Bricks and Minifigs Told to STUFF IT by Patreon CEO!

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: all right so the bricks and minifigs drama continues now i want to disclaim this video i have not been following the blow by blow of the situation but i get the basics of it for those of you who don't know it has to do with an elderly man consigning his extensive i believe a star wars lego collection to this franchise bricks and minifigs and then there was a changing of the hands with the the franchisee owners and yada yada yada there's a bunch of missing money missing merchandise we had a youtuber get involved named reckless ben who was looking into the situation a very extensive level now he's like getting into it with the police and i think he fled to mexico did something about the mormon mafia but we're gonna we're gonna take a bird's eye view here of kind of what the latest is and really we're gonna we're gonna talk about what's going on with patreon because the ceo of patreon i guess was under pressure by bricks and minifigs to take down this youtuber's page reckless ben's page and he literally told them to stuff it he's he's like you can try suing us because they're trying to sue everybody to shut them up it's like are they gonna try suing youtube good luck with that good luck with that they've got more money than god okay i mean good luck with that but uh it is kind of funny to see jack conte who i don't think is a bad guy honestly i really don't think he is but we've been hyper critical of patreon because their trust and safety just seems like it's all over the place now this this particular instance he got per you know personally involved in but we know before like with uh sargon he got booted from patreon because some of the people at trust and safety did not like things he was saying on other platforms in this case i think jack conte actually personally agrees with what's going on with the reckless ben situation so he's getting involved but patreon's um you know terms of service and and what they enforce i think is all over the place which is why we don't use them anymore because i don't trust them not that we're in any danger i don't think of of running afoul of trust and safety i mean we're very middle of the road we're not doing dicey artwork i'm not dropping you know words i should be dropping even on other people's podcasts because i just i don't roll that way but um this is why we're actually out on substack if you check us out at moremore.clownfishtv.com you can find more episodes you will not find on youtube and podcasts as well and speaking of podcasts if you'd like to listen to us instead of watch us you can go out to itunes spotify wherever it is you listen to your podcasts and we are there man so apparently bricks and minifigs is suing reckless ben over this lego star wars investigation he did multiple videos talking about it this is coming from deserto so bricks and minifigs franchisor bam franchising has filed a lawsuit against reckless ben over his viral investigation into a disputed lego star wars collection uh ben's name is ben schneider he went viral in may after releasing videos about a long-running dispute involving a collection of rare lego star wars sets that had allegedly been placed on consignment through a bricks and minifigs store in salem oregon so for those of you who don't know bricks and minifigs is a franchise they have a couple hundred stores and they sell legos and that's the thing you can do in 2026 i guess that's how they're not they're not like an official lego store but it would be like a comic shop franchise or something like that right the situation has since expanded beyond the original missing collection items with schneider documenting police encounters arrests a search warrant etc as he continued pursuing those connected to the dispute so this is what happens they said bricks and minifigs denied stealing the lego collection in the may 28 statement bam franchising denied that corporate leadership or the new salem franchisees knowingly stole a lego collection worth a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars so this was a an 83 i think he was 83 an 83 year old man's uh lego star wars collection and he was selling it on consignment and then there was a as i understand it there was a changing of the hands of the franchise because the people that originally took the items ran into some financial problems and all of a sudden the stuff is going missing and there's all kinds of investigation i mean this is like threads and threads and pages and pages of documentation like you start getting involved in internet drama and legos you're gonna get some of some of the most um aspergian people you can possibly imagine looking into it and they're going to be very very meticulous now i'm not saying that in a derogatory term because i myself uh am of that persuasion i'm just saying it you're gonna get people who are very very very very into the minutiae of it and if they're fixated on this case like the internet when it gets fixated on something like this they will not let go so every little thing like they're going to know the brand of toothpaste the people involved in this situation are using i swear to god according to bam the dispute began with an unauthorized local consignment arrangement between the mansell family and former salem franchisee crystal law gorman who apparently siding with the family the company said was not a party to that alleged agreement and was unaware of it when it repossessed the store after the former owners allegedly defaulted on payments royalties and other obligations so it's not like i guess it's kind of like mcdonald's in the way where you can become a bricks and minifigs store and i've seen this with tabletop games too like they will support you but you have to pay your franchise fees if you don't pay your franchise fees then you become mcdowell's apparently like you might own the restaurant or whatever but you can't use any mcdonald's anything bam also claimed the collection was not located in the store when it took possession of the salem location the company said found a small number of sets value between 2 000 and 5 000 that could possibly be related to the collection and offered to return them but said that offer was refused it wasn't like you could take given the value of the sets you couldn't like take a sharpie marker and write you know this is my lego set uh on on the box because that would devalue them um side note it's very weird that the whole purpose of legos is to build lego sets and all the people that collect legos leave them in the box am i wrong well i can't say anything okay speaking speaking of being of a certain persuasion i've got an office full of transformers still in the box that need to be transformed right but i don't have time to play with them i just buy them they look nice on the shelf i put them on the shelf and then i forget what i have and then my wife buys me more and i'm like because she's awesome like that she's really awesome like that and then i'm like oh yeah i got that one like two years ago it's just in a box like stuff i don't know i don't know whatever i've got a ton i've got a ton of transformers it's a good thing i'm not into legos because i think legos are more expensive now than transformers um they said the documentation uh later provided to them put the collections value closer to sixty to eighty thousand okay not two hundred thousand bam further claimed a recent uh pos audit showed more than fifty thousand dollars worth of similar inventory was sold by law gorman before corporate repoed the store bam said it's now tightening its rules around record-keeping inventory management buy sell and trade transparency and de-escalation training now i do think that there's some weird stuff going on with the franchise or the i'm sorry the company itself in addition to the franchise but again a lot of people that get in this stuff and i'm not throwing shade at anybody i don't know the whole all the details whatever but a lot of people who get into the hobby space as a career like open a comic shop or a tabletop shop or whatever they're terrible business people they're not good business people right i'm not saying everybody i'm saying a lot of them which is why a lot of the stuff is just very it's very lax it's basically hobbyists that make a little money off of their hobby selling to other hobbyists and they're not like really good at bookkeeping i've run into this multiple times with comic shops and you know tabletop games especially it's the same it's the same sort of thing so do i believe that some documentation may have gotten lost without looking into it as much as some people have possibly but now there's a lawsuit so bam lawsuit alleges defamation and harassment and a verified complaint filed in utah county bam franchising um amen mcneff matthew mcneff josh johnson brandon best baker bricks baker bricks sued schneider reckless ben llc he's got his own llc blah blah blah blah those 115 the complaint alleges schneider and others carried out a coordinated campaign against bam and its franchises through our franchisees through videos in-person stunts social media posts merchandise and legends harassment um yeah this is gonna this is gonna destroy the reputation of bricks and minifigs i mean i think they're cooked after this i i think that there's been so much attention on the company as a whole that there's no coming back from this like you'll have to rebrand as like that lego place or something you know i'm saying like you're gonna have to you're gonna have to do something else to salvage your reputation right so the lawsuit claims schneider's videos falsely accused bam its corporate leadership and the new salem operators of stealing the collection and being involved in the cover-up bam argues in the complaint that the underlying issue was a private consignment dispute involving the former salem franchisee not an adju adju adjudicated that's a that's a word adjudicated theft by corporate or new store owners um the complaint also points to several alleged stunts shown a reference in schneider's content calling fake raffle materials fake guinness world record style award disguises used to obtain signatures signs posted near stores and homes and the the we steal from old people slogan so yeah they said there are real world consequences for franchisees employees and families including store disruptions review bombing harassment threats hey welcome to the internet yeah that's how it works um look uh they might actually have a case i'm gonna be real even if you hate bricks and minifigs because of the attention being brought to them because of this they might actually have a case now they're going around threatening to sue everybody for defamation they've got their legal team on it and in this apparently they threatened uh patreon and they told patreon that they need to take down ben's page because that's bankrolling the harassment or whatever and this is where jack conte got involved and he's basically telling them to go f themselves he told them to stuff it that's a nice way of saying go f yourself so this is this is the latest update as i understand it apparently bends in mexico i don't know go out and read go out and read um the mountains and mountains and mountains of threads documenting this but uh jack conte said that patreon received an official takedown request from bricks and minifigs on may 29th relating to the reckless ben and ongoing dispute surrounding a bricks minifigs store in oregon during the video conte displayed what he said were documents submitted to patreon including a complaint request for media content removal tied to a temporary restraining order and a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary adjunction uh injunction after which conte described as an interview by patreon's uh trust and safety team or extensive review by patreon's trust and safety team coming inside not to remove the page uh so let's take a look at what he had to say this is this is funny because i've never seen uh jack conte who was a youtuber himself like just address somebody over a takedown request like i said they didn't do this for sargon they had a trust and safety person who was just like yep i don't like what you said so i'm going to take your page down this has happened to multiple people but he is getting involved in this because he seems [00:12:43] Speaker 2: to personally agree with what's going on dear creator community my name is jack conti and i'm the ceo and co-founder of patreon on may 29th patreon received an official takedown request filed by bricks and minifigs for media and accounts related to reckless ben and an ongoing dispute regarding a local lego consignment issue this is the verified complaint with exhibits there it is guys i'm sure i'm sure it's on all kinds of message boards this is the request for immediate content removal pursuant to temporary restraining order and this is the motion for the temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction so after an extensive review and investigation by patreon's trust and safety team we have in fact unfortunately determined that bricks and minifigs can stuff it we're keeping ben's page up and if bricks [00:13:34] Speaker 1: and minifigs doesn't like that they can sue us patreon out that's awesome like i said i think it's really cool that he's telling them to get stuffed um i just wish that patreon defended all of its creators in in equal capacity that's that's my wish but uh good on them because this whole situation is just insane what do you guys think i'm gonna wrap this one up again i haven't been following this super closely but it is just a rabbit hole and a half and somebody's gonna do if they haven't already when this is in the rearview mirror they're gonna do like an eight hour retrospective of the drama that was bricks and minifigs and actually it's gonna be i i believe the documentation uh leading up to the closure of bricks and minifigs because their continued uh sketchy behavior you know the using lawfare and all that which is usually what guilty people do they throw around you know threats of lawsuits all the time try to get people shut up but um i think that is going to lead to their demise because the public is going to look at this and be like hey why why are you being so aggressive if you don't have anything to hide i'm just saying go wrap it up please subscribe we'll talk later