Bricks & Minifigs Settles With The Mansells — Gutting Its Own RICO Case Against ‘Reckless’ Ben

from the figs-and-minibricks dept

We’re not going to do a full rehash of the whole Reckless Ben / Bryan Mansell / Bricks & Minifigs saga here. We’ve already got a bunch of stories on it, and there are many other sources. But there is some news in the form of Bricks & Minifigs (BAM) “settling” with Mansell — and there’s a lot more to the story, including that Mansell has assigned whatever claims he might have against the former franchisees to BAM, though it’s unclear who actually has those rights, since early on in this saga it was reported that Mansell had given them to Reckless Ben. There’s also the fact that Ben himself is still facing civil claims and criminal charges, neither of which seem legit. Especially on the civil side, given that BAM admitting that it did in fact owe Mansell money completely undercuts their civil claims against Schneider that he was running a shakedown scheme.

First a very, very condensed and incomplete summary: The short version is that Mansell asked a local BAM franchise to do consignment sales of his father’s vast Lego collection, and somewhere in the middle of everything, BAM corporate kicked out the previous owners of that franchise (Chrystal Law Gorman & Ben Gorman), promised that they were taking control over the consignment deal, and then insisted that they legally now owned the remaining Mansell Lego sets and that the consignment thing wasn’t real or wasn’t allowed. There was a lot more nonsense as well, involving multiple police departments doing shady shit.

But a fairly thorough accounting by the investigative YouTuber known as Coffeezilla suggested (yet again) that just about everyone here bears some of the blame. It showed it was quite likely that BAM corporate and the two friends they handed the franchise to (Josh Johnson & Brandon Best) had misled everyone regarding which of Mansell’s Lego sets were still in their possession. But also that the Gormans likely owed the Mansells money for sets that had already sold. The Gormans have suggested that they couldn’t pay Mansell what was owed because the receipts were taken over by Johnson/Best/BAM corporate. Oh, and also, the Lego sets in question probably weren’t worth quite as much as everyone made them out to be.

Also, as we detailed, everyone started suing everyone. The Gormans sued BAM corporate. BAM sued everyone, alleging RICO. There’s also a criminal case against Reckless Ben, whose main crime seems to be the somewhat bumbling way he actually brought attention to all of this (though bumbling around to bring attention to injustices seems to be his entire oeuvre).

The news from earlier this week is that BAM corporate has “settled” with the Mansells. This is a good step, and one that should have happened ages ago. We found it bizarre that BAM corporate’s CEO Ammon McNeff kept claiming he wanted to make Mansell whole… at the very same time he filed a RICO lawsuit against Mansell. Eventually settling was always the most sensible move. That it took this long — while doing nothing but damage to the Bricks & Minifigs brand — is pretty much entirely on McNeff’s stubbornness, and thinking he could talk his way out of the hole he had dug previously.

The details here matter though:

Bricks & Minifigs (BAM)… today announced that it has reached a comprehensive and amicable resolution with the Mansell family regarding the dispute surrounding a LEGO Star Wars collection originally consigned to a former franchise owner of the Bricks & Minifigs Salem/Keizer, Oregon store.

The agreement resolves the disputes between BAM, its leadership and the Mansell family and follows an extensive legal and mediation process in which the parties exchanged records and information that provided a more complete understanding of the circumstances surrounding the original consignment arrangement.

Again, all of this could have (and really should have) been sorted out as soon as BAM took over the franchise. The fact that they refused to do so and made a bunch of false and misleading claims, and then stuck to their guns when called on it, means the damage to BAM’s brand is entirely self-inflicted.

But the larger mess continues. First, part of the agreement is that Mansell has apparently transferred any claims he has for his sets to BAM corporate:

As part of the resolution, the Mansell family has been made whole by BAM for the losses associated with their consignment arrangement with the former franchise store owner, including an assignment to BAM of Mansell’s claims arising from the original consignment contract, and the Mansells have agreed to provide relevant records should BAM elect to pursue those claims against those responsible.

So this is pretty clearly signaling that BAM intends to use those claims against the Gormans, who are the other party to the “original consignment contract.” The Gormans’ own lawsuit against BAM was recently “upgraded” to include RICO claims of their own — so now everyone in this dispute is accusing everyone else of racketeering. But, as is almost always the case, the RICO claims seem incredibly weak. As much as people want it to be RICO, it’s almost certainly not RICO, even if BAM did do other sketchy things.

But now BAM can (in theory) use Mansell’s “claims” against the Gormans as part of any counterclaim they may file.

There is a separate issue that I haven’t seen much coverage of, which is that in some of the Reckless Ben videos, it was clearly stated that Bryan had sold off his interest in these claims to Ben, for the sake of Ben trying to use his ownership of the claims in some of his many stunts to try to get the money back. It’s possible that Ben returned the claims to Bryan, but if that’s not the case, it’s not clear if Bryan has any claims to give to BAM. I imagine that if the case moves forward, time will be spent determining who actually holds what claims.

The bigger issue, though, is that BAM still has its silly RICO case going against Schneider. There’s a decent chance that will settle as well (most lawsuits end in settlement, because it’s too expensive and too wasteful not to have them end that way). But if BAM were actually serious about fixing its very tarnished reputation, it should have tried to settle all these cases in one shot.

Instead, it looks like they paid the Mansells (though the amount remains secret) and are dropping Bryan from their case. But their legal fights with the Gormans and Ben Schneider remain.

But the settlement alone also undermines their case against Schneider. After all, BAM has insisted they wanted to pay Mansell what they owed all along, but there’s documentation showing otherwise, including an email to Mansell saying that Best and Johnson “have no legal obligation to return any of the LEGO product” and “We consider this matter closed and will not be returning any LEGO products to you.” Yet, now they have agreed to pay Mansell. And the only thing that changed in the interim was the widespread negative attention BAM got… via Schneider.

So it’s a bit rich for them to still be claiming that Schneider’s actions were a conspiracy to “shake down” BAM:

As evidenced in the 5/21/26 YouTube Video and Publications, beginning in early 2025 and continuing to the date hereof (i.e., over a substantial period of time) and with the direct and indirect support and encouragement of Bryan, Chrystal and Benjamin, Schneider and the Schneider Group began targeting the Baker Salem store, and BAM, to unlawfully shake them down and extort monies demanded.

Now they’re admitting directly that they did, in fact, owe Mansell money, which they have now paid off. And which they absolutely said they weren’t going to do until Schneider drove attention to the whole thing.

So it’s good that Mansell has been paid and dropped from the lawsuit. But it seems unlikely that Bricks & Minifigs’ reputation gets much better so long as it’s still engaged in this questionable lawsuit against Schneider. Hopefully the settling of the Mansell portion means that they’re equally willing to and in the process of working out a deal with Schneider as well. BAM’s press release does note that “separate mediation efforts between BAM and Ben Schneider regarding related pending matters remains ongoing” which is both expected and good. But if you’re already at the table with him, and you’ve now conceded that you did, in fact, own Mansell money for his sets, what exactly is there left to be negotiating with Schneider about? You’ve already admitted that the main “shake down” claims are largely bogus, because you did, in fact, owe Mansell money that you later denied.

Assuming they do eventually settle, for transparency’s sake, it would be better if the terms of such a deal were public, rather than kept under wraps like the Mansell settlement.

Filed Under: ammon mcneff, ben schneider, bryan mansell, chrystal law, consignment, legos

Companies: bricks & minifigs, bricks and minifigs