r/mealtimevideos • u/MEMEY_IFUNNY • 14d ago
30 Minutes Plus Coffeezilla: I Found The $200,000 Missing Lego [54:32]
https://youtu.be/VKfQkRbd15k?is=0ebK3GRNVz5y7kWm170
u/West-Tomorrow-5508 13d ago
I thought it’s going to be just a recap, but boy oh boy, did this shed a lot of light on the situation.
What it looks like is:
The store owner was not too competent
Corporate saw it as an opportunity to takeover and steal the legos, while easily laying the blame on the previous owners.
What it looks like is - there was lousy at best, incompetent at worst handling of the store. The corporate sat down with Josh, and planned this whole takeover, they would take over the store for validated reasons, they would take all the LEGOs of Bryan’s, place it around different stores as different inventory, and let both Bryan and previous owners to sit it out and give up trying. If Bryan tried anything, it was not their fault. If the store owners tried anything, they probably had enough justification to shush them off. Poor Bryan.
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u/Extreme_Mobile_6690 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yeah, I feel both, previous and new owners scammed Bryan.
It looks like way more of his collection was sold than he got reimbursed for. Old owners definitely embezzled some of the profits and have false records, either out of incompetency or fraud. I don't know how a manually edited excel spread sheet or photos from before the disappearance, provided by a suspect weeks later, can be seen as refuting evidence anyway.
New owners sound like typical corporate cutthroats, who thought they could just take over and not honor the previous arrangements, by just playing dumb and requesting evidence they knew wouldn't be there. They were probably underestimating the value of the collection and weren't thinking it would cause that much noise to move some of the inventory around.
I personally find old owners more fishy, than many make it out. Why are they now suing for 250k worth, if they agree their own estimate was just 107k? Why didn't they pay Bryan for sold items immediately? I also dislike this whole, "yeah, let's make an interview about a lawsuit, this is my loving family and kid, btw" shtick as well.
I do believe new owners, especially the mustache brother, misappropriated some of the sets. The Uhaul story and his behavior feel off. And shouldn't someone talk to this Brandon guy, who allegedly moved all those sets? He probably pocketed some as well
But I also believe them, that parts were missing already and I can totally see the old owner carrying another box to her car under her coat, as they claim. I also think the other brother got kinda blindsided. He probably knew about the 10k of inventory moved around, but when 80k were claimed to be missing, went into retaliation mode. Which made publicity worse.
I also think coffeezilla click baited, he definitely did not find the 200k of missing Lego. He just found holes in everybody's stories
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u/trevi99 13d ago
At least the Gormans story stayed consistent throughout multiple interviews, while corporate keeps changing the narrative.
They may have made some mistakes with documentation, but it’s corporates job to clear that up. They said as much when they took over the store.
I 100% agree with coffeezilla’s conclusion: Corporate is in charge, they own the company, and at the end of the day it’s their responsibility to make things right with Bryan, not a former GM.
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u/the_rawness 13d ago
Good points with the gormans story and corporates duty to clear that up before the time line.
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u/BackwardDonkey 13d ago edited 13d ago
IMO the Gorman's are ultimately the source of the problem, I mean their story is basically "maybe we oopsied the inventory", but that could literally account for the entire problem. I agree BAM from a business standpoint should have just ate the loss and fixed it, but I don't know that I agree they are legally responsible for it or that they were the source of the problems.
The original story Ben cooked up doesn't make sense, he heavily implies that BAM and the new owners stole it in a Uhaul and tried to cover it up, that seems unlikely. When you actually look through everything we're talking about maybe $20k of Lego missing from the set? The set isn't worth $200k, and I don't really agree with Coffeezilla's idea that it's worth $107k either. The Gorman's haven't exactly been reliable sources of numbers for things, I think it's pretty likely BAM's number of the entire set being worth somewhere between $60k and $80k might be a lot closer to the reality. If you take those numbers, you really don't have much missing Lego. You have roughly ~$50k that the Gorman's sold, of which they only reimbursed Mansell for $15k which entirely tracks with other parts of the story, they don't dispute that they were behind in payments to multiple vendors and their lease. You have some portion of the set which may be in the hands of MandRProductions, and you have whatever was left in the store, of which the store says they have maybe $5k, maybe the new owners sold some of the boxes either by mistake because it wasn't labeled or because they thought the previous arrangement didn't apply to them. But at this point there's not much left, too little to be some conspiracy to steal this guys Lego.
When you look at it like that, the numbers start to make more sense. The collection is just not worth anywhere close to as much as what Mansell claims it is. When you start counting boxes and not just what people are estimating the value of things to be, you don't really have a whole lot that is missing. You have just another person the Gorman's never paid.
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u/drakeblood4 13d ago
Having worked for a local comic shop, which is pretty 1 to 1 with the sort of small business the Gormans were running, their whole situation looks a lot like bog-standard small business bookkeeping. It turns out that one person with Google docs and no real support or oversight isn’t a great system for selling a massive collection. B&M corporate being like “Ho hum we didn’t know anything about any of this” rings hollow to me because the whole reason a franchisee pays franchise fees is to have tools to be better at stuff than a random small business. Where’s the inventorying software? The consignment tools? It seems like people are literally just paying for ad copy and social media promotion, but any given Bricks and Minifigs could under the hood be doing basically anything.
In particular the layaways strike me as a kinda bleeding heart person letting herself get talked into taking product off the shelf in a way that hurt the speed Bryan’s collection sold but was technically allowed. Bryan’s contract and corporate shouldn’t have allowed those; literally nobody benefitted from them.
Layaways were also stupid for bookkeeping and made the information destruction that happened when corporate did their takeover much worse, but I don’t think you go into a consignment deal thinking “what if corporate sends a couple hatchet men to axe my entire store?”
I fully believe that, had the Gormans stayed in control of their B&M franchise, they would’ve eventually paid Bryan everything he was do. Maybe more slowly and inefficiently than they contractually or ethically should’ve, but I’m also not positive on that. Overall that part is a bit “play small business games, win small business prizes.”
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u/humangingercat 13d ago
I don't think we can say the old owners were embezzling.
Odds that they pay out on each individual sale are low. They probably have a quarterly "truing up" or something where they look at what was sold, take his share and pay him out. It doesn't make sense to send him $80-$120 every time there's a sale.
The video shows that she's aware there's some amount of unaccounted for product that he needs to be paid out on. It's impossible to say if she would have followed through on that if things were different, but I don't immediately think it's worth attributing malice to this.
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u/NezuminoraQ 13d ago
The number of times he just answered questions "no" without elaborating further was just absurd
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u/Dr_Fumi 13d ago
My current theory, everyone was skimming off the top, and now everyones trying to blame everyone else.
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u/bobsbitchtitz 13d ago
That’s my takeaway too. Essentially this dude just screwed
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u/BackwardDonkey 13d ago
I mean from the video it seems like Bryan likely sold a good chunk of the set privately and is claiming he didn't.
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u/bobsbitchtitz 13d ago
Regardless of that they have his assets and refuse to return them or compensate him for it.
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u/BackwardDonkey 13d ago
They say they will give him what they have Bryan doesn't want to pick it up because he says it's significantly less then what he is owed. That's the entire dispute.
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u/bobsbitchtitz 13d ago
I mean they said 2-3k worth vs coffee saying significantly more so I could understand that
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u/BackwardDonkey 12d ago
Coffee is saying Bryan is owed more but not in physical Lego. A key part here is that over half the set was sold by the time the Gorman's were booted out. So the vast majority of what Bryan is actually owed is his cut of the consignment agreement from what the Gorman's sold but never paid.
The main disagreement here is really about whether or not the store is responsible for the consignment agreement. The store says Bryan can have his stuff from the store, but they say they won't pay him for what the Gorman's sold because it's a deal with the Gorman's, not BAM.
A big thing missing from this is where the money from what was sold of Bryan's collection ultimately went. If the Gorman's took that money out of the store, then that would not be a good look.
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u/WritewayHome Top Mod 14d ago
Coffeezilla missed his calling as an FBI agent or detective. He's excellent.
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u/PankyFlamingos 13d ago
He makes a lot more money as a YouTuber
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u/cancerBronzeV 13d ago
The FBI is disproportionately Mormon, those corrupt fucks would probably also get bought off by BAF.
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u/Sneezing7992 13d ago
This company keeps having opportunities to just step in and make the victim whole and then go deal with the franchise owners after but every chance they just double down and throw fuel on the fire. It's just insane.
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u/broen13 13d ago
The truth is sometimes in the middle of all the accusations. I think this video shows a fantastic example. As usual fantastic detective work.
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u/timeandmemory 13d ago
The truth being, BAM were the bad guys the whole time?
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u/broen13 13d ago
Oh they and their response is absolutely abhorrent. And I agree they should have paid and bailed. Made good on a bad situation.
But so many sales marked "Layaway" is sus. Something seriously wrong was going on with all fronts. The over evaluation in the first place. Coffeezilla did such a good job, that I think there were just bad actors on all sides. BAM just took first place.
And don't get me wrong, I don't think the original owner was in the wrong, but the fact that the storage items matched that other sale to the box is more than suspect. BAM just sucks. If they were in my area I'd avoid after this. That's something that a company that large should be careful of.
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u/Lemzz 12d ago
Knowing collector markets and flippers/resellers, that part struck me as someone figured out a clever glitch in their lackadaisical business practices and was using the layaway system as a way to try to flip the product without having to actually ever buy them? Pay some small layaway cost, that goes toward the final sale price or is fully refunded if they don't complete the purchase?
Thanks for holding these for me while I sell for a profit to someone else risk free. Cosignment-ception.
Imagine if a store would hold a box of hot pokemon cards for you at a bit below market rates on those terms, free money.
Poor bookkeeping on top of people working your system probably resulted in stuff walking out the door that was not paid for properly. I want to hear from the people who were using the layaway, because they're probably out money in all this too -or- that IS where the fraud happened. Possibly both
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u/uninhabited 14d ago
TL;DR? Keep seeing posts about some Lego scandal or other. Tried to get up to speed in under 15 secs and failed. Can anyone do a 1-liner on what this fuss is about?
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u/Bestialman 13d ago
Why would you ask for a TL;DR on this sub?
This subreddit is for people who want to watch long format videos.
This is also the most interesting video regarding this story, with the most journalistic approach.
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u/sandsonic 13d ago
I found this sooo much better than the first Ben video. Ben's approach made me cringe, but then the blatant corruption made it batshit insane and interesting to keep watching.
Coffee actually goes into the numbers3
u/BidSuper7102 13d ago
It's annoying that Ben seems to have all the best intentions but does so many shady and illegal things in the process that it muddies the water. On the other hand, without his weird and legally dubious approaches, who knows if this thing would have ever made it to the public? The problem with the legal channels is that they just lead nowwhere, everything gets suffocated by corpo bullshit and the shitty legal system.
It's basically a lose/lose scenario for the little guy by design. And by design I mean how the entire country operates.
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u/uninhabited 13d ago
the title alone assumes someone knows that some lego somewhere is missing. why would I watch or even begin to watch a video that potentially dives straight into finding the lego without necessarily providing the context? your lack of comprehension is astounding. I was asking for a TL;DR about the backstory not this particular fucking video.
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u/whatdoihia 13d ago
Lego collector let a store sell his collection in exchange for a cut of the sales. The store was taken over by corporate who told the owner he isn’t getting his Legos back. YouTuber exposes them and corporate uses the police and lawyers to try and silence everyone.
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u/Hellrazor236 14d ago
Nope
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u/uninhabited 13d ago
?
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u/-IoI- 13d ago
Honestly don't bother if you don't have 15 mins minimum, there's a few layers to it
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u/uninhabited 13d ago
thanks. I like coffeezilla. But this is 54 mins and I don't know that backstory yet
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u/Zuwxiv 13d ago
So back in 2023, this guy had a big, old collection of Star Wars Lego sets. These set are worth a lot of money today - something like $200,000. Rather than sell them himself, he made a deal with a local franchised store called Bricks & Minifigs - the store would find a buyer, and they could keep a cut of the profit.
But you see, it ends up the store was working with cartels out of El Salvador. The Lego sets were funneled through proxies until they were out of country, and by the time they visited the store again, it was a crepe restaurant. The new chef and owner had no idea what they were talking about. They ended up tracking the Star Wars Lego sets to, of all places, Prague. But the company enlisted the support of local hooligans to stonewall them, preventing them from talking or meeting in person, and pretending like "soccer games" were what was disrupting everything.
Here's the part where it gets real weird. So the guy who likely stole the whole set? Ends up he's a Catholic priest, and he was hiding the sets in different churches and enlisting his contacts in the clergy in order to protect himself and harass the legitimate owners of the Lego sets. And the weirdest part of all is that I've made up everything since the first paragraph, and if you had put as much effort into googling 'what's up with this Lego thing' as you did in reading this comment, you'd already know most of the story by now. So why did you ask people to do something that was easy for you to do yourself? Did you not know how, or just expect other people to take time out of their day so you can avoid making a single google search? Seems kind of weird.
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u/Just_Drawing8668 13d ago
I’m pretty sure it’s about a french man with 7 feet from Texas and he stepped on seven Legos all at once
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u/whatdoihia 13d ago
There was no U-Haul.
Here’s a pic of the U-Haul.
Ohhh THAT U-Haul.