The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is getting negative press once again, and this time it's for something neither the Church nor its members as a whole have any involvement in. In order to understand this completely, we have to break down the long saga of the Bricks&Minifigs Lego scandal.
The Consignment Dispute
Bricks&Minifigs is a store chain that buys and sells new and used Lego products. It’s currently headquartered in Utah and owned by Ammon and Matt McNeff. In 2023, a consignment deal was signed between the owner of a specific BAM franchise in Oregon (owned by Chrystal Law-Gorman) and a client named Bryan Mansell, whose father had amassed a Lego collection worth $200k. The franchise would sell off the Mansell collection over time and both parties would receive a share of the profits. Crucially, Mansell would retain full ownership of the sets until they were sold.
Mansell continued receiving checks until late 2024, when BAM corporate seized the store from Law-Gorman after a dispute and handed it to two new co-owners, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. Johnson, Best, and BAM corporate refused to honor the previously made consignment agreement, saying that corporate policy forbade such contracts. Law-Ghorman rejects this, saying that BAM was fine with the initial agreement and made no comment about it. Regardless of whether it was allowed, the Mansells were no longer able to access their property, and BAM refused to give it back. More about the background of the case in Oregon can be found here.
Cue in Ben Schneider, commonly known as Reckless Ben, a YouTuber who’s done some impressive investigative reporting in the past, mostly involving the exposing of cults. The Mansell family reached out to Ben to help them out, and he agreed immediately. They sued BAM and the Oregon franchise and won in court. However, either BAM corporate or Johnson/Best shut down the Oregon franchise before they would be forced to pay damages or return the Legos. Ben tried to sue Johnson and Best personally through Oregon, but the suits were rejected due to a “lack of good-faith effort” to resolve the dispute in person, so Ben traveled to Utah back in March where Johnson and Best live in order to complete this step.
Reckless Ben vs. Reckless American Fork
On March 8th, Ben first went to BAM HQ to try to talk to Ammon McNeff, the CEO of BAM, but they were escorted out by Orem police. Ben then drove to Joshua Johnson’s house, where three American Fork PD vehicles arrived shortly after. When Ben and co. tried to leave the area, they were followed and pulled over for supposedly failing to stop at a stop sign (which was later disproven by police dashcam footage). The officer then asked who Ben was, who was in the back seat, then harassed them for a bit.
The next day, Ben went to Brandon Best’s house and tried to discuss the case. Best came out, refused to talk to Ben, then called the police and claimed they were trespassing. Because Ben was able to talk to Johnson, Oregon accepted the lawsuit. Ben went to Johnson’s ward and successfully talked with someone there, asking him to go to Johnson’s house on his own and discuss giving back the Legos. AF PD were then called on this church member, Ben, and Ben’s friend. The police accused the member of being drunk, and Ben and said friend of hiding heroin in their car, as well as being high when they were stopped. They were let go after multiple hours of repeated harassment.
On March 10th, Ben and a process server went back to Johnson’s house to serve him his papers in order to get the case moving. Johnson called the cops on Ben four times. Johnson and Ammon McNeff–who Johnson had on the phone–lied to the cops, saying that Ben’s papers, court case, and the process server were fake and that Ben was trying to extort them and had threatened to kill them and a BAM employee in Oregon.
At no point were Johnson’s or McNeff’s stories/claims questioned or disputed by police. McNeff and Johnson simply threw out any type of charge cops could use to arrest Ben. A cop took the court papers from Ben and told him that he’d serve them to Johnson. According to the video evidence, this cop goes up to Johnson and tells him that he doesn’t want the papers. Johnson insists on seeing them, but the cop declines to hand them over, saying it “kind of puts me in a bind…” if he does. He goes back to Ben and tells him that Johnson didn’t want the papers. He then calls Oregon, who confirms that the papers/case are real. Despite this, they arrest Ben for criminal stalking and trespassing the process server.
After he was released, Ben and friends decided to start a GoFundMe to raise money for the Mansells, alleging that Johnson stole their Legos. They made a sign to hang by Johnson’s house on the sidewalk for an Instagram post. The police showed up immediately and, at first, said they weren’t doing anything illegal. They then backtracked, confiscated the sign, and arrested one of Ben’s friends on a phony accusation that he was trying to destroy evidence on his phone. Bodycam audio reveals that AF PD was trying to find any possible charge to stick onto them at this moment.
The very next day, AF PD swatted Ben’s Airbnb, guns drawn, and arrested Ben and four of his friends, dislocating Ben’s shoulder in the process. Their search warrant alleges that Ben had stolen Johnson’s Legos, something that Johnson had previously threatened to accuse Ben of doing over a phone call. In bodycam footage, a cop discusses with another how the owner of the Airbnb is actually a friend of the AF PD.
At the station, Ben discussed with a detective that he had created the GoFundMe page for the Mansells, which was enough for AF PD to charge Ben with mystery charges, redact his bail from his previous arrest, and attempt to hold him in jail for a month, which a judge overruled. According to Ben, a warrant for his arrest was then issued for yet another unknown charge, which led Ben to flee the country to Mexico for the time being.
The Mansell’s Ridiculous Accusations
This story is a disgusting one and I wholeheartedly agree that the American Fork Police Department needs to be investigated and potentially charged for the blatant abuses of power that we’ve seen thrown against Ben and his friends. I also think that BAM should be held liable for the $200k in missing Legos plus additional damages to the Mansells and Ben, as well as being charged for faking death threats. Where I draw the line is when people like Ben and Bryan Mansell claim that there's some kind of greater conspiracy because Johnson, Best, and the McNeffs are all LDS and so are the cops involved in this.
They claimed that because those four are LDS, they’re donating a significant amount of money to the Church, who then sends out the AF PD to stop Ben and Bryan from taking back the Legos. Sorry, but the Church is not ordering the AF PD to arrest and harass Ben. These four are not being protected because they’re LDS. They’re being protected for one of two reasons: they’re rich and have money to slide under the table to a corrupt PD, or a corrupt PD is abusing their powers to protect members of their community from a Californian YouTuber who is supposedly harassing said members.
The latter scenario may be argued by some to be proof that this situation is indeed caused by the “Mormon Mafia.” The issue with that is this type of corruption happens everywhere and is not at all exclusive to our specific community. Local law enforcement anywhere will bend or break the law in order to protect their own, despite the possibility that their own may be in the wrong. In many smaller communities, especially one with some kind of common identity, this is true. There is no grand conspiracy, there is no “Mormon Mafia,” and President Oaks isn't hiding the lucrative Cloud City set in the Holy of Holies.
What the Mansells are doing with these accusations is turning people’s attention away from the actual issue, that being AF PD’s protection of BAM, to Mormons as a whole. It’s an excuse for anyone who has an axe to grind with the Church, whether they be on the left or right, to spread blatant lies about what the true situation is.
These lies then take a hold over low information or low IQ people into thinking that this is some top-down, QAnon type conspiracy involving the Church and any member that happens to wield some kind of political power.
I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of comments across X/Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube about how bad and corrupt the Mormons are as a whole because of this situation. One post from a popular right wing X account says that, because of Ben, “Utah gets exposed as Mormon Israel.” A reply to this advocated for Missouri Executive Order 44 to be reenacted. A different poster says that “The [M]ormon church, the brand and owners, the judges and the cops [m]ust all be prosecuted.” A Redditor comments “I'm proud to be from where they hung the [M]ormon founder. Got what he deserved after trying to take over Nauvoo and destroying the local printing press. Despicable people to this day[.]”
A Long History of Bigoted Hysteria
Do I think that Ben and Bryan intended for this to happen? No, I think they were grasping at straws when they hypothesized about the “Mormon Mafia.” They don’t know that this type of rhetoric has led to multiple atrocities being committed against us over the years. We’ve always been an easy target for hatred throughout our history. We were forced to flee Ohio, then Missouri, which enacted an extermination order for any member within its borders, and then Illinois, where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were martyred and the Church as a whole was facing annihilation from mobs. We eventually found refuge in Utah, where nobody could easily oppress us. Yet still, the United States under James Buchanan tried to start a war with us in order to distract from growing tensions between the North and South regarding slavery. From the empty deserts of the Great Basin, we built up one of the most prosperous regions of the most prosperous civilization the world’s ever seen, yet the hatred remained.
We eventually shifted away from certain policies for the better, became more open with what we’re about to the world, and we contribute billions of dollars of our resources every year for the explicit purpose of helping those who can’t help themselves around the world. Yet the hatred remains. Not even a year ago, a nutjob who bought into this type of anti-Mormon rhetoric targeted our own during sacrament meeting, killing four of our members and wounding about eight others, including small children. Even on that day, you had anti-Mormons coming out of the woodwork to criticize anyone who called us Christians. One such person was failed Idaho gubernatorial candidate Mark Fitzpatrick, who said “Mormons aren’t Christians. Stop saying otherwise,” in response to Trump when he condemned the slaughter.
No matter what we do, we will remain hated by the world, and we will have to accept this. We cannot pretend that we will somehow find lasting peace with these people, whether they be in the far left crowd that Church HQ tries to placate or the rising far right crowd who call themselves “Christian nationalists.” We have no home in either camp. They will forever hate us because of our religion and our faith in Jesus Christ, either because having Christian morals is wrong or because we believe in the “wrong” Jesus.
Do not fret, however, as He has already told us that this type of treatment was always going to happen. As He says in Matthew 10:22, “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” As we continue living amongst the world, be careful not to associate with those who hate us and want to see our religion and people oppressed. We are set apart from the world, and we must act like it. Live by your covenants. Continue spreading His restored gospel with a jovial smile. When you come across people who believe in any type of “Mormon Mafia” rumor, try and tell them the truth of the matter. If they don’t accept it, disengage, as there is no point in throwing pearls before swine.
To the dismay of those anti-Mormons that truly hate us, the standard of truth has been erected, and no unhallowed hand will ever stop the work from progressing.
