who was the consignment with?

Was the contract between BAM and Mansell?
Or the franchisee that got booted and Mansell?

Did the franchise pay for the consigned items in the buyout? If so, wouldn't the items belong to the store now and the ex-franchisee owe Mansell?

If not, why do people keep trying to get free stuff?

Contract was a consignment between Martel and franchisee.

Corporate exercisesed ability to take over store.

During "audit" tomfoolery ensues.


The consignment is part of the acquired assets. Easily could have just returned the legos, but chose to try to strongarm instead.

Notice also given based on security video during seizure "audit".

Consignment was between Mansell and the LLC for the previous franchisee. As described in the video above there are:
1. Sets/figures that sold and Mansell was paid
2. Sets/figures that sold and Mansell was not paid yet
3. Sets/figures that had not sold yet and not returned to Mansell

BAM should have returned the unsold sets/figures immediately to the LLC or Mansell. At no point did they have ownership of the Lego, and were basically an insurance liability to keep around. Give that liability back to the LLC. I am not a lawyer though, obviously

jamesf said:

---

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

---

They pretty much have all the popular new sets you would find at Target or the LEGO store at pretty much the same price. In addition, they have a lot of different pre-owned sets available for resale, and you can also sell old sets to them. Sometimes my kids will take an existing set and trade it in for store credit to buy a different set. It's basically like any specialty store that caters to a specific hobby, with this hobby being LEGO. We have so many LEGOs that we call one of our bedrooms "the LEGO room".

Also, for us personally, we are supporting our friends and their locally-owned business, so whenever we are making a LEGO purchase, we try to do it at their store.

---

I had a nine year old Star Destroyer LEGO set we gave my son one Christmas that he never opened and I pulled it out of his closet and sold on EBay for $400 but I don't remember how much the fees were. I originally listed it on TexAgs for $200 before some posters told me I could get more. I didn't realize they appreciated in value and I only paid $125 for the set.

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

bonfarr said:

---

jamesf said:

---

I have some friends who on a Bricks and Minifigs franchise, and it is one of the favorite stores to visit by my kids. It sucks to think that something like this could damage good people like my friends who had nothing to do with any of this.

---

So what is it that would draw a customer to visit BAM vs going to an actual LEGO store?

---

They pretty much have all the popular new sets you would find at Target or the LEGO store at pretty much the same price. In addition, they have a lot of different pre-owned sets available for resale, and you can also sell old sets to them. Sometimes my kids will take an existing set and trade it in for store credit to buy a different set. It's basically like any specialty store that caters to a specific hobby, with this hobby being LEGO. We have so many LEGOs that we call one of our bedrooms "the LEGO room".

Also, for us personally, we are supporting our friends and their locally-owned business, so whenever we are making a LEGO purchase, we try to do it at their store.

---

I had a nine year old Star Destroyer LEGO set we gave my son one Christmas that he never opened and I pulled it out of his closet and sold on EBay for $400 but I don't remember how much the fees were. I originally listed it on TexAgs for $200 before some posters told me I could get more. I didn't realize they appreciated in value and I only paid $125 for the set.

---

"Only" $125.

TexasRebel said:

---

Who was the consignment with?

Was the contract between BAM and Mansell?
Or the franchisee that got booted and Mansell?

Did the franchise pay for the consigned items in the buyout? If so, wouldn't the items belong to the store now and the ex-franchisee owe Mansell?

If not, why do people keep trying to get free stuff?

---

If the Franchisee sold the items in the buyout, and then skipped town without paying the owner, then the items are stolen and corporate has no right to ownership of them.

$850+ for the new Super Star Destroyer coming later this year

BusterAg said:

---

TexasRebel said:

---

Who was the consignment with?

Was the contract between BAM and Mansell?
Or the franchisee that got booted and Mansell?

Did the franchise pay for the consigned items in the buyout? If so, wouldn't the items belong to the store now and the ex-franchisee owe Mansell?

If not, why do people keep trying to get free stuff?

---

If the Franchisee sold the items in the buyout, and then skipped town without paying the owner, then the items are stolen and corporate has no right to ownership of them.

---

Yes they do, if the consigner sold them. At that point the ex-franchisee would owe Mansell.

Like some others have said above, I also have friends that own a Bricks and Minifigs store here in TX. They are good Ags and have nothing to do with any of this but they are definitely worried about how it will affect their business. This is pretty much an early retirement project for them.

I don't know what the franchise owners can do but the board should scapegoat the CEO. It seems like the new store owners where his friends and he put the company in a compromising situation defending them.

UrbanDecay said:

---

I don't know what the franchise owners can do but the board should scapegoat the CEO. It seems like the new store owners where his friends and he put the company in a compromising situation defending them.

---

They don't have a BoD

Gotta think LEGO corporate is ****ing pissed about this situation as their name gets thrown into controversy without immediate context.

hph6203 said:

---

Gotta think LEGO corporate is ****ing pissed about this situation as their name gets thrown into controversy without immediate context.

---

Lego has a very strong brand and is very protective of their image. You can bet they are involved in the damage control right now