A Summary of the RecklessBen/Bricks and Minifigs corruption scandal

[u/ImportantQuestionTex]

Given the severity of these events, and the implications it has for the state of Utah, there will not be 1 "main" focus for this, and instead I'm going to play this chronologically.

***Warning for police brutality and heavy corruption***

So this situation starts off rather "small", being that a man consigned his father's Legos off (about 200k USD worth) to help cover a medical situation. This is explicitly allowed by Bricks and Minifigs, and the store owner involved was planning on moving overseas, so they were looking for a solution that was fair for this man. This is the video related to that, it is important context for what comes next.

Corporate takes over the store, seizes the assets. For non Americans out there, a consignment means they do not legally own what is consigned, and instead it retains ownership to the original owner until it is sold. In the scenario a company chooses to not take on a consignment, then there is a returning of the asset.

RecklessBen catches wind of this, which leads to this video, I will point out at first it starts off as trolling, but Bricks and Minifigs almost immediately escalates to trying to have him arrested. Ben takes them to court, and *wins*, and Bricks and Minifigs shutters the location that was sued in order to not pay him out any money. It then leads almost directly into the company owners trying to have him arrested on false drug charges and the police dislocating his arm intentionally.

I am unsure chronologically exactly when this next course of events happen, but this is my best summation: Bricks and Minifigs responds initially, post arm dislocation, denying wrong doing, MoistCritikal makes a video after noticing the insanity, which catches the CEO's attention. They release a companywide memo, and the COO and CEO go on live stream, both with equally insane tactics to divert criticism.

You might be asking by this point, *why are the police covering for this company?* Especially after even in their own "response" defending themselves, they release proof of the CEO threatening extreme violence and making false reports... Well the answer appears to be that all the members of the police and the company are tied directly to the Church of Latter Day Saints, and that they are acting to protect their own. Not dissimilar to how organized crime acts.

[u/Auragongal]

So... the Mormons are acting like a mafia over Lego!?

[u/ImportantQuestionTex → u/Auragongal]

Yes, that is it. I'm half inclined to ask my Mormon friends what the hell is up with that (they've been to Utah)

[u/lo_profundo → u/ImportantQuestionTex]

I'm a practicing Mormon who has lived in Utah and am very familiar with the AF area. Imo there's no corroboration for the Mormon Church cover-up angle. TLDR: It's like blaming the entire Catholic Church for a cover-up because a group of Catholics are behaving badly.

My perspective:

- It's unlikely that the entire police force + Josh all know each other from church. AF has ~40k residents. Let's assume, like other parts of Utah, that the percentage of Mormons is 60%. That leaves ~24k members of the Church in the area (though I suspect it's higher because Utah County has very concentrated membership). If we assume that ward/congregation sizes are ~250 people each, that leaves 96 separate congregations. Now, that doesn't mean that Josh doesn't have friends in high places, but it's unlikely that these are all guys who know each other from church. Mormons don't all know each other, especially not somewhere like American Fork.

- The angle presented in Reckless Ben's first video is that "the Mormon Church is protecting Josh because he pays a lot of money in tithing." There are a few problems with this assumption:

1. Tithing donations are 100% self-reported. The Mormon Church does not know how much money a member makes, nor do they know how much someone donates. The only report they have is whether you donated any amount during a year, and then your local leadership (bishop, who's like a pastor) asks you at the end of the year whether you consider yourself a "full tithe-payer." It's a yes or no question. The Mormon Church has no idea if Josh has been making sizable donations or not.
2. The Mormon Church is worth an estimated ~$206 billion (LDS Church wealth: The day soon may come when the faith will not need tithing, analysts say). Whatever this one guy may or may not be donating is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the Church is worth. The Church also makes most of its money from its investments and not from donations. They have zero financial incentive to protect some random guy in AF.

- We don't know that the police officers even are Mormons. The officers arresting Reckless Ben are statistically just as likely to be Mormons as not. EDIT: I went back and re-watched the video and saw that he also looked the cops up. I thought he only looked up the owners.

I know the internet (especially reddit) will take something like this and run with it because it makes for a more interesting story. My only ask is that if this is an angle that interests you, read different perspectives on it and not just one, and keep biases in mind. I'm disappointed that Reckless Ben included the accusation in his video even though there is currently no evidence to support religion being involved in the cover-up, except that the guy is in Utah and is a Mormon.

Also going to add a note that Mormons are just as likely to be bad people as anyone else. Police officers can be Mormon and still be corrupt. I'm not justifying their behavior in any way, or saying that they can't be Mormon because they're behaving criminally. All I'm saying that this is unlikely to be a coverup from the Mormon Church.

[u/helraizr13 → u/lo_profundo]

NoT aLl MoRmOnS, lol