📰 The Backlog
Last updated: September 22, 2026
The Bricks & Minifigs and Reckless Ben dispute has a settlement, some sets have actually come home, and the story is still not over.
On August 19, 2026, Bricks & Minifigs announced that it and Bryan Mansell had resolved the fight over his father Ed’s Star Wars LEGO collection through voluntary mediation. The payment terms were not disclosed. BAM said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing, and the Mansells assigned their claims under the original consignment agreement to BAM.
That resolves the Mansell family’s claim over the collection, at least on paper. It does not resolve BAM’s separate litigation involving YouTuber Ben Schneider, better known as Reckless Ben, or the lawsuit the former Salem-Keizer franchise operators have since filed of their own. Here is the complete timeline, with allegations labeled and each update dated so you can see exactly what changed and when.
The Short Version (Updated September 22, 2026)
September 22 Update: A Dismissal, a Store That Closed and Reopened (Maybe), and a Second Store
A lot moved in the nine days since our last update, and not all of it agrees with itself.
On the criminal side, one case is over and one is not. The Provo City case against Ben Schneider, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass stemming from his December 2025 confrontation with BAM CEO Ammon McNeff at the company’s office, was dismissed on September 15-16 at prosecutors’ own request, “in the interest of justice.” It was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled. The separate, more serious case, stalking (a class A misdemeanor) and targeted residential picketing (a class B misdemeanor), tied to his visits to franchise owner Josh Johnson’s American Fork home in March, is still active. Ben has a preliminary hearing in that case on September 30, 2026.
On the Tucson store, the reporting genuinely contradicts itself and we are not going to pretend otherwise. On September 17-18, Bricks & Minifigs’ West Coast franchise business coach, Julie Kuni, told The BAM Map on the record: “We bought out the lease, closed them down, and asked them to immediately vacate the building.” Photos from a customer showed the Reckless Bricks sign tarp removed, the BAM logo visible again, and a “Temporarily Closed” note taped to the door. Then, on September 20, a new sign reportedly appeared saying the store “is not going anywhere” and that the owners were “dealing with business in the background,” with reports disputing that BAM actually bought the lease at all. We have not seen a document that resolves which account is true, so treat the store’s current status as unsettled until one side produces something more than a sign or a quote.
A second store opened while the first one was in dispute. On September 19-20, a Sarasota, Florida store called Cosmic Critter Toys opened, described on its own website as an independent Sarasota toy shop partnered with Reckless Bricks, not a second Reckless Bricks location outright. Reports say the address had still been listed as an active BAM franchise as recently as the night before it opened.
The legal fight escalated instead of settling. BAM’s civil case against Schneider had a mediation hearing set for September 15; there has been no public statement from BAM about its outcome. On September 18, Schneider’s lawyers filed an anti-SLAPP motion in the federal case (BAM Franchising, Inc. v. Schneider, No. 2:26-cv-00593, D. Utah), arguing the core claim in his videos, that BAM took the Mansells’ LEGO, is protected opinion and is substantially true by BAM’s own admissions. If a judge agrees, Utah’s anti-SLAPP law would require BAM to cover Schneider’s legal fees. Separately, Schneider has claimed on livestream that BAM is now seeking damages “in the millions” and control of the Tucson store; we have not seen that claim independently confirmed, so it is reported here as his claim, not a fact.
BAM has not made a public statement addressing any of this since its August 19 settlement announcement with the Mansell family.
September 13 Update: Reckless Ben Opened His Own Store
On September 12, a former Bricks & Minifigs franchise location in Tucson rebranded as Reckless Bricks. Ben Schneider fronted the launch and is reportedly letting the store use his personal branding free of any royalty, but the store’s own website names an independent owner and does not mention Ben at all, so this is not accurately described as Ben’s store. BAM’s only response so far is an internal Slack message, not a public statement. This is significant enough that we gave it its own page: read the full Reckless Bricks story here.
September 2026 Update: Some Sets Come Home, But Not All of Them
On September 2, Bricks & Minifigs returned part of the Mansell collection. Bryan Mansell said it looked like about 30 sets, out of the 177 his father originally consigned. In his words: “Some of the sets have made their way home… I never thought I’d see any of them again.”
There is a real complication attached to that good news. According to reporting on the case, BAM’s own employees told police that the marks identifying the collection had been removed. Those marks were part of how the family could prove which sets were theirs. Mansell says the returned sets will now go through third-party authentication to establish provenance before any of them are sold, which is not something you would expect to be necessary for a collection that was supposedly just sitting in storage the whole time.
The math on the return
177 sets consigned. About 30 returned. That leaves roughly 147 sets unaccounted for, and the ones that did come back need to be authenticated before anyone can confirm they are genuinely part of the original collection.
The former Salem-Keizer franchise operators are also no longer just background characters in this story. Chrystal Law-Gorman and Benjamin Gorman have filed their own lawsuit against BAM, in Utah Business and Chancery Court, alleging fraud, breach of contract, defamation, conversion, civil conspiracy, and several related claims, twelve in total. Their filing says BAM seized the store without warning in November 2024, terminated their franchise agreement, and locked them out. That is the same handover the Mansells say is when their collection disappeared, so this lawsuit is effectively the other side of that story, told by the people BAM has spent over a year blaming for it.
Meanwhile, BAM’s civil case against Reckless Ben has not gone away. The September 15 mediation hearing came and went with no public outcome announced, and on September 18 Schneider’s lawyers filed an anti-SLAPP motion aimed at BAM’s racketeering and defamation claims. Schneider has separately claimed, unconfirmed by BAM, that its demands have grown to the millions. Nothing has been decided. See the September 22 update at the top of this page for everything that has moved since this section was written.
August 2026 Update: The Mansell Family Settled
On August 19, BAM and the Mansell family announced a settlement reached through voluntary mediation. According to BAM’s public settlement FAQ, the amount and detailed terms are confidential. The company says the agreement is a compromise of disputed claims and is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing.
The practical result is that the Mansell family’s consignment claim is resolved. BAM’s statement also says Bryan Mansell assigned his claims under the original consignment contract to BAM, potentially changing who can pursue claims connected to that contract.
This does not mean the entire Reckless Ben case is over. The published announcement addresses BAM and the Mansell family. It does not announce a dismissal of the separate claims involving Ben Schneider, the former franchise operators, or related criminal proceedings. Until a court filing or joint statement says otherwise, those should be treated as separate and ongoing matters.
What changed, and what did not
Resolved: the Mansell family’s dispute with BAM over the collection. Not publicly resolved: BAM’s litigation involving Reckless Ben, the Gormans’ dispute with BAM, and Ben’s criminal case. Settlement is not the same thing as a court finding about who was right.
The Key Players
There are a lot of names in this one. Here is your cast before we dig in.
Ed and Bryan Mansell are the father and son who own the LEGO Star Wars collection at the center of everything. Ed built it; Bryan handled the consignment.
Chrystal Law-Gorman and Benjamin Gorman ran the original Salem-Keizer Bricks & Minifigs store and signed the consignment deal. They were later pushed out by corporate and have their own lawsuit over it.
Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson are the new franchisees who took over the store after the handover.
Bricks & Minifigs (BAM) is the corporate franchise, headquartered in Utah, led by CEO Ammon McNeff.
Ben Schneider, known as Reckless Ben on YouTube, is the investigative creator (now past 1.5 million subscribers) who took up the Mansells’ cause and turned it into a national story.
Act 1: The Missing $200,000 Collection
The original owner of the Salem-Keizer store, Chrystal Law-Gorman, signed the consignment deal with the Mansells in 2023, and for about a year it worked exactly as it should. Bryan collected receipts and a check every month.
Then in November 2024, Bricks & Minifigs corporate terminated that franchise and handed the store to two new franchisees, Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson. When Bryan went to recover the unsold portion of his father’s collection, a significant chunk of it was simply gone. Not on the shelves, not in the back. Gone.
When Bryan pressed corporate, their response was that consignment was never part of the Bricks & Minifigs model, was never authorized by the franchise agreement, and that no franchisee ever had the right to do consignment deals in the first place. There is one problem with that. Chrystal Law-Gorman still had her franchise contract, and she released it publicly. It explicitly says the franchisee may offer consignment services.
Let that sink in.
An 83-year-old man consigns his life’s collection under a legal agreement. The company takes over the store. The collection partially vanishes. Corporate denies the agreement was ever valid. Then the original franchisee’s own contract surfaces showing consignment was allowed all along.
Even the value is contested, which matters because it shapes any settlement. Bryan Mansell puts the collection at $150,000 to $200,000, and the store itself once advertised it as worth over $200,000. An early store inventory appraisal reportedly landed at $85,000 to $120,000. BAM first suggested $60,000 to $80,000, then said about $95,000 to $100,000 in a June statement. Everyone agrees a lot of value went missing. Nobody agrees on the number.
Act 2: Enter Reckless Ben
Bryan eventually connected with Ben Schneider, the investigative YouTuber who goes by Reckless Ben. Ben went all in: publicity stunts outside the store, a signs campaign, and repeated attempts to get the new owners on camera and serve legal papers. Some of that got him in real trouble. In March 2026, prosecutors in American Fork, Utah charged him with stalking, targeted residential picketing, disorderly conduct, and trespassing, largely tied to showing up at Joshua Johnson’s home, and he was arrested. He has not been convicted of anything.
Then the video series hit. In May 2026 Ben dropped a nearly two-hour investigation titled “I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of LEGO,” and it exploded past millions of views.
The internet did what it does. A GoFundMe for the Mansell family blew past $445,000, more than twice the collection’s disputed value.
Rather than sit down with the family, on May 30, 2026 BAM corporate went on the attack. It filed a lawsuit against Schneider, the Mansells and others, accusing them of a harassment and extortion campaign and invoking RICO statutes, which are normally reserved for organized crime. BAM also sent a legal notice to Patreon demanding it shut Ben’s account down. Patreon CEO Jack Conte answered with a public video:
“Bricks & Minifigs can stuff it. We are keeping Ben’s page up. And if Bricks & Minifigs doesn’t like that, they can sue us.”
A corporation tried to silence a YouTuber and got publicly roasted by the CEO of one of the biggest creator platforms on the internet. Not a great week for BAM.
Act 3: The Police Questions and the Conspiracy Rumors
This is where the story left LEGO circles entirely, and where you have to be careful, because the internet ran well ahead of the evidence.
The verifiable part: somewhere between 52GB and 88GB of unredacted bodycam footage from the American Fork Police Department ended up publicly accessible in a Dropbox folder. The department confirmed in a since-deleted Facebook post that it was “not intended for public release.” On that footage, BAM CEO Ammon McNeff can be heard telling police that Schneider tried to extort the company and threatened a manager. Those are serious claims, and they are exactly the kind that would justify the police response, if true. The catch is that Ben’s own dozens of hours of public video do not match that characterization, and the AFPD has since faced formal misconduct accusations.
The rumor part: because Bricks & Minifigs is headquartered in Utah County, and Ben alleged shared community and church ties between BAM figures and local police, a “Mormon Mafia” conspiracy took off online, claiming coordinated religious collusion. Here is the honest reality check. Utah County having a high Latter-day Saint population is not evidence of anything on its own, no collusion has been proven in court, and several commentators have pointed out that the viral coverage produced a lot of sloppy conspiracy conclusions. There are legitimate, unanswered questions about whether the police in BAM’s home city acted as a neutral party. That is very different from a proven religious conspiracy, and it is worth keeping the two apart.
It is also worth saying the pile-on had real casualties. Bricks & Minifigs franchises with no connection to the case, in Sacramento and elsewhere, were flooded with harassment and threats. Being angry at corporate is fair. Threatening a random franchise owner is not.
StudDad’s Take
I am not going to sit here and say Ben handled every move perfectly. He didn’t, and he has said as much. But the only reason any of this exists is because a franchise corporation took over a store, an old man’s collection disappeared on their watch, and corporate then told the family the agreement was never valid while their own paperwork said otherwise. That is where the blame starts and it is where most of it stays.
Bricks & Minifigs Reckless Ben Timeline
These entries summarize public statements, court reporting, and published video updates. Complaints contain allegations, not findings of liability.
November 2023: Bryan Mansell signs a consignment agreement with the Salem-Keizer Bricks & Minifigs store for Ed Mansell’s Star Wars LEGO collection.
November 2024: The original franchise operators leave during a disputed store transition. The Mansells later say sets and proceeds remain unaccounted for.
March 2026: Utah prosecutors charge Ben Schneider with stalking, targeted picketing, disorderly conduct and trespassing. He contests the allegations.
May 2026: Reckless Ben’s investigation goes viral. BAM denies key accusations and files civil claims against Schneider, the Mansells and others, including RICO allegations.
June 2026: The Salem store closes, police footage becomes public, BAM and the defendants enter mediation, and the civil dispute moves toward federal court.
July 6-8, 2026: A federal judge approves a narrower injunction. Ben says he can speak again and releases another investigation video.
August 19, 2026: BAM and the Mansell family announce a confidential settlement through voluntary mediation. The statement resolves their consignment dispute but does not announce an end to the separate litigation involving Reckless Ben.
September 2, 2026: About 30 of the 177 originally consigned sets are returned to Bryan Mansell’s lawyer, pending third-party authentication.
September 12, 2026: A former BAM Tucson franchise reopens as Reckless Bricks, independently owned, with Ben hosting the launch livestream.
September 15-16, 2026: The Provo criminal case against Schneider is dismissed without prejudice at prosecutors’ request.
September 17-18, 2026: BAM says it bought out the Tucson store’s lease and closed it. Schneider’s lawyers file an anti-SLAPP motion in the federal case.
September 19-20, 2026: A second, partner store (Cosmic Critter Toys) opens in Sarasota, FL. A new sign at the Tucson store disputes that it was permanently closed or that BAM bought the lease.
September 30, 2026 (upcoming): Preliminary hearing in Schneider’s remaining criminal case (stalking, targeted residential picketing).
Where the Bricks & Minifigs Lawsuit Stands Now
The collection dispute has a settlement, and a partial physical return. BAM and the Mansells reached a confidential agreement on August 19, and on September 2 about 30 of the original 177 sets arrived at Bryan Mansell’s lawyer. BAM’s own employees reportedly told police the collection’s identifying marks had been removed, so the returned sets still need third-party authentication before their provenance is settled.
The broader legal fight escalated instead of settling. The settlement is limited to BAM and the Mansell family. BAM’s civil case against Reckless Ben had a mediation hearing September 15 with no public outcome announced; on September 18 Schneider filed an anti-SLAPP motion aimed at BAM’s racketeering and defamation claims, and Schneider has separately claimed (unconfirmed) that BAM is now seeking damages in the millions. The former franchise operators, Chrystal Law-Gorman and Benjamin Gorman, have gone from accused parties to plaintiffs, having filed their own twelve-claim lawsuit against BAM in Utah Business and Chancery Court. Schneider’s Provo criminal case was dismissed September 15-16; a separate case (stalking, targeted residential picketing) has a preliminary hearing September 30. None of the civil litigation is resolved.
Ben is publishing again. After the federal court narrowed the speech restrictions in July, Schneider released another video in the series. For legal context, Brick Fanatics covered the move to federal court, while BAM’s own June and August posts document the company’s position. None of those sources should be mistaken for a final judicial finding.
Why This Hits Different for LEGO Families
We talk a lot on this site about LEGO as something worth buying, holding, and passing down, sets that keep value and matter beyond the box. Ed Mansell understood that better than most. He spent 30 years building something real.
The idea that a franchise corporation could take over a location, watch that collection disappear, and then tell a man in his 80s that his legal agreement was never valid is genuinely enraging. It is not just bad business. It is wrong. And it is a reminder to know what your own collection is worth and who you trust it with.
Speaking of knowing what you own
If this story sent you off to take inventory of your own bricks, good instinct. A couple of things worth a look while you are at it:
• What actually makes a minifigure valuable, in our Top 10 Most Expensive LEGO Minifigures guide.
• The kind of display piece collectors actually hold long term, like the Darth Vader Bust (75439, $49.99) or the Up-Scaled Darth Vader Minifigure (75461, $99.99).
• What is coming for the big collectors next year, in our LEGO Star Wars 2027 leaks page.
Bricks & Minifigs Scandal: Quick Answers
What is the Bricks and Minifigs scandal?
The controversy began with a 2023 consignment agreement covering Ed Mansell’s Star Wars LEGO collection at a Salem-Keizer Bricks & Minifigs franchise. After a disputed store transition, the Mansells said sets and sale proceeds were unaccounted for. Reckless Ben’s 2026 investigation made the dispute viral, and BAM responded with civil claims that included RICO allegations. BAM and the Mansell family settled their consignment dispute in August 2026 without a public admission of wrongdoing.
Who is Reckless Ben?
Reckless Ben is the YouTube handle of Ben Schneider, an investigative content creator now with more than 1.5 million subscribers. After Bryan Mansell contacted him about his father's missing collection, Ben published a series of videos documenting the dispute. His first video, "I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of LEGO," reached millions of views and sparked widespread public attention.
Why was Reckless Ben arrested?
Ben Schneider was charged in American Fork, Utah in March 2026 with stalking, targeted residential picketing, disorderly conduct, and trespassing, largely stemming from repeated visits to the home of Joshua Johnson, one of the new Bricks & Minifigs franchise owners, while trying to serve papers and get him on camera. The disorderly conduct and trespassing counts (the Provo case) were dismissed without prejudice on September 15-16, 2026, at prosecutors’ own request. The stalking and targeted residential picketing counts are still active, with a preliminary hearing September 30, 2026. He has not been convicted on any charge. Separately, Bricks & Minifigs filed a civil RICO lawsuit against Schneider and the Mansells in May 2026.
Did Bricks and Minifigs return the LEGO collection?
Partly. On September 2, 2026, BAM returned about 30 sets to Bryan Mansell’s lawyer, out of the 177 his father originally consigned. BAM’s own employees reportedly told police the collection’s identifying marks had been removed, so the returned sets need third-party authentication before their provenance can be confirmed. The August 19 settlement resolved the Mansells’ claim against BAM, but it does not resolve BAM’s separate litigation involving Reckless Ben or the lawsuit the former franchise operators have since filed.
Did the original Bricks & Minifigs franchise owners sue the company back?
Yes. Chrystal Law-Gorman and Benjamin Gorman, who ran the original Salem-Keizer store and signed the Mansells’ consignment deal, filed their own lawsuit against BAM in Utah Business and Chancery Court. It alleges fraud, breach of contract, defamation, conversion, civil conspiracy, and several related claims, twelve in total, stemming from BAM’s seizure of the store in November 2024. This is separate from and unresolved by the Mansell family’s settlement.
Did Reckless Ben release Part 3, and is Part 4 coming?
Yes. A gag order had blocked it, but a U.S. District judge approved a modified injunction on July 6, 2026 and the restrictions lifted on July 7. Ben released Part 3 that day, an hour-long video featuring courtroom audio and a recorded call with the prosecutor in his criminal case. At the end of the video he confirms Part 4 is already in development. Both are on Reckless Ben's YouTube channel.
Is the Reckless Ben GoFundMe real?
Yes. A GoFundMe was set up for the Mansell family after the story went viral. It passed $445,000, more than the disputed value of the original LEGO collection, reflecting how strongly the public responded to an 83-year-old man losing a 30-year collection.
What happened to the American Fork Police bodycam footage?
Between 52GB and 88GB of unredacted bodycam footage from the American Fork Police Department became publicly accessible via a Dropbox link. The department confirmed in a since-deleted Facebook post that the footage was "not intended for public release." It showed BAM CEO Ammon McNeff telling police that Schneider had made threats and attempted extortion, claims many observers dispute based on Ben's extensive public video record. The AFPD has faced formal misconduct accusations in connection with the case.
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