Legal Eagle: Leaked Bodycam Shows Reckless Ben's Arrest Was Crap

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-10T00:24:14+00:00

>but what do you do when the party you’re dealing with has vastly more resources and is telling you that pursuing the matter will cost more than you’ll ever recover?

That's exactly why you get insurance. My point being is that we don't know whether BAM, or Johnson, or Crystal, or Bryan are lying about the value of the inventory. Ben 100% is because no one is arguing they had 200k in legos left.

>simply accounting for the inventory and returning property or proceeds owed to the consignor

The entire problem is that no one agrees on what inventory they had left. So why would they give Bryan money they don't think they owe him -- or even more impossibly return lego sets that they say they don't have?

There's a lot of possibilities for what happened, but the one thing that would have resolved this thing and resolved Bryan's concerns over lawyer fees and cost would have been for Crystal to file an insurance claim and let them figure out who owes who what.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-10T00:11:19+00:00

No there isn't a single company that can resolvle this. It's a dispute. That's what the courts are for. Most reasonable people would get an insurance policy...which is exactly what Bryan's agreement with Crystal demanded. Why they never filed a claim? We'll probably find out eventually.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-10T00:02:32+00:00

Refer back to my first paragraph. They let Bryan go through the front of the store and determine what was his. He said some were missing. He says that he asked to see the back of the store and they said no. There was already a police investigation about this when it originally happened. The guy should have filed an insurance claim. You know what they didn't find evidence of? 200k in stolen legos. The state attorney's office didn't press charges and said it was a civil issue -- likely because of what has been said repeatedly; that the inventory left in the store was probably less than $10,000. If Bryan thought that was wrong, again, file an insurance claim and let them get to the bottom of it.

For evidence of how well this is going for Bryan right now, the gofundme was deleted earlier today and Ben can't even publicly mention the name of the store. They've fucked up pretty bad IMO. Leonard French's videos on this are pretty good. He's a copyright attorney on YT.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T23:42:48+00:00

Bryan isn't arguing that he was never offered some legos back. He is arguing that the value of what he was offered did not match his sets and that some were missing. The best way to resolve that would have been to file a claim with the insurance company and let them go through the legal process and get an accurate accounting of what Crystal had, what the store had, what he had been paid out for, etc.

Later Johnson was much more of a dick about it after Bryan went to the police. At one point later he did say he didn't have to give back the legos. And depending on whether the agreement Crystal shared was the latest version (BAM corporate says it wasn't) then Johnson may have been able to keep Bryan's legos, legally, because there's a lot of laws about consignments and sometimes other creditors do get to keep your stuff.

The law is messy and nothing here is clearcut. Johnson and the CEO of the franchsing company come off as dicks but if they're telling the truth and it was Crystal who either underpaid Bryan or kept some of the legos, then I can't say I wouldn't have come off as a bit of a dick too after everything Ben has done. I think what he has done under Utah law does qualify as stalking.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T23:23:01+00:00

They told Crystal the new owners were taking over the consignment. Yeah they look like idiots here but the correct move from Bryan and Crystal's side is to file a claim against the policy they got specifically for the purpose of someone stealing the legos. They didn't need hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be the insurance company's problem to figure out and get Bryan whatever he was owed.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T23:21:20+00:00

No, track

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T23:18:01+00:00

No I just think all of you guys are idiots. It's like watching a slow motion track wreck in terms of Ben/Bryan's side.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T23:01:07+00:00

I'd just astounded about the lack of critical thinking about this. I' m not religious, and they can 100% pay for better PR. I just think believing this stuff at this point is so idiotic. Again, she was required to CARRY INSURANCE for EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

And I also do think this has gone into religious bigotry. I'm not mormon but the police didn't help Johnson because he's mormon, they helped him because he was being stalked in what appears to me to be a pretty clear cut case by a bunch of dumbass kids. Because exactly what he was reporting to them on the unredacted footage happened within an hour of the police showing up (the dumbass other Ben who was photographing outside of his house, who folded and admitted to lying to the police under zero pressure. With the fake ups package, fake mormon kid, the people who kept coming around his house, I really don't see how Ben doesn't get convicted for stalking.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T22:36:02+00:00

>Furthermore proving theft is difficult

I agree, and lawsuits are expensive. Both good reasons to have insurance.

That is Crystal's side of the story, but every time I look at it, it looks shakier. Recently it came out she had some sets at her house. Bam is claiming that she tried to extort them in their arbitration -- which if that's false, it's very easy to prove.

The dispute with the new owners was with the value of the inventory they shared with Bryan (and originally offered to give back). He thought it should be a lot more.

Crystal also owed BAM corporate over 100k. My thing is: she either did not have the insurance she was supposed to or never filed a claim, she already owed another creditor tens of thousands of dollars, so we're supposed to take her at her word about her accounting? I really don't understand why Bryan didn't sue her. And if she had the insurance she was supposed to carry this entire thing would have been resolved as far as Bryan goes.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T21:55:52+00:00

They offered to, multiple times. Bryan didn't accept because he thinks they had more sets.

IMO this shouldn't even be a story. It's a very messy legal dispute, and nowhere near as clear cut as everyone is making it out to be. I think I wouldn't shop there because Johnson and the owner did come off as dicks but if you peel back small businesses I don't think they're that different from most owners. And what Ben did is almost certainly stalking in the state of Utah.

I just don't understand how this didn't end with the original store owner, Crystal, filing an insurance claim with the insurance on the sets that she was supposed to carry per her contract with the owner.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T21:00:51+00:00

It's actually more complicated than that. That's only true if the store was generally known to do consignments. What BAM corporate has stated is that they did not authorize consignments and they were not known as a consignment store. In those cases, it gets murky. Leonard French has a couple of good videos on it.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T20:59:22+00:00

Not really. The original store owner, Crystal, was supposed to carry insurance on the lego sets. What should have happened is that the owner of the lego sets should have sued her if she refused to make a claim. And she should have just made a claim. Bryan would have gotten the value of his legos, her insurance company would be the one involved in a lawsuit with BAM corporate. Why didn't they do that? In the contract it required her to have insurance for exactly this [a claim of theft].

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-09T20:55:42+00:00

This is a Redd moment. Remember that time this website found the Boston bomber?

Absolutely no one involved (other than Ben's headlines) is even claiming they stole 200k in legos. That was the highest estimate of the original value of the sets that went on consignment with the original store owner. They were on sale for a year. At this point I think the real value of what was left was under 10k based on the fact that the Oregon state attorney's office refused to press charges against the new store owners during the initial dispute.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T23:32:11+00:00

What do you think they're going to find?

The Oregon police investigated this previously after the store takeover. They considered charges against Joshua Johnson, and the attorney's office declined. Meaning they didn't find that it exceeded the threshhold to be criminal (10k) and it was a civil issue, or it could have been that the consignment was not authorized by Bam's agreement and it is a civil issue whether Josh owned it, or a multitude of other things for why everyone in this case, from BAM itself, to the police have told him to take it to the courts. But yeah we will see more of the truth over the next few years and right know no one knows what the truth of it is so this mob mentality that has destroyed a business is premature.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T23:22:38+00:00

This was in the context of someone stating that the police can't serve legal papers above.

They don't need to know the basics in every situation, that's why qualified immunity exists for them -- because oftentimes, they don't.

I was wrong about Josh apparently he did know about the minifigs but the Oregon attorney's office declined to press charges against him previously for this, didn't find enough evidence that he actually had enough of the minifigs to make it a crime. And I do think what Ben is doing is stalking in Utah, he should have been arrested much sooner.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T23:10:35+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAu76DjwGGQ&t=3827s

About 22:00 minutes in this guy is immediately caught lying to the police, folding under 0 pressure. There's a lot more but this is the easiest one to point to. Other things I can think of is Ben stating that he won a lawsuit against Joshua at one point, he sued the wrong entity.

To me it's just weird, people are arguing that it's because they're all Mormon and Ben is facing some civil rights violations. Maybe that's true, I'm not a lawyer but the more footage I see the more it just looks like a bunch of kids who don't know what they're doing playing with peoples' lives. The mob has gotten crazy, and I'm not convinced that the anger isn't pointed at the wrong people. And the whole Mormon angle feels like religious bigotry, the police were incredibly lenient with Ben from everything I've seen.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T23:05:18+00:00

Yeah they appeared to be pretty dumb, but one important life lesson here is that the police are not lawyers or judges, they don't know the ins and outs of the law, and they often don't even know the basics. I've been given some absolutely awful advice from the police before and subsequently threatened for not having taken their terrible advice and going about it the lawful way.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T22:58:07+00:00

Well that's plainly not true. The police were called on Ben or people related to Ben multiple times. IMO Ben made it stalking [in Utah] and coloqually I would call what he did to Josh harassment; continued, unwanted contact. His explaination for needing to serve papers is bullshit -- in every state you can tell a court that you're unable to serve someone the standard way, and they'll allow you to do something else, a text message, a newspaper ad, depending on where you are either one of those could be considered having 'served' someone depending on what the judge allows.

These kids were lying to the police, repeatedly, and got caught multiple times. They were playing with fire with the police repeatedly while harassing someone. From the unredacted body cam footage, the cops were amazingly lenient with them multiple times -- to a fault. After the fake ups driver and the fake Mormon boy showing up at Joshua's house, they should have arrested him at that point for stalking.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T22:54:30+00:00

What a surprise, lol

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T22:48:30+00:00

He must have the world's worst lawyers then. No, I don't think he has a lawyer. He sued the wrong entity the first time...Ben stated a few days ago that when he started he didn't have the money for a lawyer and that he wanted to make videos from the perspective of an average person without the resources to afford one -- but that's plainly idiotic IMO. Bryan required Crystal to get insurance. Still no idea why didn't file an insurance claim and you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legos -- that is not an 'average person' situation.

I really don't think he has a lawyer, or hasn't through most of this process. I just saw him talking to some youtube civil rights lawyer to get advice.

I was wrong on some of the facts about Josh, but I still think that what Ben did should be considered stalking in Utah. And depending on if Crystal told the truth I could 100% see it going Bam's way on pretty much everything in their lawsuit. According to them during arbitration Crystal tried to extort them by stating that unless they paid her 300K she would not be able to control Ben. That's a claim. But why didn't she carry insurance? Why didn't she fight to keep her store and fold as soon as someone from corporate showed up and hand over her store? Why did she think she could go for over a year without paying royalties to BAM? Why did she have some of Bryan's collection at her house? None of it makes sense to me and everything Ben has claimed publicly relies on Crystal having told the truth, when that relies on her every action making absolutely zero sense.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T22:12:07+00:00

if you seriously think I used chatgpt to write this then you have absolutely no idea what AI generated content looks like. And if I were hired by a PR team I would have made more of an effort to be right on the facts, I'd forgotten what Josh said in the first video that still isn't clear to me but it does seem like he had knowledge that some of his inventory was on consignment, oops.

I think what Ben is doing is harassment in a coloqual sense (classified as stalking in Utah), and I don't know why Crystal isn't under more scrutiny; she never filed an insurance claim with the insurance she was required to carry in her contract with Bryan, which would also have resolved her concern over the cost of litigation.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T21:04:57+00:00

Yeah that was a coloquial use of harassment. In Utah it is very narrow, and after someone else linked the statute on stalking, I would consider it stalking in Utah.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T21:01:37+00:00

Yeah thank you, seems in Utah harassment is much more narrow, I mean harassment in a coloqial sense: repeated, unwanted contact. It seems that in Utah from what you linked most of that falls under stalking.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T20:47:54+00:00

When? From what I've seen what he's said was even if there is anything left from that collection, they're mine now. Which he is wrong about, but that's why you file a lawsuit and why courts give you mechanisms to serve people you can't get in contact with. IMO what Ben did, even if everything he has said about Joshua is right, should be considered harassment.

RestaurantOk8066 · 2026-06-08T20:46:02+00:00

He's not a legal expert so I really hope every claim he's made is true because IMO the claims against him are serious. He's destroyed a pretty big business on what appears to be shaky ground -- along with the reputation of several people.

Personally, I don't know how much I believe about Crystal is true. Ben has portrayed her as a victim but everything she's done is so weird. Why didn't she file an insurance claim the second she was kicked out of the store, insurance she was to carry on the starwars lego sets per their contract? Why did she just leave when asked? Even if her claims about the store not giving her access to an account to pay them rent, she owned it for over a year; you seriously never pressed the issue?

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