Mormon Stories: The Mormons Behind the Lego Scandal

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is June 5, 2026. We are live streaming today and we have a hot big story Mormon story that's blowing up the Internet far and wide. Even though it is, you know, dealing with Mormons. The entire Internet, it seems, is interesting. This is definitely one of the most recommended stories I've received in quite a while. The thumbnail says the Mormons behind the Lego scandal. There's this huge Lego related scandal that again has hit the Internet and we're here to cover it. I asked Julia. Julia's here with us. Hey, Julia.

Julia [00:00:53] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] Happy Pride Month.

Julia [00:00:56] Yeah, thanks. Happy Pride Month to everybody out there too.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] Is it Fidelity Month or is it Pride Month? I'm confused.

Julia [00:01:01] It's Pride Month.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] It's Pride Month. Okay. Happy Pride Month everywhere outside of Utah and within Utah. Happy Fidelity Month, according to Gary Cox, the governor. We'll cover that in another episode. But, but anyway, Julia, thanks for joining us and you kind of produced this episode. I want to welcome all everyone who's joining us on the live stream. We'll just ask everyone at the beginning. Please subscribe. Please, like, please comment. Super Chats will allow us to see and show the comments or questions. We would love to get feedback from the live audience. This is a story that's moving fast and so we want to, you know, there's probably going to be comments and input that'll happen real time and we'll just ask people to share the super chats so we'll see them. But again, if you subscribe and like, and support us, that, that really, really helps. So anyway, Julia, why don't you take this over? This is, I'm, I'm kind of learning a lot of this for the very first time. Yeah, the audience who has no idea what this Lego scandal is, you guys are clueless. All kind of right along with me. And also, who's this? Who's this dude in the middle? You got to tell us that as well.

Live Stream: The World's First Comic

The Lego Scandal

Matt Gillespie [00:02:15] Yeah.

Julia [00:02:15] So this is Matt. Matt, how about you just take a few minutes and you can introduce yourself.

Matt Gillespie [00:02:19] Okay, I gotta, I gotta apologize because I've got the sound going around and around and around. I think I'm hearing it two or three times.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Oh, you probably got tabs open on your YouTube. You gotta close all the tabs so that you're not, it's not playing it back and forth. But Julia, I thought I was just,

Matt Gillespie [00:02:37] you know, it was like schizophrenia or something.

John Dehlin [00:02:40] Yeah, okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:02:41] No, no, I'm My name is Matt Gillespie and I. I just have a really small YouTube channel. I've been a Lego fan since I was 5. I still have all my original Legos from Lego. I gotta back up. The plural of LEGO is Lego.

John Dehlin [00:02:57] I did not know that.

Matt Gillespie [00:02:58] Yes. So many people are getting that wrong. But anyway, I have my collection. Since a kid. I. I make mostly vehicles, tanks, planes, jets, anything like that. And I make things on commission.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] Okay, wait, showing slides for.

Matt Gillespie [00:03:15] Yeah, we've got slides for this.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] Okay. Okay, so. So what is this like?

Jonah on Mormon Cult Porn

Matt Gillespie [00:03:21] Oh, yeah, okay. This is, this is kind of my exposure and my knowledge of Mormonism. I'm not a Mormon. I've never been one. But I first heard the word Mormon when I was a kid watching the Osmond family. And I saw them, I said, gee, there's so many of them. And my mom goes, that's because they're Mormon. And I'm like, what's that? And so she told me a little bit. That's also the very first time I heard the word polygamy too. So anyway, fast forward as an adult. I didn't realize it till I put the, put the things together that I. My introduction was actually through true crime books. Like I started, I read the, the book about Mark Hoffman like in the mid-90s, and around that time I read the. The Four O' Clock Murders. That's like the LeBaron family clan. And then when I think I actually ordered John Krakauer's book, I couldn't wait for that to come out. And it went so deep. I thought it was going to be a true crime story, but it was really like a history. And I got on the early Internet and started looking at the, the Book of Abraham and how the hieroglyphics were basically kind of busted it down. And I said, wow, that's. That's a deal breaker. And it just made me want to go deeper and deeper into it. And I've been a fan of yours for several years. I also watch other, other folks in, in this sphere.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Wait, wait, really quickly. Why would, why would you. What's your interest in Mormon themes today?

Matt Gillespie [00:04:47] My interest in Mormon themes is it has to do the Lego is the crossover. And I've learned Lego has a. An importance maybe in Mormon circles even more than, you know, the rest of the United States. But what this LEGO story has done is it's taken. It started out just like a business dispute, but it got deeper and deeper and deeper and basically it turned into folks going, wow, there's a Mormon conspiracy behind now this is just perception.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] No, but I'm asking you what's interested. Why are you interested in Mormonism as an adult prior to the Lego scandal, but after reading those books, are you saying you've been watching Mormon themed podcasts just over the past several years?

Matt Gillespie [00:05:32] Yeah. Why? Is, to be honest, for an outsider like me, it's, it's a train wreck. You're watching a train wrecking.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] Mormonism is a train wreck. I'm offended.

Matt Gillespie [00:05:45] Sorry. No, but, but the thing is, and especially with, with Mormon stories is you have, you have like some amazing people, you have amazing guests and you have people like me. But anyway, you have fantastic people and you get to see people kind of making these realizations of, of what's going on in their life and going, wow. And it's basically setting themselves free. And us, the Gentiles, us on the side, or we're cheering you on. We're going, yes, yes. You know, live your own life. Live what's. Live to live, you know, have good morals, but live to your own rules.

John Dehlin [00:06:22] And so your concern, if you as a never Mormon, your concern with Mormonism is one sentence, fill in the blank. Mormonism is controlling in your opinion. And so you're, you're fascinated with Mormonism and Scientology and things like that just because they're high demand religion.

Matt Gillespie [00:06:43] Yeah, those are the, those are the top, top two. I've looked a little bit at the Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah, and, and then you had a, you had a Seventh Day Adventist guest. She was fantastic. I'm like, oh, I gotta, I'm gonna dig into this.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] There are Mormon apologists that call what we do Mormon Mormon cult porn. Is that right?

Matt Gillespie [00:07:07] I never heard that, but I. Porn.

John Dehlin [00:07:11] You're a Mormon cult porn consumer?

Matt Gillespie [00:07:14] Yes, I am. That's, it's, it's ethical Mormon porn though.

John Dehlin [00:07:19] Okay. Okay. So what's this next slide you were talking about? Yeah, stuff you do.

George Lucas on Building Lego and Costume

Matt Gillespie [00:07:25] Yeah, this is what I do. You can see like for those listening. What.

John Dehlin [00:07:31] Describe what we're seeing here.

Matt Gillespie [00:07:32] That's a, that's like a 69 Plymouth I did on commission for it. These are all my different designs. I build them from scratch. Planes, cars.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] And so you, you just take vanilla. You take vanilla Lego parts?

Matt Gillespie [00:07:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:49] And you make customers.

Matt Gillespie [00:08:02] These are all my designs.

John Dehlin [00:08:04] Do you take, you just take generic Lego pieces and then make stuff out of them Custom?

Matt Gillespie [00:08:09] Yes, that. My rule is I get a box of Lego, the original kit, I build it once, one time, and I never did.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] Was that a Lego?

Matt Gillespie [00:08:21] It's not A lego. But see, my other thing I do is costumes.

John Dehlin [00:08:25] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:08:26] I build props. And we'll, and we'll, we'll look at that next.

John Dehlin [00:08:31] I just wanted to.

Matt Gillespie [00:08:32] Yeah, yeah, but with the lego, I only, I only build what's on the box once. I don't keep LEGO built on my shelf. I just, I don't do that. Once I build it, I see how it is and then I take it apart and I, and actually I have different colors and stuff and I just build from that and I'm creative.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] Wait, wait, wait. I just want to make sure I understand. So I, When I grew up, you just bought a big kit of random legos and you made stuff. This whole prefabricated Harry Potter castle LEGO thing. That's all after I stopped playing with legos. And honestly, after my kids got grown. So what you're saying is you'll buy one of those kits of like Harry Potter or Star wars, you'll build it once and then you'll throw, you'll take it apart again, throw all the pieces in these big bins and then you'll make custom legos. Is that right?

Matt Gillespie [00:09:24] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:09:24] And do you do it for K? Like, do people pay you to make.

Matt Gillespie [00:09:27] Yeah. So I've been commissioned to build a couple things. Like that 69 Plymouth Roadrunner was like, it doesn't look like it, but there's like 2,000 pieces in that super, super detailed hood. Opens trunk. You can see the engine. But I, you know, I specialize in vehicles, but I can build anything. So, like, if anybody, you know, they want a custom build of like the Carthage jail or the hill Cumorah, you can look me up.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] I love it. And really quickly, is 3D printing a thing where people make their own LEGO parts?

Matt Gillespie [00:10:01] It is. Now this is something that's important too, is lego. They let their patent expire. I can't remember when, but now any third party can make LEGO compatible bricks. Yeah, so there's companies that specialize in making like LEGO has a rule against making like modern war machines. They don't make tanks, they don't make warplanes. So there's people that have stepped in and. Yeah, but there's, there's companies like Kobe, if you're hiring, that do that. And they have like specialized parts like tank barrels and stuff. But I just, I do it the old school way and I make it out of existing lego. But a competitor now is Mega Blocks and they make some of these, they make some of these parts that I'll use all they all fit with Lego so you can get some cool parts that way.

John Dehlin [00:10:56] Okay, really quickly, what's this slide about? We don't have a lot of time.

Matt Gillespie [00:10:59] Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm also. These are some of the, the costumes that I do. And, uh, they're pop culture type things. And one thing I realized when I was putting this together, if you look at the guy near the bottom right, wearing the green and he's got a camouflage dude next to him. That was my costume as Waco cult leader David Koresh. This was back in the 90s and I actually burnt the coat so you could smell. I smelled like fire. I smelled like I'd been on fire.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] You're committed when you just.

Matt Gillespie [00:11:31] Total, total detail. These are all hand built.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] That's it. Evan Halen. We've got Kermit and Animal and Miss Piggy. We've got Jedi, some sort of Jedi thing with Obi Wan. Obi Wan, yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:11:45] Mobi1.

John Dehlin [00:11:46] You got those Transformers there.

Matt Gillespie [00:11:50] Yeah, I love it.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] You're basically like larpy, not larping. What is it? Cosplay. Kind of like a cosplay.

Matt Gillespie [00:11:57] I was doing cosplay before cosplay. I've never been to a Comic Con or anything. People like, oh, you gotta go. But I'm like, no, I can't go now. Now a real Transformers, they actually, they do all that stuff and. Okay, I'm gonna. All right, all right.

Lego Collection Giveaway Goes Mainstream

John Dehlin [00:12:11] What's this next slide about?

Julia [00:12:13] Oh, so this is just the coverage we wanted to show in. Just a quick snippet, I think. Matt, you got this one just to show how many content creators. And this is from a couple days ago. So I'm sure it's bigger than this. This is just a brief. So just here we're just scrolling through and just showing how many people are covering this. And it's been covered on the news. You've got like, I can't remember everything. Fox 13, ABC. You got different, just different news outlets talking about this.

John Dehlin [00:12:37] So somebody has no idea what we're talking about.

Julia [00:12:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] Like this. Can one of you give a, like three to five sentence summary of the story before we go into it in detail?

Matt Gillespie [00:12:49] Well, I, I gotta say, unless you've been like living under a shed with a white salamander.

Julia [00:12:53] Well, hang on.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] Yeah, so nerd that most people have

Matt Gillespie [00:13:01] no idea what this.

Julia [00:13:02] Yeah. So until John reached out to me, I had no. This was just a couple days. I had no idea about the story. So. So, man. So old man gives LEGO collection, Star Wars Lego collection to his son says these are worth $200,000 and I want you to cash them in and pay for, pay for your kids schooling. So I guess his grandkids college fund or whatever. And so he goes and he gives them to a store and. But on commission. So he says consignment. Sorry. So he says you keep 35%, I'll get the other stuff 65% and then you guys sell them for me and then you, you pay me the 15th of every month. And so this was, this seemed to be happening under, under the owners of the franchise because there's different franchises for the bricks and minifig. Anyway, so then they got this story gets all crazy.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Bricks and minifigs. I know we're going to talk about it, but just super high level.

Julia [00:13:51] Oh yeah, Bricks and minifig. We have a slide that just says the name. So bricks and Minifig is just, they, they resell. Legos. They just the characters and then the, the sets and things like that.

Matt Gillespie [00:14:01] Yeah, they're the biggest, They're Lego authorized and they're the biggest in the business.

Julia [00:14:06] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:14:06] As far as people reselling, people basically say it's a pawn shop for Lego.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Okay, right, okay.

Julia [00:14:12] So what did you say was consignment? Am I saying the right word? Yeah, consignment. So the whole collection goes to consignment. The franchise is in charge of the consignment. But then they, the owners of that get kicked out. And we'll talk about all of these. They get either vacate, abandon the property or get kicked out, depending on which side. And then he, Brian Mansell, this son doesn't get any, doesn't get the rest of the collection. Some of it had been sold, he had been paid a little bit. But as far as I understand this now, now a bricks and minifig is holding. Is half. Yeah. Is holding on to this, the rest of this collection. And so he was just, just been trying to get it back or trying to get the pay the worth of this because it was worth 200000 so I guess now they only had half. So it's only 100,000. So he's just trying to get that back either the money or. Anyway, so, so then the son of

John Dehlin [00:15:00] the guy that put a bunch of Legos up for consignment.

Julia [00:15:04] Right. And so he'd been trying to get the story going, trying to get these back. Lawsuits and things like that change hands.

John Dehlin [00:15:12] Right. Once the business.

Julia [00:15:13] Yes, once the business changed hands, but then nothing. This man wasn't getting any Success. And so he got a hold of this YouTuber named Reckless Ben because he was looking for people to do different do episodes. He was like, oh, send me an email if you want me to do an episode on this thing. And he was like, oh, this is a really interesting story. And so he latched onto this, and he's just been taking it and running with it. So, like, over a million.

John Dehlin [00:15:32] He's got, like, over a million subscribers, right?

Julia [00:15:34] He's got six. He's got six videos, I think, as of yesterday, that are on this topic. Yeah, he has a million subscribers, and each of these videos has, I think, a million views, if I'm not mistaken, or more. So, like, this story has really taken off. So.

Matt Gillespie [00:15:46] Okay, speaking of taking off, I forgot blue is no longer an approved color on this show. I got to take this blue shirt off. I tried to find an orange one,

John Dehlin [00:15:57] but Matt just made a legal reference. I'm wearing blue. In fact, in honor of the American Fork Police Department, I'm wearing my BYU hat because they both are in Utah county, where we do things differently, apparently.

Matt Gillespie [00:16:13] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] Okay, so what's this? Thanks for that summary. And by the way, there's a Mormon angle. So. Yeah, what's this next slide, Julia?

Mormon Mafia Trending Again

Julia [00:16:25] Okay, so the next slide is. This is from a. From the show. All those in favor? It's an lds, as far as I know. Are we off screen right there?

John Dehlin [00:16:33] There we go.

Julia [00:16:34] Yeah, so it's an LDS pro LDS channel, and I think. But Ben has just been on their channel, too, so. But this is a clip from. From a couple days ago that just kind of gives an overview that this is even being talked about in the active Mormon sphere. So it's just a really in favor.

Guest [00:16:51] There's.

Matt Gillespie [00:16:52] There's a scandal rocking the United States right now about stolen Legos, and it is related to the Church of Jesus

Julia [00:16:57] Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Guest 2 [00:16:58] This is perhaps the most requested video we've ever had.

Julia [00:16:59] We've had so many people sending us

Guest [00:17:00] DMs about this issue, and there's allegations of corruption.

Matt Gillespie [00:17:04] Mormon mafia is trending again, and Baylor and I.

Guest 2 [00:17:07] This time. It's true. It's true.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] Why was her voice accelerated there?

Julia [00:17:13] We. We tried to figure that out, too. I don't know. I don't know what happened.

Matt Gillespie [00:17:16] I looked. I think we're just talking fast.

John Dehlin [00:17:20] So that's a Faithful Mormon YouTube channel, and they say they're using the term Mormon mafia, which is hilarious.

Julia [00:17:27] Right?

Matt Gillespie [00:17:28] And that's. That is what you see over and over and over. And over again in the comments.

John Dehlin [00:17:34] And apparently if it's trending again, that means it's trended in the past. So. Julia, I have not been plugged in to this hashtag Mormon Mafia. I'm one of the bigger Mormon YouTubers.

Julia [00:17:46] Yeah, well, you should know about this. I didn't. I don't know anything about this.

Matt Gillespie [00:17:49] Maybe you're a part of it.

John Dehlin [00:17:51] Maybe I'm Mormon Illuminati. Is that right?

Matt Gillespie [00:17:55] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] Mormon Trilateral Commission. Okay, what's this next slide, Julia?

Another Case of Anti-Mormon Hysteria

Julia [00:17:59] I think this is the byu. This is the Cougar Chronicle, which I think is the byu. Is this the official BYU paper?

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Probably.

Julia [00:18:06] I think so. But the title is the Bricks and Minifix Scandal. Another case of anti LDS hysteria.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Oh, so this is just hysteria.

Julia [00:18:14] And just the title just caught my attention. So I was like, we should just show this just because.

John Dehlin [00:18:18] Yeah, go. Well, I'll be the judge of whether this is anti Mormon hysteria because, you know, I'm. I'm kind of reviewing this for the first time. All right, what's this, Julia?

Mormons and Legos

Julia [00:18:30] That's just. We were just going to give an overview of what the. The bricks and minifig, which I feel like we've already done.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] Okay. Bricks and Minifigs website, right?

Matt Gillespie [00:18:38] Yeah, yeah, they are. They're valued on the web or on the, you know, in the sphere out there. They're Saying anywhere between 95 and 400 million is their value.

John Dehlin [00:18:49] So maybe at least 100 million. As a. As a retail outlet.

Matt Gillespie [00:18:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] Okay, that's. That seems like it's really big, but if that's true, that's.

Matt Gillespie [00:18:58] They're the biggest. They're supposedly the biggest reaction Lego retailer in the. In the world.

John Dehlin [00:19:04] Reseller. What's this slide?

Matt Gillespie [00:19:06] Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Julia [00:19:08] No, no, yeah, you go.

Matt Gillespie [00:19:10] This is a. This is actually a map I made out of Lego, but. And I actually picked this up from Alyssa that when per Google Trends, when the word LEGO is searched for, the concentration by state is number one is Utah, number two is Idaho, and three is Wyoming.

Julia [00:19:30] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [00:19:31] What is up with Mormons and Legos? I had no idea. Mormons. I mean, we are big on Disney.

Julia [00:19:38] I never thought about that.

John Dehlin [00:19:40] Yeah, we're big on Disney. I guess we're big on Legos. We're big on ice cream and jello.

Matt Gillespie [00:19:44] I. I know why.

John Dehlin [00:19:46] And we're big in plastic surgeons.

Julia [00:19:47] We can't consume coffee.

Matt Gillespie [00:19:49] No, it's not the coffee. It's because it's a family thing.

Julia [00:19:53] That makes sense.

Matt Gillespie [00:19:54] People of all Ages, adults build LEGO kits with their, with their kids, big family. They even, they. They also, they tailor kits to like girls or boys and some. To moms. Like my wife bought one. They have these beautiful botanical plant.

Julia [00:20:11] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:20:13] And so there's, there's. There's something that they make that's attractive to, like, everyone, and it's something the whole family can do, and I think that's why it's so popular.

Julia [00:20:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:22] Makes sense. A lot of kids, a lot of families, a lot of Legos.

Matt Gillespie [00:20:29] Let go. What Lego. Remember plural form of LEGO is Lego.

Julia [00:20:34] I'm gonna, I'm gonna struggle with that this whole episode. So I apologize.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] Stop correcting. I'm not gonna get that fixed. Okay, so why are we showing Oregon?

Lego Collection in Oregon Worth $10,000

Matt Gillespie [00:20:44] Okay, we're showing Oregon is. Because that's where the story starts out. The, the bricks and minifigure store is in Salem. It's in Kaiser Salem. It's a.

Guest 2 [00:20:53] It's like a.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] Can I blow you guys away? My dad's third wife and he lived in Kaiser, Oregon for like 25 years.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:01] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:21:02] A lot of time in Kaiser, Oregon. And they were a member of the ward there in Salem, Oregon. So I actually know where Kaiser is and I've been there over two decades. So that's crazy that Kaiser, Oregon is coming up here.

Julia [00:21:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:19] Okay, so we've got, we've got Oregon is where this is happening.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] Overview of the story. Go ahead.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:26] Yeah. The collection is actually Star wars lego.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:30] And this is not the collection. This is one of my subscribers that I featured. I mean, but people are serious about their Lego.

John Dehlin [00:21:38] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:38] And the collection itself is actually still in the boxes. One of the boxes. One of the sets is actually valued at $10,000. So it's big money.

Julia [00:21:48] One box is 10,000.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:49] One box. Yeah. One kid.

Julia [00:21:50] Oh, my gosh.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:52] Yeah.

Julia [00:21:52] Dang.

Matt Gillespie [00:21:53] And. And you can have a minifigure worth a thousand dollars.

Julia [00:21:56] That's not another little see through. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:59] So like, what is the. The Death Star or the Millennium Falcon? Like that one on the right in the middle. The.

Matt Gillespie [00:22:05] The right Star Destroyer.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] What is that worth?

Matt Gillespie [00:22:09] You know, I'm not sure because I. It's way beyond my.

Julia [00:22:13] Maybe people in the comments can. Can check for us.

Matt Gillespie [00:22:15] Yeah.

Julia [00:22:16] That's wild.

John Dehlin [00:22:17] Okay, so that's an example of how people are serious about their. Their Legos. All right, let's do the timeline. Who's doing the timeline?

The Making of This Story

Julia [00:22:23] I can do that.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] Okay, Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [00:22:25] This is just me. This is just my. I don't want to. Yeah, so this is Just me putting a timeline up here. So, February 2023, Crystal Law Gorman and her husband, or excuse me, I, I think it's partner and I think that's important. We can talk about that later. Her and her partner acquired the Kaiser Salem bricks and minifigs franchise location. Late 2023, Brian Mansell and his 83 year old father consigned a massive Lego Star wars collection to the Salem store. The collection reportedly contained 780 plus sets along with 1,200 minifigures, as well as numerous rare sealed Star wars sets. So unopened, the collection was publicly promoted by the store as being worth More than $200,000. And I don't know if this is just the franchise promoting this, like Salem ones.

Bricks and Minifigs Store in Salem, Oregon Forced to

Matt Gillespie [00:23:11] Yeah, it was on the Salem the Kaiser Facebook page.

Julia [00:23:15] Okay. And then according to Mansell, the, the son who's consigning this, the store would sell items on consignment, meaning an owner consigner entrusts their goods to the third party consignee to sell on their behalf. The store would keep 35% of sales. Mansell would receive periodic payments. Unsold inventory would be eventually returned to mantle. In November 14th of 2023, bricks and minifigs issued a notice of immediate termination to Crystal Law Gorman and her partner. A corporate response or. Response. I'm sorry, I cannot say that word. Repossessed the store.

John Dehlin [00:23:49] And then if we go on, summarize. So this person, Crystal Law Gorman and her husband get a bricks and minifigs franchise in Kaiser or Salem, Oregon. Brian Mansell, on behalf of his 83 year old father, consigns this guy's collection, his dad's collection, worth over $200,000 to the store, the bricks and minifig store owned by Crystal and her husband. And then the store changes ownership and immediately issues a notice of termination and Crystal and her husband are kind of fired and lose their franchise. Right. Okay.

Julia [00:24:28] Yeah. And then we'll expound on this one. So November 22nd of 2024. Oh, sorry, this one's got two. Yeah. So November 22nd of 2024, Brian Mansell reportedly sent a formal notice of cancellation and termination to new store owners Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson. By email and mail, Mansell cited two alleged breaches of the agreement, failure to make a November payment and refusal to allow him to inspect the remaining inventory, according to which it does say in the agreement. According to Mansell, the notice demanded access to sales records dating back to April 1, 2024, payment of any outstanding proceeds, and the Return of all remaining sets within 10 days. And then late 2024, Johnson and Best take over the Salem store and claim that bricks and minifigs specifically do not do consignment deals and that the inventory is theirs. Throughout 2025, Mansell pursued recovery of the collection and attempted to seize sue bricks and bricks and minifig, but to no avail. May 2026, Mansell emails reckless Ben, who jumps on the story and takes matters into his own hands.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] Okay, and so just so that people get these names right, so Mansell, again is the son who's trying to get his dying dad's Legos back, right?

Julia [00:25:44] Lego, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] What did I say?

Julia [00:25:46] No, you're fine. Keep going.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] Johnson and Best, they're the local owner, the new local owners in Salem. Kaiser.

Julia [00:25:55] Yeah. Who take it over from the Gorman Laws. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:58] Okay. And I. Are we going to talk about whether they're Mormon or not? Whether we have any idea if they're Mormon? The Gorman Laws, Johnson and Best.

Julia [00:26:05] Oh, yes, we will talk about that. Yeah, it's really soon.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] Okay. And then. And so Mansell can't get the Legos back on behalf of his dad. They try to sue the. The parent company, don't have any success, so they reach out to this reckless Ben guy for help. Okay, so this is. Thank you for helping me make sense of that.

Reckless Ben: Going undercover in Scientology

Julia [00:26:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] This reckless Ben.

Julia [00:26:30] Yeah, we already talked about this, but he's got a million subscribers. He's got these six videos. I, I, Matt, Matthew and I have. Or Matt and I have combed through all these videos and we pulled out all these clips, and that's what we're going to show today. A lot of what we're going to

Matt Gillespie [00:26:43] show, Ben is kind of famous for. He's actually done some amazing work. He was. He was. He first got famous for infiltrating Scientology and he.

John Dehlin [00:26:56] Oh, are those the dudes that were running through Scientology headquarters?

Matt Gillespie [00:27:00] No, that's more recent. This was. This was two or three years ago.

Julia [00:27:03] And he became part of the Sea Org, right?

Matt Gillespie [00:27:06] Yeah. He got as high as, like, joining their clergy.

John Dehlin [00:27:09] Oh, wow. So he, like, infiltrated it and moved his way up.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:14] Oh, wow.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:15] Series. That was just. For me. It was like, fall down. Funny.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] Talented YouTuber. He's a talented YouTuber.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:23] What I say about Ben is he's. He's a goofball, but he's a righteous goofball.

Julia [00:27:27] He's really. He's really entertaining. And also he's really good about showing his sources. He's so in all these videos, I noticed that he seemed to be really meticulous to detail as far as trying to do everything. The legal route.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:39] Yeah, it's hard.

Julia [00:27:40] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:41] It's hard to tell how naive he really is or if he's a. He's a genius and he's hiding it. That's the other thing that's interesting.

John Dehlin [00:27:47] I think he's brilliant is what I think. Okay, so Reckless Ben, everyone check out Reckless Ben. He does good work. I think he's trying to do good in the world, that's for sure.

Matt Gillespie [00:27:57] Yeah.

Bricks and Minifig's Top Leaders

Julia [00:27:58] Okay, so this is just. I want. There are so many people in this story. I just made a slide just to kind of keep everybody in track. So Joshua Johnson took over the Salem store, and. And then after Bam. After Bam or Bricks and Minifig took control. Brandon Breast also also took the Salem store over. And then Amity McNeff is the CEO of Bricks and Minifigs or the chief corporate spokesperson. Matt McNuff is his brother. I don't know if they're twins. Do we know that, or just brothers.

Matt Gillespie [00:28:24] I'm not sure, but they look a lot alike.

Julia [00:28:26] Okay, well, they could just be just because the sibling. Anyway, he is the COO of Bricks and Minifig or the executive leadership. And then you have Kai McAllister, who doesn't really show up in a lot of Ben's videos, but he's a corporate executive and a unit support agent from BAM is. Is what my understanding is. Okay, These are the. These are the Bricks and Minifig characters.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] Go ahead.

Matt Gillespie [00:28:47] I was gonna say, I think Kai actually had, like, been promoted to, like, area development, or there's another title at the time, but that's. That's minor.

Julia [00:28:58] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] Joshua and Brandon are the new Salem store owners. Ammon and Matt McNiff are two of the top leaders of Bricks and Minifigs, and Kai McAllister is also sort of executive.

Matt Gillespie [00:29:14] The McNafs are the owners of the company.

John Dehlin [00:29:17] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:29:17] They aren't the founders, but they are the owners.

Is Ammon A Mormon In The Book Of Mormon?

John Dehlin [00:29:20] Okay. All right, this is helpful. So this is. This looks like Ammon. And that's a. For those of you who are Mormon, Ammon is a character in the Book of Mormon, and it's one of the most intense characters in the Book of Mormon. Do you know why Ammon is famous in the Book of Mormon, Matt?

Matt Gillespie [00:29:39] You know, that's one thing I should have looked up, but I didn't, so don't remember it.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] I've heard Ammon is called to be a missionary. I think he's white. I think he's A white Nephite. Rusty, in the Book of Mormon, he's one of the white ones. And he's called to be a missionary to the dark skinned, evil, wicked, cursed Lamanites. So Ammon shows up and, you know, as is probably reasonable, a lot of the Lamanites, according to the Book of Mormon, don't like that. That this white guy shows up on their property. So they started. They start attacking him, I guess, because they say.

Julia [00:30:19] They say it's custom. It's custom to just arrest a white guy who walks into their town.

John Dehlin [00:30:23] Maybe he's trespassing. Maybe he's trespassing. I don't know. Maybe Ammon. Ammon was trespassing. Anyway, as the Lamanites go to go to kill or attack Ammon, he pulls out his righteous sword and he chops off so many arms of the Native American Lamanites.

Julia [00:30:41] Well, hang on. He was instructed. He was like, I'll be your servant. And so he puts them over the flocks. So he's with the. He's with the dark skin laminate, Right?

Guest 2 [00:30:50] That's right.

Julia [00:30:50] That was my favorite story.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Oh, my gosh, I'm so rusty.

Julia [00:30:53] No, you're fine.

John Dehlin [00:30:55] Okay. So he gets. He. That's right. Be a missionary to the king. Right.

Julia [00:31:02] He's like, you can marry any of my daughters because I'm kind of impressed by you. And he's like, no, no, I'll just take care of your sheep. Yeah. Or your flocks or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] So he. That's right. Thank you, Julia. So he goes to take care of the flocks, and then some bad robbers come to try and steal the sheep. And then he pulls out his righteous sword and he chops off so many arms that they, like, have to, like, put them in a pile.

Julia [00:31:25] And then they show the king. And the king's like, oh, my gosh, this man is God.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] They bring the piles of arms to the king to show the king. That's who Ammon is in the Book of Mormon. Julia, thank you for rescuing me.

Matt Gillespie [00:31:36] That was like the original arms race.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] I guess I made those jokes when I was a Mormon. Yeah.

Julia [00:31:43] Somebody says, don't forget about him feeding the horses. That didn't exist.

Matt Gillespie [00:31:47] Tapers.

Julia [00:31:49] Yeah, the tapers.

Guest [00:31:50] Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] Matt knows his Mormon apologetics. Okay, okay. Ammon McNath is named after. And he apparently went to Brigham Young University, which technically doesn't necessarily make him a Mormon. That's true, But I think 98% of BYU students.

Julia [00:32:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] So he's likely Mormon.

Julia [00:32:14] No, we know for sure he's Mormon. Sorry, We'll. We'll talk about that later.

John Dehlin [00:32:16] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:32:18] Yeah. What's perfect about Ammon is he looks like a cartoon villain.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] He does.

Matt Gillespie [00:32:26] Yes. This guy, he's got. He's got. It's kind of hard to tell from that picture, but he has like the. He looks like Snidely Whiplash. He's got like the curled waxed mustache.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Okay, okay. So that. That gives villain vibes to you, Matt. Okay. All right. All right.

Matt Gillespie [00:32:42] Not just to me.

John Dehlin [00:32:43] All right, Common. So is this the same guy in the second guy?

The Salem Store Owner and His Mormon Stake

Matt Gillespie [00:32:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:32:50] He looks different in the second photo.

Matt Gillespie [00:32:54] Yeah, the. So somebody in. In the clip on the right. Someone actually did what I. What I was going to do and make a caricature. And there's a lot been comments that the one on the right is from the videos.

John Dehlin [00:33:09] People that are listening, Matt.

Matt Gillespie [00:33:11] Okay, I'll describe it. Sure.

John Dehlin [00:33:13] Don't watch.

Matt Gillespie [00:33:13] So, okay, so what we have is a guy, and he has a real traditional, like a. Like a late 19th century mustache and like a soul patch. And he looks like the character in the, like the Klondike serials where he ties the damsel to the railroad tracks.

John Dehlin [00:33:35] Okay, so he's got a mustache with the ends turned up.

Matt Gillespie [00:33:38] With the ends turned up. And so somebody has taken. There's a Lego figure that looks like that with a monocle and a top hat, and they made Ammon into a version of that.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] Okay. So wow. Don't mess with the Lego Internet community.

Matt Gillespie [00:33:54] No, they're.

John Dehlin [00:33:56] They're vicious. They're savage. Okay, so now this is Matthew McNeff. We're assuming it's the brother, Is that right?

Julia [00:34:04] Yeah, that's the brother also.

John Dehlin [00:34:08] What's that?

Julia [00:34:09] Yeah, Also byu. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] Okay. And then Brandon Best. Okay, so that's the Salem store owner, right?

Julia [00:34:16] Yes. And so I couldn't find any, like, LinkedIn profiles for him. I don't know if he's even has one. But I have a source that has access to church records, and they verify that Brandon Best is an active member in his ward.

John Dehlin [00:34:28] So it's probably the Kaiser. The Kaiser Ward, or the Salem, Oregon Ward.

Julia [00:34:33] Yeah, my source told me the ward and his calling, but I didn't want to put all that on there. So the more important part is that just that he's Mormon, he's an active member.

John Dehlin [00:34:40] Were you gonna say something, Matt?

Matt Gillespie [00:34:42] Well, this story crosses state lines.

Julia [00:34:45] Yes, yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] Yeah, because he goes to American Court. Right. It involves the American Fork Police Department, so.

Matt Gillespie [00:34:52] Right. Because he has a. Brandon has a residence there.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Okay, got it, got it. All right. Okay, that answers my question. Brandon apparently is Mormon. And then Joshua Johnson, the other owner of the, of the, of the Salem franchise. Right? This is him.

Julia [00:35:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] And no one could read these words. They're too small. But does someone want to summarize?

Julia [00:35:19] Well, this is just an image from one of Reckless Ben's. And so this is just like the profile that we were able to grab because I couldn't find a LinkedIn for him either.

Matt Gillespie [00:35:26] Resume.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] It basically says he's an entrepreneur that helps people with their business and medical and dental industries. And he's a speaker. And the word prestigious is. Is there. So his own profile calls him prestigious, I guess. And he helps his clients safeguard the. Their hard earned assets and financial well being. Tax planning, asset protection. That's a little ironic. We'll get to that later.

Matt Gillespie [00:35:56] Again, it protects family heirlooms.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] Okay. All right. Okay. So do we know if he's Mormon?

Julia [00:36:06] Yeah. So actually, if you'll skip. Skip Kai for a second and then go to the next.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] Okay, okay.

Julia [00:36:11] There you go. Okay. So.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Okay. Yeah, let me show this really quick. Go ahead, Julia.

Mormon Mafia Members Kissing in the Newspaper

Julia [00:36:16] No, yeah, show it. Yeah. So this is from Reckless Ben's Reddit. And so he points out that Ammon McNeff and Joshua Johnson are served a mission together. They're mission companions. Alexandria, Louisiana, 2020.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] So these are, these are mission. These are mission homies all doing business together.

Julia [00:36:32] Yeah, yeah. And so, and then if you go

John Dehlin [00:36:34] to Mormon mafia, it's given Mormon mafia vibes.

Julia [00:36:37] And if you go to the next slide, I just blew up these two little images at the top so you can see them better. And so it says the caption. Elder Ammon McNeff on the right, leads a prayer for a safe ride and a successful day of ministry with Elder Joshua Johnson.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] That's, you know, for missionaries, that's really good PR to get a paper.

Matt Gillespie [00:36:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:55] Elders kneeling in prayer.

Julia [00:36:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:58] And you get a secular newspaper to cover that. That's. These guys must have been impressive. I bet they were APS or zone leaders.

Julia [00:37:04] Who knows?

Matt Gillespie [00:37:05] They did get at least one convert.

Julia [00:37:08] Well, we do. We know that. Does it say.

Matt Gillespie [00:37:09] Yeah, the picture. I think you have the picture of it, Elizabeth.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] Does that mean they got baptized or just.

Julia [00:37:16] We can read the caption.

John Dehlin [00:37:17] Okay, here it is.

Julia [00:37:19] So on the right. Is this the right image on the newspaper? Missionaries are forbidden from being alone with the opposite sex unless chaperone. So elder Johnson and McNeff talk with Renee Elizabeth, an investigator, in front of her apartment. So they're even following the rules to exactness.

John Dehlin [00:37:34] Okay.

Julia [00:37:34] Their work pays off, as Elizabeth was later baptized. Oh, you're right. As by Elder McNeff into the church. So, yeah, they do have. We were wondering if Elizabeth.

Matt Gillespie [00:37:45] Yeah, I'd love to find her now.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] Okay, well, if you're. If you're out there, Elizabeth, we'll interview you on Mormon stories. Okay, so as far as the key characters go, what's the Mormon count?

Salem Main Key Characters Are Mormon

Julia [00:38:02] Oh, wait, can you go back up to Kai? Let's go back up. Just. Just for a second.

John Dehlin [00:38:05] Oh, go back to Kai. Okay, here is Kai. All right, go ahead.

Julia [00:38:12] So this is Kai's profile, and it doesn't say anything about byu. It does say that he lives in Provo, which I don't know the percentage of Mormons who live in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:38:19] I mean, it's high.

Julia [00:38:20] It's high. Well, I serve my mission in Salt Lake, which I guess someone near Provo, but, like, at the percentage of Mormons are. Are. I think they're. They're minority right now, right? 40.

John Dehlin [00:38:29] Yeah, but Provo is one of those Mormons.

Julia [00:38:31] That's true. And it does depend on the city that they live.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Anyway, so he is not the same as Salt Lake county in terms.

Julia [00:38:37] I had. I had my source check to see if Kai McAllister was listed, and he wasn't. But sometimes you can't find members without the middle name or things like that. So, like, it could just be that he's not a member. It could just be that we don't know enough about him to verify that. But I had my source check, and they weren't. They said they couldn't find him.

John Dehlin [00:38:53] So I'm going with he's Mormon, but we don't. That's.

Julia [00:38:55] We don't know for sure, but he is from Provo.

John Dehlin [00:38:58] Okay, so it says Provo. All right.

Julia [00:39:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:01] So what's the count? The Mormon count.

Julia [00:39:03] So of all the people of the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 main. Main key characters, four of them are Mormon, if not all five of them.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] So the two Salem owners, Joshua and Brandon, are Mormon. The two. Two of the owners, ammon and Matt McNeff, are Mormon, and Kai is likely Mormon, but we don't know for sure. Okay.

Julia [00:39:21] Yeah.

Ben and the American Fork Police

John Dehlin [00:39:22] All right, what's next, Julia?

Julia [00:39:24] Okay, so I was really struggling to figure out how to set up the story because they all interchange intermesh, and so I wasn't sure. I. So I tried to set this up, like, show Bam's side of the story bricks and minifig. Show the other side of the story with, like, Ben and the. The Mansell and everybody, and then try to show more about the American Fork Police. Yeah, so that's how I've set this up. And so, like, even though we're getting this from a lot of this from Ben's channel, it does show the. What they are saying, because he's recording a lot of these characters, a lot of these individuals.

Bam's Story About The LEGO Collection

John Dehlin [00:39:53] Okay, well, let's hear. Let's hear Bam's story first. I like it. Bricks and mortar. Bricks and minifig.

Julia [00:39:59] Yeah, I always want to say mortar.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Yeah. Okay. Should we play this clip?

Julia [00:40:03] Yeah, this is. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] Would you want to set it up?

Julia [00:40:06] Yeah, this is just Joshua Johnson. He's saying that the collection belongs to

John Dehlin [00:40:09] them, but this is a reckless. Ben.

Julia [00:40:11] Yeah, this is, like, one of his first times trying to get the collection back.

"Are You the Owner of the Legos?"

John Dehlin [00:40:15] Okay. All right.

Guest 2 [00:40:18] Eventually, the owner of the store called in and asked if you could talk to me. Are you the owner of the bricks and minifig store? Yeah. What you got? So, basically, I wanted to get some of the Legos back that you guys still have. I think I'm looking for the, like, the Clone Turbo tank. Why do you think you would be entitled to our inventory? Well, at least I confirmed the Legos are still here. The only thing is, the owner's claiming that he's the owner of these Lego sets. I mean, it's pretty stupid of him to say that, considering I'm literally holding a copy of a contract he made with the store that said that this Lego Star wars collection is not the store's property, it's the family's property. The contract makes all of this very clear. So I want to give him one more chance to answer a little bit better. Well, I just want to get it back to my friends. He said he couldn't get it back,

Matt Gillespie [00:41:06] so I was just wonder if I

Guest 2 [00:41:07] could just come and pick him up, because you guys will have them, right? Why do you think your friend would

Matt Gillespie [00:41:13] be entitled to our inventory?

Guest 2 [00:41:15] What's his.

Matt Gillespie [00:41:16] He owns the Legos. Huh?

Guest 2 [00:41:18] He doesn't own the Legos. Well, yeah, we have a contract. He does own them. No, bro. Are you an idiot? Are you stupid?

Julia [00:41:28] Josh, the police. The police have showing up right now.

Guest 2 [00:41:31] Hey, how's it going?

John Dehlin [00:41:34] Okay, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna. You know, one of the reasons we do stuff like this is is to be able to tell how much of a story is Mormon or not and how significant the Mormon element is. And I'm. So. I'm gonna just call some balls and strikes here for my opinion, and I want to hear y' all weigh in as well. But first of all, I just want to acknowledge that while most of the Mormons that I interact with, and a lot of them are ex Mormons these days are honest, kind people, and I think there's a lot of people out there in the world who have the impression, including Joe Rogan, that Mormons are nice people, they're kind people, and that they're generally honest people. So that I'm going to say that it wouldn't be fair to say all Mormons are mean or all Mormons are dishonest. I think that would be a gross misrepresentation. However, as a Mormon, I'm also aware that especially in Utah, Mormons do sometimes have this reputation of being super sleazy, scummy business people. And so when I hear that there are scummy, sleazy, dishonest business people who are Mormons in Utah, I'm like, yeah, I've heard that quite a bit. So I'm 50, 50 on this being uniquely Mormon. But what it's giving is the vibes of sleazy, scummy Utah Mormon business people. Just right off the bat, that's my immediate reaction and rudeness. Like to call the guy an idiot. Like, I don't know a lot of returned missionaries that I interact with in my life, and a lot of them are ex Mormons. Now, who would ever. Just right off the bat, somebody calls a business, you call them an idiot. So that's disturbing to me and would show uncharacteristic or. Or a. A disappointing level of. Of meanness for what I would expect from a Mormon. Now, I want to hear Matt's perspective and Julia's reaction, But that's my reaction.

Matt Gillespie [00:43:45] Well, right off the rip, he says, what you got? Is that a way to answer the phone? I wouldn't have thought I would me, because actually, I have the same opinion of. Of, like, Mormons in general. That they're. They're good, they're kind people, and that they're polite. And for this guy to go, what you got Right off the rip and not have, like, any professional or just any courtesy. Really. Yeah, yeah. I don't have enough experience with. With, like, business people in that world. I did see a comment. I don't know if this is true or not, but somebody said, yeah, my friend, he's a lawyer. He specifically moved to Utah because that's where most fraud cases are in the

John Dehlin [00:44:25] United States, I have heard, is top five in the nation in white collar kind of affinity fraud. And There's a lot of MLM multi level marketing fraud. Not to say that all MLMs in Utah are, are, are problematic, but I've certainly heard of many. And I've also heard from people in law enforcement that historically Utah has led the nation or at least been high on the list for white collar affinity fraud type of stuff. So.

Matt Gillespie [00:45:01] Well, a common trope you find in the contents are, is that LDS is an mlm.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] Hey, be careful, man. You're.

Matt Gillespie [00:45:08] I'm just, just saying what the comments are saying.

John Dehlin [00:45:11] Okay. Okay. All right, Julia, what's your take? Any, anything you want to add to this?

Married Mormon Gets Ruder Than He Should

Julia [00:45:14] Well, so I serve my mission in Salt Lake, but I'm a Southern Missouri Mormon. And so we were taught to like, you're going to be like, probably the only Mormon in your, your school, so be the best example that you can be. Treat each other kind, don't swear, don't, don't do drugs. You know, all the normal stuff. And then like, there's a temple recommended question that was running through my head as I was hearing him talk where it says, are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men? And like, just the, this whole thing is kind of makes that come into question. But yeah, he's also like, are you an idiot? Like, what are you stupid? Like, he's just being really rude to this, to this man, to Ben, and like, like, whoa. Like, I don't know. And then like her, this woman's immediate reaction was to call the police. I don't know that. Yeah, I was, I was surprised to find that these guys were all Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:46:00] Yeah. So I, I, People are going to have their different experiences. This guy Josh is acting ruder than I would expect the average Mormon to in my experience. Although I don't know if like the past five to 10 years, with all the political shifts, if the average Utah Mormon has gotten ruder. I don't, I don't know. But like, yeah, that's typical for a, for a Mormon in my experience. But anyway, you say it's the sugar?

Matt Gillespie [00:46:30] Yeah, it's all the soda. All right.

Josh Thinks He Can Steal The World's Largest Lego

John Dehlin [00:46:33] All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next clip. I'm not liking Josh so far at all.

Guest [00:46:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:40] Oh, go ahead, Julia.

Julia [00:46:41] Oh, no, I was just going to set this one up. So this is, this is a clip of Josh claiming that he didn't sign the consignment agreement.

John Dehlin [00:46:46] Okay. All right, let's play it.

Guest 2 [00:46:50] Since Josh was pretending to not remember any of the Star wars sets that make up half of his store's Inventory, and I decided to send him over a picture of the contract to store it. What contract is it?

Guest [00:47:01] I don't.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] I didn't sign a contract.

Guest 2 [00:47:03] I didn't.

John Dehlin [00:47:03] I didn't sign that agreement.

Guest 2 [00:47:04] I didn't agree to anything in that. And now I finally understand the legal loophole that Josh is using to get away with this. It's probably the stupidest loophole I've ever heard in my entire life. Josh is claiming that it's not his name on the contract, it's the previous owners, which makes no sense because in the security camera footage, he tells the previous owner that he's going to be the one taking over the contract. Now on the business he takes on all that, I guess this is some sort of just contract loophole he's trying to use to steal the world's largest Lego Star wars collection.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] In order for me to be under

Guest 2 [00:47:39] contract, I have to sign something. Or you had to take it over from the previous owner, right?

Guest [00:47:45] Nope.

Guest 2 [00:47:45] That's not how the law works. Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] It is.

Guest 2 [00:47:52] So if that's how the law works, then sue me for it. You don't just want to give the Legos back. Like, show me. Let's go to court. I'm calling the police right now, and you guys are going to be arrested for harassment. Do you feel threatened right now? Yeah, I was surprised at how much the owner wanted us to sue him. He wants this because Brian already tried.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] Okay, go, go. I mean, Matt, what's your reaction to that?

Matt Gillespie [00:48:25] Just unbelievable. As. As these videos unfold, and unfortunately, Ben didn't, like, number them, you kind of have to know which is one, which is because he's a goofball and he doesn't, like, even give him good titles, but as they unfold, you get madder and you get madder and you matter at the way. Like, you just can't believe this treatment that's going on.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] Okay, but what don't you like about it? Can you be specific?

Matt Gillespie [00:48:53] Just that he's. He's denying and he's being confrontational and he's being. He's looking down. He's. He's being very condescending.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah, yeah. The idea that, oh, the owners changed hands and I didn't sign that piece of paper, so we can just violate any agreement from the former owner and seize the property and sell it and make the money because my signature is not on the contract. If that's the logic he's operating under, that's just ridiculous. So I agree with Reckless Ben on that, but Then also just, like, sue. You know, like, sue me and I'm calling the cops. That's just. That's kind of gross behavior, in my opinion. Julia, anything you want to add?

Julia [00:49:44] Well, I just was thinking, for some reason, a lot of times when I, growing up Mormon, I was told, mormons don't sue people. And I don't know why I was taught that. I don't know if other people had that experience, that, like, this is just something Mormons don't do. Clearly, that's not the case. Or they don't sue other Mormons, maybe, but, I mean, here, clearly, they're suing you, John Dylan. So. But that's interesting that he would say that, but I. I love that. The editing. I have two things. The video editing, where he's like, that's not. It's the. The video is panning out, and it's like, that's not how the law works. He's like, yeah, it is. And then it just, like, stops the music. He's just really good at his video.

John Dehlin [00:50:21] Yeah.

Julia [00:50:22] Yeah. The other thing. What was the other thing I was gonna say? Maybe it'll come to me in a second.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] Yeah. It's so hostile, so aggressive. It is really problematic behavior. So it's embarrassing. This has got to be embarrassing for bricks and minifigs to have one of their owners behaving this way and it's getting shared on the Internet. What a disaster for their reputation, potentially.

Matt Gillespie [00:50:50] You would think they'd be embarrassed, but just watch.

Julia [00:50:53] Okay, so he's saying. So the two parts that we've covered so far, the collection belongs to the store. They didn't sign the consignment, so therefore, this. There's nothing that they're doing that's wrong.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Yeah.

Julia [00:51:05] From their perspective.

Ben's lawsuit against the Gorhams

John Dehlin [00:51:06] All right, should we go to the next slide?

Julia [00:51:08] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:51:09] You want to set it up or just play it?

Julia [00:51:11] So this one. So, Matt, you. You compiled this one. It's just like a. Do you want to talk about this one?

Matt Gillespie [00:51:17] Which one is it?

Julia [00:51:18] Do you want to throw it up on the screen?

John Dehlin [00:51:19] Okay. It doesn't.

Matt Gillespie [00:51:21] What.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] It just does this.

Julia [00:51:23] But they all had a. I think this one's just showing how big this case is and how much this.

Matt Gillespie [00:51:28] Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [00:51:33] This is the. This is the Reddit. This is just showing you how many twists and turns and how all the things. So on Ben's Reddit page, he's got a list of all the documents, and this is somebody following along. They're also tied to his video, so you can look at each one of these individual things.

John Dehlin [00:51:51] It's like a legal history. Is that right? History of all the litigation back and forth.

Matt Gillespie [00:51:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] Okay. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:51:59] It also has the. Later on, they went and added the. The Gorhams, the Gorman's responses, too. This. That was based on Bam's lawsuit.

Guest [00:52:09] They.

Matt Gillespie [00:52:09] They filed later.

Julia [00:52:12] I remember my comment that I was going to say earlier. Somebody. Somebody in the comments was saying that people aren't taking Ben seriously because he's a kid and he kind of is a. Is kind of a goofball, like you guys were saying. And I think that's. I wonder if they would have taken him seriously if he was, like, an older man, if he was, like, in business clothes or, like, had some other, like, way of presenting himself. I'm not sure if this is any of the case, but he keeps. Throughout a lot of these videos, they're like, he's just a kid. He's just a kid. And, like, he's talking to him like he's a teenage. Some teenage kid. And so, like, yeah, he's not a kid. Like, I just think that. That people are not taking him seriously.

Matt Gillespie [00:52:44] I don't know.

Julia [00:52:44] Because of his YouTube.

Matt Gillespie [00:52:46] Well, part of it is he's from. He's from Southern California. He's like Jeff Spicoli showing up. Hey, dude, give us the Lego, man.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] It's a movie called Fast Times of Ridgemont High for you.

Matt Gillespie [00:52:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:58] Millennials and Zlenials. Sean Penn played a character called Spicoli in a movie called Fast Times. Julia, did you get that reference?

Julia [00:53:09] No.

John Dehlin [00:53:10] Okay, so, okay, remember, we got young people here. Yeah, but I got it. Okay. All right. So that's the bricks and minifigs side of the story.

LEGO Store Accusers: Everything Is Allegation until Proven

Julia [00:53:22] The gist of it. It'll grow.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] We didn't sign the previous contract, so even though we allegedly. And we should say. I don't know if there was a. A disclaimer slide. We. We did. Was there a disclaimer slide?

Julia [00:53:37] No, I put it in the description, detail or description.

Matt Gillespie [00:53:39] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] I just want to. I'll say right now, everything we say here from the beginning of this podcast to the end episode is all alleged. We can't possibly verify all the facts. We don't know if things are fully represented by Reckless Ben or by others, all the commentarists. So we are just doing our best to make sense of the video and the information that's out there. So everything is allegation until proven factual in a court of law. Is that an okay disclaimer? Julia, anything else we should say?

Julia [00:54:12] That's Great. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [00:54:13] Like, we don't really even know that I've seen any. If we actually know if all the Lego, all those sets are somewhere, if somebody has them or not, that's something that keeps going back and forth.

John Dehlin [00:54:24] Yeah, because I was just going to say, like, what if this is possible? Right? Is this possible? And I'm just playing devil's advocate here. What if when the store got transferred to the new owners, the old LEGO set that the grandpa owned had already been sold or stolen or liquidated, such that the new owners never even received the LEGO set? Do we have proof that he did receive?

Julia [00:54:51] Yeah, so I think log. I think Gorman talks about this. Chris. I think she says that she took images of the inventory before she left. She was only. She only was able to take a box, one box of items from her personal item from her personal stuff before she was kicked out, essentially. And I think Ben, a lot of times he shows the. All the lists of legos that were kept and there's like a. Some kind of marking that shows the ones that were sold and whatnot. But as far as I know, there were. There were verified verification that there were still in the store.

Matt Gillespie [00:55:21] Supposedly they put a little yellow sticker on the ones that were part of that Mansell collection. And when she was basically pushed out the door, as she says, she's like, can I. Can I at least, you know, take an inverter? Can I do something? He's like, no, no, no, get out. And she basically, I think he let her take pictures and take video. So I don't know if that's been publicly released. The actual videos of the inventory, the

Julia [00:55:45] number of the photos has been released. I've seen.

Matt Gillespie [00:55:48] Okay.

Julia [00:55:48] But I don't. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] Okay. So again, I was just playing devil's advocate, trying to give the benefit of the doubt. We're showing the BAM story. Viewers and listeners are saying, I'm missing context. That's because I'm learning as we go. I'm playing the role of audience members that don't know any of this. But if bam's strategy was, hey, there's a bunch of assets there that we want to liquidate and profiteer from, so let's seize the franchise, and then we don't have to honor any of the consignment agreements, and then we can liquidate the supplies and just make pure profit and rip off all the people that consign their stuff to us. If that was their strategy, they. That's just pure evil.

Julia [00:56:33] Yeah. And he's on, you know, we saw the video where he's or about to watch it where he says that he acknowledges he's taking over the consignment. And so some people have said that that's not enough to really like hold somebody to that kind of contract. I'm not a lawyer so I don't have. But like I would assume that if the franchise is take. I don't know how that all works.

Matt Gillespie [00:56:51] There are accuse, there are accusations of. Oh yeah, we're just going to take this. This is sweet. There's some sweet pieces. They can't go against us because we're too powerful and we're just going to sell and we're going to make money. Other people are kind of joke like oh dude, probably he saw that $10,000 one and he wants that in his man cave. You know, he's just wow, this is cool. You don't come across this and just snagged it personally. So yeah, there's accusations of that.

Prior Owner of Salem's Kaiser Tells Her Side

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Okay, okay, well let's play the other side of the story. Whose side is this, Julia?

Julia [00:57:23] So to me in my head it's the, it's Chris Gorman and then some more of Ben and so these next couple clips are from Chris Gorman

John Dehlin [00:57:32] dying man.

Julia [00:57:33] No, no, no, sorry. This is Chris Gorman. This is the woman who was, who was over the franchise in Salem Kaiser. Yeah.

Guest [00:57:39] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] The previous owner.

Julia [00:57:40] Yeah, the previous owner.

John Dehlin [00:57:42] Okay, so this is, so what's the, what's this clip?

Julia [00:57:45] This is a, this is just a TikTok video that she made. She was like hey, my name's getting thrown around and I just want to address this specifically. So this is just what her response.

John Dehlin [00:57:53] Previous owner telling her side of the story.

Julia [00:57:56] So my face has gone a little bit viral in the last couple of days thanks to a YouTube video by Reckless Ben. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out. It fills in a lot of blanks that I'm not going to be able to get to in this short video. There's also a couple of TikTok videos from creators on here. I will tag them below so you can check out those videos and as well. First I want to say I appreciate the support from everybody across the board. It's been almost completely fantastic and I appreciate that. So. So over a year ago my bricks and minifigs franchise store was illegally seized by corporate. This was a store that I had poured my entire life savings into that I had built and created something that I absolutely loved. Co customer base that I could welcome into a warm and Fun and inclusive environment. This was, this was my life. This was everything to me. I was not compensated for anything in the store. I was removed under threat of police action from the store at night with no notice whatsoever. And included in all that inventory was a very large Star wars collection that we had under consignment. My husband and I have been found fighting for over a year with corporate to get them to come to the table to settle with us so that we could be compensated for what we lost and Brian could be compensated for what he lost. They have thus far shown no indication to act in good faith whatsoever. They are employing every stalling tactic they can think of. We have filed a lawsuit against them. I'm going to try to link Google Drive of that lawsuit so you can read it if you are interested. Lawyers are expensive. We've incurred over 30,000 in fees thus far. And that's just to get to the point where we can file a lawsuit. I've created a GoFundMe and there's a video pinned in my profile with that information. Even if you can't donate, just sharing it and getting the word out means so much to me. We appreciate it more than I can say. Also, please don't, please don't harass current Bricks Minifigs employees. They are people trying to do their job. Most part. They're good people that love Lego. What I would, you know, perhaps encourage is to maybe lean on corporate to acting in faith, come to the table, make this right, compensate myself, compensate Brian. Try to redeem some shred of decency and, and integrity within the Lego community before it is irrevocably too late. Thank you everybody for your support. I appreciate it so much. I will continue to update as I can within the bounds of our lawsuit. Thank you.

Bricks & Minifigs Franchise Store Stealing

Bricks and Minifigs Franchise Owner Kicked Out

John Dehlin [01:00:45] So already my heart is breaking for this woman because it sounds like she started a. A Bricks and Minifigs franchise as an act of love and she poured her life into it. And, and according to her, illegally and for no good reason, corporate just seizes it and kicks her out. Now, I know we're going to talk a little bit about this. I'm sure the corporate has their version, but she seems credible and that felt heartbreaking to me. Matt, what did you think?

Matt Gillespie [01:01:19] Well, one thing I'd like to point out, she does, she does look credible. There are, there are some questions about, you know, how well she ran the business, she and her partner, and why it was failing. But what I've seen in the comments is that they talk about the bricks and Minifigures all the mom and pop owners out there, they, they put their. There's people that have put their life savings and put their efforts into it. And now with this scandal blowing up and with their brand declining that they're, they're toast. And there's all kinds of comments about y' all should band together and do a class action lawsuit because you've got the people at the top of this company that are tanking your business. And I just, I feel sorry for those people that they're taking a lot of this blame. I've also seen where some people say, yeah, well, my local guy's shady too, so I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:02:14] Julie, anything you want to add?

Julia [01:02:16] Yeah, I want to add something. And then I. There's a lot of comments that I want to address as well and that are going right now. But yeah, she seems really sincere. I know that I've seen a lot of. I've seen a little bit more of the other side where they're worried about money that she could have owed or she wasn't if she was the one maybe not paying Brian Mantle and things like that. But she seems like a really decent person. She even says in her longer form video, she's like, I don't want this to tank because some of these stores of these store owners like herself are like, seem to be good people. And so she doesn't want this to tank every bricks and minifig franchise. There's one here in my town. She doesn't want them all to go bad. She just wants them to fix the problem, do the right thing, and then run their business as usual. But yeah, there's some comments that says that. Somebody says, saying that Kai McAllister is a Mormon and served his mission in New Zealand. I think that's what somebody's saying.

John Dehlin [01:03:02] Oh, wow. Okay.

Julia [01:03:03] And then somebody also said that Ammon is not. And I don't know if this is true. I can't verify this. They said Ammon is not new to suing people. He has sued his own father, if I'm getting that correct. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] Internet allegations from commenters.

Matt Gillespie [01:03:17] Right. And what, what is known is like they're. They're the two brothers. Like their father owns a company that's. It's all about like protecting. I can't remember. It's like suing people or protecting people from suits. It's like a real. It's another one of those ironic things. People in the comments, it's called legally mine of all things

John Dehlin [01:03:37] Okay, I don't know anything about that stuff. Should we play this?

Julia [01:03:41] Yeah. So this is when I was talking about. About them addressing the consignment being taken over by the Johnson and Best. Okay, fine.

The Collections Store Being Taken Over by Johnson & Best

Guest 2 [01:03:50] Then we decided to move overseas because of my work.

Matt Gillespie [01:03:52] I'm a publisher at a small press, not a pipe publishing. And we thought we might need to be publishing from outside the US for political reasons.

Julia [01:04:00] When we approached Bam about selling the store that they pretended to be open to the idea, though they would later admit they had been planning this.

Matt Gillespie [01:04:07] A guy named Brandon Best showed up on a Thursday night and demanded the keys. They threatened us with the police and promised to do an inventory and compensate us. They said they understood there was a large collection on consignment and acknowledged they were taking that over.

Julia [01:04:25] They told us the same thing they told Brian Mansell that we could fight them, but they would drag it out and make it so expensive. Expensive. We would be putting ourselves into a whole lot of their words.

John Dehlin [01:04:36] Okay, so the guy from corporate shows up, says we're taking over, and acknowledges that they're taking over the consignment. And it's sort of a surprise. So she wouldn't have even had. They would have even had time to liquidate or sell. Yeah, that's on consignment.

Julia [01:04:52] Yeah. Because on one of the other sides, in another place that they were saying, like, oh, she, like, cleared out the store. And so basically all the inventory is gone. But, like, this was. This is price to her. She only left with the one box of things. And then even she's like saying, I'm really worried about Mansell not getting his money. And they're like, she's trying to be careful about all this before leaving. And he's like, no, we're. That's business stuff. We take care of the consignment stuff. Like, we take that over.

Matt Gillespie [01:05:15] It's got to be said that about half the store's inventory was the Mansell collection. And she did what? So according to her, she said, look, we need to fold. We're going to move out of the country. Let's talk about it. Bam. Corporate says, hey, we got a buyer for you. We're going to send a guy over just to take a look. Just to assess. Just to take a look. No, he shows up there, Bam, give me the keys, you're out of here.

Julia [01:05:41] Well, I think that morning they had had. That morning they'd had that soft conversation about all this, and then that evening, she was kicked out.

Matt Gillespie [01:05:48] Right.

Julia [01:05:48] It's my understanding, yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:05:49] But they told her, oh, we're just gonna, just gonna have somebody take a look. So there was no reason for her to clear anything out. They hadn't gotten there.

Julia [01:05:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:58] Okay. Julia, what's this. What's this slide about?

Julia [01:06:02] So Law Gorman shared a document on Reddit which she claims indicate consignment agreements were permitted under certain circumstances. And here is an image of it and it's highlighted where the. Under the circumstances which it was permitted. So I don't. It's confusing to me, especially if they're saying, like, oh, we don't do that. I don't understand the law, but they're

John Dehlin [01:06:19] saying the corporate headquarters said we don't,

Julia [01:06:21] we don't do consignment. But she's part of the franchise. And I would assume that they would have conversation about that on whether they could or could not do it. I don't think she would just make this up. I. But I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:06:30] Like, it just seems like she was allowed to do consignment stuff by the contract.

Julia [01:06:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] Some are saying the court, the corporate headquarters is saying we don't do consignment. Yeah. Okay.

Matt Gillespie [01:06:40] Yeah. Well, it's funny that their publications don't say that.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] Okay. What do you mean?

Matt Gillespie [01:06:48] There's like, like a franchise agreement, you know, whatever their franchise agreement is. And right in there it says, among the things you can do is do consignment.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] Oh, okay.

Matt Gillespie [01:07:00] That's part of like Ben's showing.

Julia [01:07:03] Isn't that what that was? Isn't that what that was?

Matt Gillespie [01:07:06] I think it was. I just couldn't read it at the scale. But what I'm. But yeah, so they're saying, no, we don't do that. And the paperwork saying you can do consignment.

Julia [01:07:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:14] Franchisee may also offer consignment services, approved theme services, approved off site events after school project based programs. Yeah. This is the BAM Franchising license agreement saying the franchisee may offer consignment services.

Julia [01:07:35] Yeah. So this, this isn't her agreement with Mantle. This is what she agrees with, with the franchise as the franchise owner.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] Yeah.

Julia [01:07:42] So. Yeah. Okay, so this next clip, this is one of the reasons why Kai McAllister has become a name in one of these characters because I, again, like, I don't think he really appears in Ben's videos from my understanding. So. But in this video, he's threatening the law Gormans.

BAM Group Product Manager Threatens To Sue Crystal Gorman

Matt Gillespie [01:07:59] It's just his voice on the phone. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:08:01] Okay.

Julia [01:08:03] Executive Product manager and Director of Operations Kai McAllister on the phone with us. The Night they took the store.

Guest 2 [01:08:10] If. If we go the legal route, it's going to be a very expensive battle for you, and it's not going to be a good position for you guys to get into that. There's not a whole lot of options for you if you want to go the legal route. It's just going to be a mess, and it's going to be expensive for you.

Matt Gillespie [01:08:28] Yeah. So. So why not consider talking with us rather than leaping to this?

Guest 2 [01:08:34] We jumped on the call with Crystal this morning and.

Matt Gillespie [01:08:39] And. And you talked with her or you talked at her?

Guest 2 [01:08:43] We talked at her. If you fight this, then. Then you're putting yourself into a whole lot of shit. It sounds like a threat, and I can all. I can acknowledge you feeling that, because in a way, it is.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] What? Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:08:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:59] First of all, if I'm reading that guy's resume, he studied computer science. So why is a computer science guy basically making what seems to be legal threats and giving sort of legal counsel to somebody? But then why would he admit that he. It kind of is threat. It's. He's kind of admitting he threatened him.

Julia [01:09:19] If it sounds like a thread, it's probably because it is. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:09:25] I. I have the feeling. I don't know this, but I have the feeling that the BAM Group corporate group is actually very small.

John Dehlin [01:09:32] And so, yeah, I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [01:09:34] We have a guy overstepping that.

John Dehlin [01:09:37] That did not sound like a professional phone call.

Julia [01:09:40] And then he's admitting he's like, yeah, I talked at her.

Matt Gillespie [01:09:43] Yeah, we didn't talk to her. We talked at her.

John Dehlin [01:09:46] Okay. Okay. So what's.

Julia [01:09:50] Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] So what's this?

BAM Store Employee falsely accused of selling heroin

Julia [01:09:52] So this next one is a comment left by the partner, I think, because he says at the end of that video, he was like, oh, look in my comments. To see something even crazier. So he says, the craziest new development, someone reached out and told us. And this is just an allegation which we can't verify from his words. Not me. That Josh Johnson, the other guy who bought the store after it was taken from us, had been going around telling people we were selling heroin. This would fit a pattern in which we'll see later in this episode. Oh, yeah. When you watch Reckless Ben's video, see that he was also falsely accused of possessing heroin. And considering the way he was treated by the police, it's pretty scary. So please consider donating.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] So, yeah, was that. That's the former owner.

Matt Gillespie [01:10:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:37] Of the Salem Kaiser BAM store.

Julia [01:10:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] Saying that BAM Corporate was spreading rumors that they used Heroin.

Matt Gillespie [01:10:47] Yeah.

Julia [01:10:48] And I think they were saying that. Were they saying. I thought. I remember seeing somewhere that they said in that building they were. They were dealing or whatever.

Matt Gillespie [01:10:55] Yeah, like. Like. Like bad talking after they're gone. Well, those guys were fronting. That was a front for selling heroin.

Julia [01:11:03] We had to get them.

Matt Gillespie [01:11:04] We had to get rid of them.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] Yeah, okay. Yeah, that definitely comes in later. We're about to show a bunch of police footage. Some of the audience are like, get to the police footage.

Julia [01:11:14] Oh, yeah, we will tell the background. It is. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:17] So sorry. Impatient people who want just the police footage. But it is coming, and it's extremely disturbing for me. It's the most disturbing part of this whole deal. All right, so what's the next clip, Julia?

Bricks and Minifig World CEO Confronted by His

Julia [01:11:28] Okay, so Ben goes to the headquarters, I guess, and he confronts. Maybe that's a rude way of saying that, but he confronts Ammon, and this is him confronting Ammon.

John Dehlin [01:11:39] Okay, so Ben, the YouTuber, confronts Ammon, one of the owners of a Bricks and Minifig. Right?

Matt Gillespie [01:11:46] The CEO.

Guest 2 [01:11:48] So to continue the video without getting arrested, I went back to Bricks and Minifigs corporate offices. In the Bricks and Minifigs CEO, the guy who runs the entire entire company, Amon McNeff. He personally came out to talk to us. So what?

John Dehlin [01:12:02] Okay, wait, where is this? Where is Bricks and Minifig World headquarters. What city?

Matt Gillespie [01:12:07] Provo.

John Dehlin [01:12:09] Well, one of you look that up. Okay, so we think this might be in Provo.

Matt Gillespie [01:12:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:14] But y' all are gonna check. And this guy coming out is Ammon.

Julia [01:12:18] It says Orem.

John Dehlin [01:12:19] Okay. Utah County. This is an aurum. This is Mustache Ammon. Handlebar Mustache Ammon confronted by reckless Ben, the YouTuber, who's never been Mormon, probably never been to Utah. Okay, what's going on?

Guest 2 [01:12:39] So you guys are holding some of our Legos. No, we're not. You're not?

Guest [01:12:42] No.

Guest 2 [01:12:43] Is that a lie? No, that's. That's a lie. You did take the Legos.

Matt Gillespie [01:12:50] So we have. Our.

Guest 2 [01:12:51] Our attorneys have visited, like, again. So who's let. Like, Brian Mansell. Okay, and who is that? He's a guy who had a bunch of. He had, like, $200,000 worth of Legos in your resin store. Never happened. I mean, it did happen. Yeah, it does happen. No, we did not. Yeah, because his Legos were in the store, and you guys took them. I know you think lying to us right now is. Is kind of like helping you out. Well, we both know you're lying, but

Matt Gillespie [01:13:18] we don't know that.

Guest 2 [01:13:19] So I showed him some social media Posts his own company made that are still up that claims that these are Brian Mansell's Lego sets and these Lego sets that they're still holding on to are worth $200,000. All of these claims are from his own company. We just caught the CEO of the entire company red handed in a lie.

John Dehlin [01:13:39] Okay, so if I would just want to play devil's advocate for a second, it could be that Ammon was listening precisely to the word choice and that some small word that he used wasn't quite right. So he's basically dismissing the whole story because he wasn't accurate enough in his speech. So I'm just saying, is that possible?

Julia [01:14:01] Well, my other thought was because all those posts said Salem Kaiser do, do the, I don't know how franchises work. So like, are they supposed to know what these franchisees are doing? Like, do they, are they aware of consignment? Is he playing dumb or does he really not know that this, that one of his franchises is, has done or signed with this consignment? So like, I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [01:14:21] I would tend to think as hyped up as this collection was, dude would know that was like a marquee collection.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] And especially because there was years of litigation, right?

Matt Gillespie [01:14:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:14:39] What are the chances that one of the stores would experience a couple years of litigation around highly valuable and controversial collection and that the CEO wouldn't know any of it? So that's one set of questions. The other is, oh, if he's got hundreds and hundreds of franchises, how many do they have? How many franchises?

Matt Gillespie [01:15:01] 300.

John Dehlin [01:15:02] If they have 300 franchises, what CEO could know everything going on in every franchise? So I'm going to just say I don't know how to know whether he's really lying or not. It's possible that Ben knows more than us. It's also possible the reckless Ben jumped to conclusions there. Julia, do you have an opinion or a reaction?

Julia [01:15:21] I, I don't know if I know specifically if Ammon knows, but I really feel like Johnson and Best have no excuse because like they said on the video, like we are taking over this consignment. So I don't, I, I would think

Matt Gillespie [01:15:35] that Johnson's companion bro is going to talk with him and yeah, that's likely

Julia [01:15:41] because they're friends and we've shown that.

Matt Gillespie [01:15:43] Yeah, so.

John Dehlin [01:15:44] So Ammon and Johnson were those two missionaries together. Johnson wouldn't, the Johnson new store owner under lawsuit wouldn't call Ammon CEO and say, dude, we've got this really gnarly

Julia [01:15:56] lawsuit and it's his franchise. So I don't know why that.

John Dehlin [01:15:59] The likelihood's very low.

Julia [01:16:01] Yeah, because.

Matt Gillespie [01:16:02] And. And Johnson calls him later.

Julia [01:16:04] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:06] Okay. Okay. So what is this?

The Internet Melts Down On A Comedian's Appearance

Julia [01:16:08] Julia, this is Matt. Do you want to talk about this one?

Matt Gillespie [01:16:11] Yeah. This is just how many people are, like, just piling on this guy as. As the cartoon villain. And he appeared. He. He made an appearance on a. On a live broadcast by acob. A couple of brickheadz. I think that's what it stands for. And people are just like, the more he talked, the more it turned people off. And another comment was if, like, if you look in the upper left, people are saying, man, this guy has, like, shark eyes. Like dead shark eyes. But the picture on the right, it doesn't look like that. But that was just kind of a weird observation I saw in the comments.

John Dehlin [01:16:46] Yeah, I'm not crazy about talking about people's appearances.

Matt Gillespie [01:16:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:50] Plus, you know, images can be manipulated, too, to make people look bad. So anyway, and by the way, audience, I'm not trying to defend bad behavior. I like to try and call balls and strikes. And I don't, like, I never want anyone to get busted for defamation. And so I just try and make sense as fairly as possible of what I'm seeing. So. So anyway, that's why. It's not that I'm trying to make excuses for bad behavior. All right, so what comes next, Julia?

How To Brainwash Someone To Join Your Cult

Julia [01:17:22] Okay, so this is just a tiny little part that I'm like, pause the story for one second because I feel like this is a tiny little Mormon kind of interesting topic. So if you go to the next slide. So at one point, Ben, he's trying to get in with an employee. Oh, here, I'll just talk for a second. He's trying to get in with an employee so that the employee can give him more information. So he's. So he's in his video. He's kind of being silly. He's like, I'm going to recruit this employee to my cult. And so he's like, there's three steps to somebody being brainwashed so that they can then join your cult. And so then he's kind of selects this. One of the employees. This is young woman who works there. And then if we. If you want to throw up the slide. I just wanted to talk about this really fast because I thought it was interesting. Okay, so I've already explained all that to just learn more information. And he says, step one to. To brainwash somebody is to make the recruit feel like the most special person. And I Feel like we can see this a lot in even Mormonism, where, like, you're making the most decision, important decision of your life, being baptized, you're joining the one true church of God.

John Dehlin [01:18:19] And then the next step, Missionary love bombing. Is that what you.

Julia [01:18:22] Yeah, missionary love bombing. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] Okay.

Julia [01:18:24] The second one is to give them power. And I don't know this specifically, so I had to look it up. But, like, there's no time limit for when a man gets baptized to. For him to receive the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood. They can happen almost instantly. And so, like, they give men power right away. And this is the power to act in God's name is what the priesthood is. And then the third one is engage in group rituals, which in Mormonism, that's like the sacrament, the temple work. Yeah. Going through endowments, and just. There's a whole bunch of. Just these rituals that we do. And so I just thought it was interesting they were able to successfully. He's like, we successfully brainwashed this woman. But, you know, he's kind of just being silly. But she was able to give them information. They showed her some of the pictures, and she's like, oh, yeah, that's in the store. That's in the store. She said when my boss was on the phone, he was like, how can we get these guys arrested? And she was. She was, you know, giving them information that was helpful to them.

Bricks & Minifigs Employee Forced To Work For Cult

John Dehlin [01:19:12] So bricks and minifigs employee in the Orem Kaiser.

Matt Gillespie [01:19:18] In the Kaiser. In the Salem Kaiser place.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Why is. Why is. Is Ben describing himself as using cult tactics?

Matt Gillespie [01:19:27] Yes, because he has experience with it.

John Dehlin [01:19:29] He's just being silly.

Julia [01:19:30] Yeah, he's just being silly.

Matt Gillespie [01:19:31] Silly, but I think he's subtly illustrating something and kind of getting a jab in.

Julia [01:19:37] Yeah. So this next clip is just an interesting. It's just a funny part that's been going around the Internet. If we want to just play that clip, it'll. It should explain itself.

John Dehlin [01:19:46] Okay, break. By brick. Brick by brick. Brick by brick. Brick line. Brick, brick, Brick by brick. Brick by brick. Brick by brick. Brick by.

Guest 2 [01:20:00] And now the employee is fully brainwashed. Okay, maybe not fully brainwashed, but we definitely did a much better job at brainwashing her than corporate bricks and minifigs did.

Julia [01:20:12] Yeah, bricks.

Matt Gillespie [01:20:14] I wonder if that cape is like, her. Her garments now.

Julia [01:20:17] Oh, so he's.

John Dehlin [01:20:20] This is. This is a reckless band just making cold jokes, basically.

Julia [01:20:23] Yeah, well, the woman did give them information, so, yeah, it works.

Matt Gillespie [01:20:27] He got. He got his inside spy, his informant,

John Dehlin [01:20:29] and I'm going to just Say. I'm going to just say. And some people are saying, Julia, that we're getting an echo from your microphone. I don't know, maybe turn down your volume a little bit. Or I can turn down my volume a little bit because sometimes that can influence it.

Julia [01:20:47] Can you still hear me?

John Dehlin [01:20:48] Oh, yeah.

Julia [01:20:50] Oh.

John Dehlin [01:20:51] Oh. How is it you like, I had a pay.

Matt Gillespie [01:20:53] I must have had a YouTube page on in the background.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] Okay. All right. Well, I just turned on my mic.

Julia [01:20:58] Let me know. Let me know if it's still audience.

John Dehlin [01:21:01] Let us know if there's still an echo going on. Okay. It's kind of. If I had a company, I wouldn't want a youtuber hiring my former employees. That feels pretty aggressive now. I'm not saying it's wrong, but that. Is that harassment? I don't know. What do we think about that?

Matt Gillespie [01:21:26] Well, she had a great time. She. She was queen Lego. They actually came in there and I did, like, some kind of competition, and she won. And. And they agreed to it. Like, they said, yeah. He's like, I'm a YouTuber and we're gonna do this. I think it was actually his buddy. It might have been Victor Nguyen, but it was one of his other on his team. He's got like a whole posse. Ben does. And she was like the winner. And like, you're the queen. You're the LEGO queen for a day, and everybody's happy. And she had a ball.

Julia [01:21:57] So I didn't really like that. I didn't really like that part either. But she. One once his hat came off and he's like, you know, I think you guys have my collection. And she was like, oh. So she, like, she's not. She's. She's not unintelligent. She knew what they were doing, and then she was able to, like, make the decision to tell them things. So, like, sort of feel like you. But.

Matt Gillespie [01:22:14] Yeah, it is. Yeah. But she goes, oh, wow. That's not what they told me about the collection.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] I mean, I can see. I can see why he would do it. And I'm also just going to say that would. You know, I would feel. I would feel really uncomfortable with the YouTuber finding a former employee and then hiring them to, like. To trash me on the Internet.

Julia in the Tanked Video

Matt Gillespie [01:22:40] No, no, she was a current. She was a current employee.

John Dehlin [01:22:44] A current employee. Even worse.

Julia [01:22:47] Well, to trash. What do you mean? To trash him? Because she was just giving some information. Yeah, I guess he was filming it. So I guess, like, maybe you can count that as trash talking, but I

John Dehlin [01:22:57] mean, would it be Julia, like someone hiring you to create a video to trash me while you're working for me.

Julia [01:23:04] Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't really like that.

John Dehlin [01:23:06] But, like, I mean, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying if I were the owner, that would.

Julia [01:23:11] Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. If you were the owner, that would be really icky.

John Dehlin [01:23:14] Now, if I was doing something really bad, then I. Maybe some would argue I'd be deserving it. Right. So.

Julia [01:23:19] Yeah, I guess.

Matt Gillespie [01:23:20] But.

John Dehlin [01:23:21] Okay. All right. Anyway, here's the next next slide.

Jonah Mansell Gets His Scientology Collection Back

Julia [01:23:24] Okay, so there's a couple of things we need to explain. Matt, do you want to explain any of these?

Matt Gillespie [01:23:27] Yeah, so. So Ben kind of picked up the mantle, so to speak, for. For. For the Mansell family, and they realized they couldn't do like a full lawsuit for the 100,000 or 120,000, whatever it was. And they figured, well, wait a minute. If we break this down, we can take it to small claims. So Ben and nine friends, they divided 100,000 into $10,000 shares. They. There's this whole thing where they got loans and they. They each bought a $10,000 piece, and that way they could go to small claims court in Oregon because it was under the limit. And they all filed suits, basically identical suits, and then waited for them to expire. The corporate. They either didn't see it or thought it was a joke, and they actually won default judgment. And the reason what they could do next was they held a lottery. They looked at the Oregon laws that said if you have like a non profit lottery, there is a. There is a statute on the books from stealing from a lottery. And so what they did was they said, well, you have to have a 501C or 503C. I forget what it is. But he's like, no problem. I have a church established called Scientology Sucks. And from what? From. From his earlier videos, when he infiltrated Scientology, he got like a legally registered church and they held a raffle. They had a $1 entrance fee, which they charged everybody.

Julia [01:24:58] Which they gave everybody.

Matt Gillespie [01:24:59] They gave. Yeah. But then they said, well, for appearing on our YouTube video, here's a dollar appearance fee. So it didn't cost anybody anything. That was clever and funny. And they had the. They had the lottery and a little kid won it. It was a thousand dollar Lego set. And they said, okay, well, go to the books of books. I mean, go to the bricks and minifigs and go collect your prize. Because they were showing that we have ownership of this. And this is. Again, this is through paperwork. This is through Brian Mansell's paperwork saying, I own this, but it's in this store. That's where it physically resides. And so now the new owners could say, I own this chunk, and this is where it resides. And so basically the kid shows up and they're like, we're not going to give it to you. This isn't. This is bogus. This isn't real. And at the end, Ben gave the kid a thousand bucks out of their own pocket. But basically, they now have a criminal case against bam. Because they're basically holding stolen property.

Julia [01:26:03] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:26:04] Okay, so they're just being creative.

Julia [01:26:06] Yes. These are constantly creative. Collection back. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:26:09] Yeah. All in an effort to get it back. And in this case, they wanted to make it, like, have some criminal weight to it, not just be a civil matter.

John Dehlin [01:26:19] Okay, all right. Any thoughts on that, Julia?

Julia [01:26:22] No. I think these are really interesting cases. And like, it was. It was a really interesting way to see how to. He was attempting legally to get this collection back, and it fails every time that he attempts to do it.

John Dehlin [01:26:33] Okay. So these efforts failed. Okay.

Ben Troller Uses Legos As a Tagline

Julia [01:26:37] And then this next slide is kind of interesting. And I don't know if I know enough about this from my. Understand my understanding of his video, but he opened up a store, so there's like different laws where he. You can have your tagline above or below your. Your trademarked name. So he got. He has the business name. If you go to the next slide, it shows it in a bigger picture. His business name is we steal from old people. But what he did is he put the bricks and minifig above it as his tagline. So it doesn't matter what order. And so he's just using it so it looks just like they're obviously, it's exactly like their trademarked image. And he was putting that on. He was printing all these big pages and he was putting on the store. And even after, when he was able to. I think it was the ten times to sue, whenever he was going to turn that into the store, the store was closed. And I think it hasn't been open since. And he hung up this big poster with this bricks and minifig. We steal from old people over the store. So I thought that was interesting. It was another illegal way that he's trying to do. Trying to get this collection back.

Matt Gillespie [01:27:40] Yeah, the. What. What he hung over the. They. The one thing I could say maybe he did criminally was you could say he trespassed or whatever, but they hung the sign over the store, because the people bailed, according to Ben. Like, when they went to go get the payment, because they said, hey, look, we won all the judgments. They went to get payment. They showed up, the store, it was closed. So they put a sign that said, you know, we took this old man's. We sued. You know, they lost, basically. I thought we maybe had a picture of that, maybe not.

Julia [01:28:09] But it.

Matt Gillespie [01:28:09] It made the rounds. It was on, like, the local Salem News, this big banner that they unfurled over it. But it's just an example of how Ben is a master troller. He really is. And he's actually selling merch. He's actually selling.

Julia [01:28:24] And that's a real website.

Matt Gillespie [01:28:25] And it's a hashtag now, too. We steal from old people. Same with hashtag.

John Dehlin [01:28:29] That's pretty. If. If I'm owning corporate, that I would want to start, you know, saying this feels defamatory. Right. You're. You're slandering us. You're smearing us, and this could harm our reputation materially. Right?

Julia [01:28:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:45] But, you know, if it's true, then, you know, they deserve it. Maybe.

Matt Gillespie [01:28:52] Well, from the very start, the comments have been, give the guy his effing Legos back.

John Dehlin [01:28:58] Yeah.

Guest [01:28:58] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:28:59] Over and over. This go.

John Dehlin [01:29:01] All goes away really quickly. Julia, people are still mentioning echo. I don't know if they're listening to earbuds in.

Julia [01:29:10] I do. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:11] Okay. All right. Okay. Hopefully there's.

Julia [01:29:14] I do know. I have noticed when we talk over each other, I can hear an echo, so maybe I can try to restrain my screen.

John Dehlin [01:29:19] Okay. Yeah, I just interrupted. I'll try to interrupt. Okay, let's play the next clip.

LEGO Franchise Owners vs The Mormon Church

Julia [01:29:24] Yeah. So this one's just a. It's just an. I thought this was an interesting clip. Just talking about facts and evidence.

John Dehlin [01:29:30] Okay, Julia, they're saying there's still an echo, so maybe try and turn down your volume if you can.

Guest 2 [01:29:39] I kind of feel bad for the franchise owners here, because it's like we are showing so much evidence of these things that are happening. And then corporate saying, hey, all this evidence, you can't believe it because we have the facts. We're not gonna show you the facts, but we have the facts. And now as a franchise owner, you have to think, okay, do I believe the side with all the evidence and get fired? Because if they. If they take our side with the evidence and they get fired, or do I just take the side that claims they have the facts but don't have the facts, and then this way I don't get fired. Yeah. So Corporate kind of putting all their franchises in a really bad situation right now.

John Dehlin [01:30:18] Yeah, that makes sense to me. The. The. I mean, this is. This is. This is going to infect the entire company in very negative ways if they're not careful. That makes sense.

Julia [01:30:28] Yeah. Yeah, that was just a quick. Yeah, I just, like, I just also, the facts and evidence, just from a Mormon perspective, like, I feel like the church would want to see, say, what facts were, but they weren't producing evidence to support those facts. And so that just made me think of that where it's like one side saying, no, this is the right story, and then their stories sometimes changing. Whereas Ben's story has been consistent. And he's. Like I said, he. He's been recording everything. He has body cameras. He has cameras everywhere. He's constantly filling, filming himself, and he's constantly showing his receipts. And so, like, I really appreciate that from him because then we don't have to, like, trust what he's saying. We just watch the videos ourselves. And I guess editing, I guess, could be a thing. But.

John Dehlin [01:31:06] Yeah, and I. And there's. There's people in the comments that are basically saying that the way that bricks and minifigs is behaving reminds them of how the Mormon Church historically has behaved.

Matt Gillespie [01:31:20] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:31:21] By hiding evidence. That's the evidence. Smearing people who are critics being very litigious. Like, if. If we're trying to be objective about who's acting like, you know, ethically, who's not acting ethically, who's acting like a cult or like a Scientology or like a unethical organization, it seems like. And if you put the church, the Mormon Church and how it's behaved historically in one of those camps or the other, you could be argued that the bricks and minifigs corporate is acting more like the Mormon Church in Scientology at their worst. And that reckless Ben and maybe even the franchise, the former franchisees and the owners originally of the LEGO set are all acting more ethically, speaking out against abuse and bringing receipts.

Matt Gillespie [01:32:22] There's a lot of me as an outsider, I see all these parallels. That's what it looks like to me.

Julia [01:32:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:31] Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, now the police get involved. Is that right?

confrontations with Legos thieves

Julia [01:32:35] Well, not yet.

John Dehlin [01:32:36] So.

Julia [01:32:37] So he. This first he's going to go confront Brandon Best because he was like, I just remembered that there's another store owner, and this one was I. Maybe we'll just play it and see what everybody thinks about. About this one.

John Dehlin [01:32:47] Is this Utah?

Julia [01:32:49] Yeah, I think he's in. Is he in Utah now? I Feel like he's with Brandon.

Matt Gillespie [01:32:53] Yeah, yeah, he goes to. So they. They eventually wind up like suing those guys personally. But I think I. This is something I'm not clear on is whether they're just trying to approach them first and just talk, you know, man to man.

John Dehlin [01:33:08] So who's talking to who in this?

Julia [01:33:09] Well, hang on. In order to. In order to sue somebody, you have to show that you have a. You had a good faith effort to resolve this problem.

Matt Gillespie [01:33:16] That's right. That's talking to him first.

Julia [01:33:19] So he has to go to Best first and then try to resolve it and then. Yeah, and he does the same thing with Johnson.

John Dehlin [01:33:26] Yeah. Okay, so again, Brandon Best is one of the new owners of the Oregon store.

Julia [01:33:34] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:33:35] Right. But they both live in. In Utah.

John Dehlin [01:33:39] Owners of the Oregon store live in Utah.

Matt Gillespie [01:33:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:33:42] So is this footage in Utah, not Oregon?

Julia [01:33:45] Yeah, he drove. I think he drove for 16 hours or something like that. He shows his. He filmed himself driving the whole time from la. From wherever I was. He in Oregon.

Matt Gillespie [01:33:55] Well, he keeps going back and forth.

Julia [01:33:57] He's driving everywhere.

Matt Gillespie [01:33:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:59] Because these police officers. Do we know where they're from?

Julia [01:34:02] Yeah, these. So the thing is, I don't know if this. I don't know. So this thumbnail could be a different part of.

John Dehlin [01:34:08] Got it. Okay. Okay, okay, Got it.

Guest 2 [01:34:15] But before going the hard way, I actually remembered that there's another owner of the store named Brandon Best. Brandon is the guy in the security camera footage that illegally kicked the first owner out of the store so he could steal all their Legos. I tried calling him, but I am also blocked.

Matt Gillespie [01:34:29] I'm sorry.

Guest 2 [01:34:31] The only option left is to show up to his house. Hello?

Matt Gillespie [01:34:37] Hey, how's it going?

Guest 2 [01:34:40] Hello. Hey. Well, I was wondering if you'd be

Matt Gillespie [01:34:46] down to pay us for the lawsuit we won.

John Dehlin [01:34:57] Okay, so when he says pay us for the lawsuit we won, he means what again?

Matt Gillespie [01:35:01] It's one of those.

Julia [01:35:03] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [01:35:03] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:04] So Brandon didn't pay out even though he lost.

Julia [01:35:07] Yeah, he didn't get any money for that. But just the blank look on Brandon's face was.

Matt Gillespie [01:35:12] It's. It's eerie. It's creepy.

Julia [01:35:14] Yeah. And you hear the lawnmower.

Guest 2 [01:35:15] So I decided to see if I could find.

John Dehlin [01:35:17] He looks furious.

Julia [01:35:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:35:20] He never. I guess Ben stood. He said 30, 40 minutes and the guy didn't say a word.

Julia [01:35:25] Dang. I'm ready for that. Thanks.

John Dehlin [01:35:28] Okay, so he tried to reconcile this amicably.

Julia [01:35:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:33] Didn't work. So what's the next clip?

Reckless Ben Gets Arrested For Trying To Talk To A

Julia [01:35:36] Yeah, so this next One he's. He's addressing. He's just found out Reckless Ben has just found out that these guys are all Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] Okay. All right, let's play the clip.

Guest 2 [01:35:47] So I decided to see if I could find Josh online to see if I could look up any more information about him.

John Dehlin [01:35:52] Yeah, well.

Julia [01:35:53] What?

Guest 2 [01:35:53] They look the same. No, Joshua Johnson. Yeah, Joshua Johnson. We lower their tax liabilities and minimize their exposure to lawsuits.

Matt Gillespie [01:36:01] That's hella ironic.

Guest 2 [01:36:03] Are you kidding me?

Matt Gillespie [01:36:03] Dude?

John Dehlin [01:36:04] That's what he's known for is reducing

Guest 2 [01:36:07] people's exposure to lawsuits. After some more research, we found out that both Josh and Brandon are super hardcore Mormon, which was actually extremely surprising to me, because if Josh and Brandon are truly Mormons, they believe that stealing is wrong, and if they steal, they're gonna go to hell.

Julia [01:36:28] Even he was surprised that they were Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] Yeah. Yeah. So in Utah. Meaning that his impression might have been the Mormons are good people.

Julia [01:36:41] Probably. I would hope so.

John Dehlin [01:36:43] And kind people. Yeah. Okay.

Matt Gillespie [01:36:45] All right,

John Dehlin [01:36:48] so now are the police getting involved? Right.

Julia [01:36:53] So they're starting to. So. So in this next clip, he. So this. This clip's a little bit longer because it's somebody else's reaction to it, but I think this person is a lawyer, if I'm not mistaken. But so having this mindset that these men are Mormon, Ben's like, oh, maybe if I recruit a Mormon, then they can talk some sense into them or, like, you know, speak Mormon to Mormon. And. And because this man swore on God that he would give the collection back and things like that, and so he. So he recruits this Mormon. And so that's what this next one is about.

John Dehlin [01:37:21] All right.

Julia [01:37:23] And it's longer, so we can pause throughout it if we need to.

John Dehlin [01:37:25] Oh, he got. He finds a Mormon to go confront.

Julia [01:37:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] Some teenage kid. Right.

Julia [01:37:31] Johnson. Is he confronting Johnson?

Matt Gillespie [01:37:33] No. No. Yeah, he's going to talk to Johnson.

Julia [01:37:36] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [01:37:37] It's. His name is Christian Morgan.

Julia [01:37:39] I couldn't remember who. Yeah, Christian Morgan is his name.

John Dehlin [01:37:42] Wait, Best in Johnson. Okay. The guy that he confronted, Brandon Best, that's the guy who was quiet and angry at the house, right?

Matt Gillespie [01:37:51] Yeah.

Julia [01:37:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:52] Johnson. The other guy.

Matt Gillespie [01:37:54] Right. And this is at Johnson's house this time?

Julia [01:37:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:58] Okay. Different guy.

Julia [01:37:59] Yeah, different.

John Dehlin [01:38:00] Yeah, different owner of the Oregon store. Mm.

Matt Gillespie [01:38:03] Something, I guess we should say, too, is that Ben had been. Had. Tried to talk to Johnson himself and got trespassed. And he. I can't remember if he put out a call, like, on through his social media, or he just went to a ward nearby, and he. But he found a guy, a kid that was like, okay, yeah, I'll go, I'll go talk to him. You know, we're the same faith and maybe I can get through to him.

Julia [01:38:29] Well, the kid Morgan was in a Salt Lake ward, I think so it would, it wouldn't have been quite so local but, or I guess I don't know how far away that was because

Matt Gillespie [01:38:40] now here's, here's an interesting standpoint, like for me as an outsider is like, and I might make this point later is why does it matter? We, we, the, the people, the non, the nevermost think this. It's like a mono block. They're all the same. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what ward. That, that's just kind of how the, the view of it.

John Dehlin [01:39:02] Yeah. Okay, let's go and roll the clip. So this is Ben recruiting a Mormon kid to confront Johnson, is that right?

Julia [01:39:09] Yes, correct.

Guest [01:39:10] On March 9, Ben, this is clearly established that was a member of Johnson's church and he was going to have that individual talk to Johnson about returning the Legos, especially since he's a God fearing man.

Guest 2 [01:39:24] My problem right now seems to be that Josh is never going to listen to anything I ever tell him. But if someone from his church heard this audio, maybe he would listen to them. So after finding exactly what church these guys go to, we went to it and showed one of the Mormons there, this audio clip. And the Mormon thought that the best thing to do was to have a talk with Josh to save him from going to this outer darkness.

John Dehlin [01:39:48] How's it going, sir?

The Police Called on Reckless Ben

Guest 2 [01:39:49] You going to step on down here

Matt Gillespie [01:39:50] for me for a.

Guest 2 [01:39:52] You got any form of ID on you? No, I'm just here trying to talk to Brother Johnson.

Julia [01:39:58] Okay.

Guest 2 [01:39:58] I'm in the second world. What's the, what's the relation? There's an audio going around through our young men's group.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:40:08] Can we pause for a sec? Taking advantage of some people.

John Dehlin [01:40:11] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:40:12] I don't know if you're, if your audience like your Nevermo, knows what a young men's group is.

John Dehlin [01:40:16] Oh yeah, go ahead.

Matt Gillespie [01:40:18] And why would this be passed around? Is that what's, what's up with that?

John Dehlin [01:40:22] I mean it could be just these kids all like to follow Reckless Ben and so they know that there's a Utah and possibly Mormon related Lego story and they all follow this guy and so they're just talking about it.

Matt Gillespie [01:40:34] So could that actually be in a class?

John Dehlin [01:40:36] Oh, what's that?

Matt Gillespie [01:40:37] It wouldn't actually be like in a classroom or Something from a meeting.

John Dehlin [01:40:40] Not as part of the Sunday school class, but it could just be kids talking about. Did you see what happened with Ruthless Bed? You know, so.

Matt Gillespie [01:40:49] So a young men's group is like a. Just a loose group. It's not a specific.

John Dehlin [01:40:52] No, no, no. It's just the. In a congregation or a ward during. Let's just call it the second hour. Like the 14 to 15 year old boys or the 16 and 17 year old boys or the 12 or the 13 year old boys would meet as a class to do kind of Sunday school type stuff.

Matt Gillespie [01:41:13] Right.

John Dehlin [01:41:14] And in that class they might be talking about.

Matt Gillespie [01:41:16] That's what I was getting at.

John Dehlin [01:41:17] That's what I mean, on the Internet. Yeah. Okay, okay, go back.

Julia [01:41:24] Like how so?

Guest 2 [01:41:26] So this guy donates his life savings in, in Legos to bricks and min minifigs. It's like a resale store.

Julia [01:41:37] Okay.

Guest 2 [01:41:38] I was just coming to come discuss that with them and then on the

Matt Gillespie [01:41:41] ring doorbell he said he'd be out in a minute.

Guest 2 [01:41:43] So I've just been waiting for him. Okay, what's the audio that you wanted to play?

Matt Gillespie [01:41:48] I can show you.

Guest 2 [01:41:49] I'm not gonna screw you. You have my word.

John Dehlin [01:41:52] That's not who I am.

Guest 2 [01:41:55] I promise you. I swear to God. I guess that's him. No, I know that. How did you get here? I drove down here and then I met up with men like 5ish minutes away. I think he's at an Airbnb.

Matt Gillespie [01:42:08] Just.

Guest 2 [01:42:08] He just asked me to come confront

Matt Gillespie [01:42:10] him and get his side of the

Guest 2 [01:42:12] story on everything, you know. And what was your plan exactly? I was just gonna ask him like, you know, does he. Is he willing to give up everything like he said because he score on everything sworn God. And if not, I was going to confront his bishop. So have you been drinking at all today?

Matt Gillespie [01:42:35] Can we stop for a second because I have.

Guest 2 [01:42:38] I smell a little bit off your breath.

John Dehlin [01:42:40] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:42:41] Now maybe if he like the problem was swearing. If he would have affirmed. If he had affirmed to God instead of swearing. Right. Wow. I did a Mormon joke in it.

John Dehlin [01:42:54] I don't know if that make a dad joke. Come on, brother.

Matt Gillespie [01:42:57] No, no, no, no. One of one of the prophets said, well, we don't swear to anything, but I'll affirm to this.

John Dehlin [01:43:04] That was not worth pausing.

Matt Gillespie [01:43:05] Sorry, sorry.

John Dehlin [01:43:07] Really quick. Is this a police officer talking to this?

Julia [01:43:09] Yeah, this is a body cam for American Fork police. So this is where the police are starting to get involved.

John Dehlin [01:43:14] Johnson is not even.

Julia [01:43:15] Well, no, in the videos.

Matt Gillespie [01:43:16] Yeah, Johnson's there. He called the cops.

John Dehlin [01:43:19] But we're not hearing him in the audio clip.

Julia [01:43:21] No, he. He had been ringing the doorbell and the police officer says, you were ringing it for 10 minutes and like harassing him. And so then the police show up and they're, they're talking to.

Matt Gillespie [01:43:29] We did hear his voice from the phone. Now, interestingly, it was redacted. His voice, him saying, I swear to God. And all this stuff was redacted. Ben's. Ben had to like, put that back in to what was actually being played.

Julia [01:43:43] But Ben has it because of his phone call.

Utah Police Explain Why They Arrested a Mormon Boy

Matt Gillespie [01:43:45] Right.

John Dehlin [01:43:46] And we just heard the policeman say, do I smell alcohol on your breath?

Matt Gillespie [01:43:52] Yes. And this was something I asked Julie about. Is, is that like a real insult to a Mormon youth?

Julia [01:43:59] It would offend me as a youth if somebody asked me that.

John Dehlin [01:44:01] Yeah, but what it, what it suggests is they're trying to create some sort of pretext to allow them to do something else later. That it start. This is where things for me.

Julia [01:44:15] Well, and then we see that. Yeah, foreshadowing. Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:44:18] Yeah. So the policeman is already trying to manipulate a potential participant in this case in a way that likely. I mean, unless the police officer really smelt alcohol. But I, I doubt it. Right.

Julia [01:44:37] I. I doubt it too. I don't.

John Dehlin [01:44:40] Yeah. So anyway, pay attention, crowd, because this comes up later. No more dad jokes.

Matt Gillespie [01:44:45] Sorry.

Guest 2 [01:44:51] So what am I smelling then?

Guest [01:44:55] So him fishing for the alcohol. Remember that? That's important. Later.

Guest 2 [01:45:00] So you're there for about 10 minutes on ring camera, kind of asking for him and all that kind of stuff. After he's saying he doesn't want to answer you and stuff like that. Is that what he said?

John Dehlin [01:45:09] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:45:11] Honestly, I couldn't hear the audio coming out.

Guest 2 [01:45:13] I thought he said he was. So, yeah, he has asked you to be trespassed. So what word are you from?

Matt Gillespie [01:45:24] Yeah, I'm from the Crystal Heights First Ward.

Guest 2 [01:45:29] You're asking questions about a whole. Another ward from a whole different city, from a whole different individual, about a whole different bishop, because he said he score on God.

Matt Gillespie [01:45:42] He score on everything he has.

Guest 2 [01:45:43] That he wasn't trying to take advantage of this person.

Matt Gillespie [01:45:46] I said, okay, that's fine. I just wanted to clear it up

Guest 2 [01:45:49] with you just so I don't have

Matt Gillespie [01:45:51] to build a bishop confidence.

Guest 2 [01:45:56] So he sent you today, Correct? Asked you to be a third party liaison with him. So he was trespassing this residence yesterday. He's using you third party's console. That's ending you up in the same trouble that he's in now. I was unaware I didn't know he was trespass. Probably not best to be a tool for someone else. Well, this isn't Salt Lake County. This is Utah County. We do things differently down here. So if I wanted to, I could push things. Once you trespass from the property, which means you cannot return. If you do, you will be arrested for colonel trespassing, booked into the Utah County Jail.

Guest [01:46:35] So Ben put together this idea that maybe it was Mormon cops who were protecting their own. It could be true.

Guest 2 [01:46:41] This might be a crazy ask, but

Matt Gillespie [01:46:43] could you take a selfie with.

John Dehlin [01:46:48] Okay, just a couple quick reactions. First of all, there's a lot of comments right now about those being dirty cops. I thought it was weird the cops were asking him what his real ward was.

Matt Gillespie [01:47:00] Why does it matter?

John Dehlin [01:47:02] Why would cops care what ward the kid's in?

Julia [01:47:04] Yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say, like, do cops maybe. Maybe Utah cops know the lingo of Mormons, like to say bishop and ward and things like that. Like, they seem like they could very well easily be Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:47:18] Yeah.

Julia [01:47:19] And then I think they say the line twice. They say it again to Ben's friend where he's like, we do things differently here. You're from Cali. He's like, well, we do things differently. And so, like. And they just said that here.

John Dehlin [01:47:28] Yeah, that was. And it'll be played again later. But that's kind of disturbing, this. This idea. We do things differently here also. It just seems like the cops are fishing to try and gather evidence to get Ben in trouble. Is that what y' all felt?

Are the Cops Trying to Frame Ben?

Julia [01:47:45] Yeah, that's. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:47:47] Yeah. They've already got Ben on the radar now.

John Dehlin [01:47:50] I'm just trying to think about it from their perspective, like, Ben's an outsider. Are they thinking. Are they, like, in the pocket of the. The bricks and minifigs guy, or are they just not liking an outsider coming in, a YouTuber causing hassle or stress in the community? Were they briefed by the bricks and minifigs guy ahead of time and said, this reckless Ben guy is causing trouble? Can you help us frame him? Like, I. I've got questions. What do y' all think? What. What did you think?

Julia [01:48:23] Well, in some of the video, in some of the body cam, he's re. Some of them are. I. It's Johnson who's re. Explaining the situation. So it sounds like they are coming at this kind of blind, but maybe. Maybe they did know. Maybe some of them did know. I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [01:48:36] He. He keeps, like, Johnson keeps feeding him stuff, and you could tell he's like, really upset. And I. I would argue it's because. Yeah, because he knows he's in trouble. And some of the things he says, I think are beyond, like, he's. He's making up these threats that aren't really. It's not really a threat. This is a goofball coming up to him, and they're in their way. They're overselling it and making it sound worse than it is, but go ahead. But, you know, the questions of maybe are the cops treating the. The Ben this way because he's not a member, or, you know, maybe just because he's Cali from Cali?

John Dehlin [01:49:18] I mean, in theory, the cop should be neutral. Is this kid a minor? Because if this kid's a minor, I'm disturbed as a dad. I wouldn't want some youtuber recruiting my son into potentially illegal behavior because I'm imagining at some point the kid is like, holy crap, what did I get myself into? The cops are now involved, and I could get in trouble. And then the kid asks for a selfie, which makes me not so sure how afraid the kid is. But do we know if the kid was a minor?

Matt Gillespie [01:49:50] I'm pretty sure he's like, 18 or 19. This is just based on what the cops are saying later. They're kind of describing ages of people they talk to. I don't think they just. In. In the. In. The chief of police might actually give his age, too, but I. I'm inferring He's. He's like 19. Because while they're talking, there's like. Yeah, one of them was 19, one of them was 23. And I'm just assuming that.

John Dehlin [01:50:12] I'm talking about the kid that was just in that video.

Julia [01:50:15] Is it Christian Morgan?

Matt Gillespie [01:50:17] Yeah, because the cops just. So Christian, he. He runs. He. He walks off. He's going to get in Ben's car. That's what's coming up next. And he sees the cops are still following, and he runs away.

John Dehlin [01:50:27] Okay. Because if the kid is 19, I don't think he's in young men's. I think he's.

Matt Gillespie [01:50:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:50:35] When you're young. Young men's traditionally end when you're a senior in high school, and then once you go on your mission, you get ordained an elder, and that's when you're 18 now in the church traditionally. And so once you're 18 or above, you're. I don't think you're hanging out in young men's anymore, which is why I asked the question about him being a minor.

Julia [01:50:59] I. I Just Googled it. His name, his age wasn't disclosed. I don't think the chief of police does say his age, but he does say that he, you know, he left the scene and nobody attempted to reach out to him or anything like that.

John Dehlin [01:51:11] Okay, if the kid is 22, then why is he talking about being in young men's.

Julia [01:51:17] Could it be a story that Ben gave him to. To say. I don't.

Matt Gillespie [01:51:19] I'm just know that Ben wouldn't.

Julia [01:51:21] Oh, that's true.

Matt Gillespie [01:51:22] Like that he would have come up with himself and apparently, I guess he did. He did do some little fibbing here and there when. When the cops first asked him. So that might be part of a cover that's.

John Dehlin [01:51:33] I mean, can we call. Do we want to be fair and say we don't like dishonesty on either side or.

Julia [01:51:39] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:41] To call dead out on that.

Julia [01:51:45] Well, I don't think it's. Well, there's also other things because he's a YouTuber and he is an entertainer and so he could do. He could try like one of the things that's. That's brought up later by the chief of police is he's sending packages of ducks of these rubber ducks. And that Johnson didn't like that or. Or he was. Somebody impersonated a FedEx employee. And so like that's shady. Nobody should be doing that. But also like, what is entertainment like? Yeah, I don't know. There's just like different levels.

Benjamin on Benji's Arrest

Matt Gillespie [01:52:12] They were also. They're trying to approach him just to talk to him. And that was just the guys to approach him. And it was extra trolley that it was a box of ducks.

John Dehlin [01:52:21] I mean, I, I get that Ben's an entertainer and I, I get that this stuff is fun for him and for other people. And I'm not trying to be moralistic, even like what my actual feelings are again, like a ref. I'm just trying to.

Julia [01:52:34] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:35] Call balls and strikes. If that kid's a minor, I have a problem with it. It sounds like he's not. But then if he's not, then they're lying about him likely finding the video as a young men because he wouldn't be 22 and be sharing a video with young men. So anyway. Questions?

Julia [01:52:54] Yeah.

Police Try To Get Ben To Confess In A First Vehicle Stop

John Dehlin [01:52:54] All right. So now the police get involved. Do you want to set this up, Julia?

Julia [01:52:57] Yeah. So this next one, this is just the. So there's different parts that are like, worth talking about. And so this first one is the. Is one of the reasons for the. The first vehicle stop because the, the police Seem to always be. As soon as he gets to Utah, the police seem to always be trying to stop Ben. And so this is one of the first stops that they. That they make.

John Dehlin [01:53:18] Okay, all right, now this is where it gets disturbing for me. So this is. This is called First Vehicle Stop. Fishing for Reasons to Arrest. And, yeah, it's troubling. All right, I'll play the clip.

Matt Gillespie [01:53:34] Can we just have him pick his friend up?

Guest 2 [01:53:36] And they're probably.

John Dehlin [01:53:37] So these are police officers sitting in their car, talking from one car while they're looking at a police officer talking to the car they pulled over ahead, right?

Julia [01:53:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:48] Okay. Make sure.

Guest 2 [01:53:50] Tired of dealing with the police at this point?

John Dehlin [01:53:52] I'm not sure.

Guest 2 [01:53:54] Yeah, was gonna. I was gonna scare him a little bit and let him go is all I really was gonna do.

Guest [01:53:59] But the initial purpose of the stop, the initial Terry detention, if you will, was to investigate the relationship between Morgan and Ben. Well, Morgan is gone. He spoke to Ben. Ben said, yeah, we don't really know the guy. So what information do they really have to go on at this point? They don't have any information. Instead, the officer turned the detention into a scenario where he's like, you know what? We're gonna scare them a little bit and then let them go. That's not a lawful stop. And at this point, the stop has already been going on for at least 10 minutes. They collected their IDs. They know exactly who they are. What is the purpose of the stop? So to me, this already is turning into a clear cut Fourth amendment violation that, based on the information available right now, should overcome the qualified immunity defense. Let's keep watching because.

Guest 2 [01:54:59] In the car.

Matt Gillespie [01:54:59] Huh? How many are in the car?

Guest 2 [01:55:01] Two are in the car, One in the back seat, and then Tyler in the front seat and wherever freaking this guy's hiding. So are they trying to just pick him up and get. Get out of here, or do we have charges? Are we just tired of them being annoying? I was gonna try to link it to get Ben to say, like. Because he said that Ben sent him. So if I can get Ben and say, yeah, well, I did tell him to go over there and do that, then I have harassment charges on Ben. But also at the same time, I don't care that much. It's more of just the fact that they're trying to be sneaky about it.

Guest [01:55:36] Well, the cop wants to keep them detained so he can get Ben to make some kind of confession. Guess what? The officer would not have even considered this if Ben just said lawyer immediately. And Was not willing to talk at all. But now the cops are starting to game plan to figure out if we just keep them there long enough, we'll get them to say what we want them to say. And that's in line with. They already say that they're annoying. They don't care as much.

Julia [01:56:05] But.

Guest [01:56:05] But they don't like that they're being sneaky. Well, guess what? Being annoying and being sneaky is not against the law.

John Dehlin [01:56:14] Yeah, like, I'm just. This was really troubling. Why would cops be trying to fish for ways to get Ben in trouble? Like, yeah, Ben's being sketchy, or Ben's up to mischief. Yes, he's an outsider, but is it ever a cop's job to try and almost entrap or trick or manipulate someone into self incriminating? I don't even know if I'm using the right words, but that felt gross to me.

Julia [01:56:46] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [01:56:47] It happens over and over in these. In these videos that they're just trying to find something. And. And, like, there'll be one cop, and he'll be like, some of them like, why are we doing this? What? Know what? Yeah, it's. It's interesting to hear them talk with each other.

John Dehlin [01:57:04] Julia, what were you thinking or feeling? What's your reaction?

Julia [01:57:06] That's where he's like, I don't really care the reason why. But they're. I don't know. He just. I don't know. It's just.

Matt Gillespie [01:57:12] We're just gonna get him.

Julia [01:57:13] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:16] I just don't like the idea. I live in the state. I just don't like the idea that there are cops out there who have an agenda and they're trying to manipulate people into doing something wrong.

Lawyers Criticize the American Police Department

Guest 2 [01:57:28] Well.

Julia [01:57:29] And that you'll see that in the other clips, they're trying to get them to confess to something that they're not guilty of.

John Dehlin [01:57:33] Yeah. I should credit the. The YouTube channel that we're pulling these clips from is called clearly established, and it looks like it's a lawyer who's analyzing the American fork police department's behavior, and he has a really great job. So shout out to. Clearly,

Matt Gillespie [01:57:52] all of the big legal YouTube guys have. Have been weighing in, and it's. It's. You can find all kinds of content. It's.

Guest [01:58:03] It's.

Matt Gillespie [01:58:03] It's big.

John Dehlin [01:58:05] Yeah. Okay, so this next one is. Is where they actually do a drug search.

Drug Search NSFW

Julia [01:58:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:13] All right. Do you want to say anything y' all want to say before we show the clip? Because this is disturbing.

Julia [01:58:17] I feel like we can just show it.

John Dehlin [01:58:18] Okay. All right, let's play it.

The Harassment Stop

Guest [01:58:22] So the original stop was at 7:18pm we are now at 7:32pm and the officer has made clear that he was probably going to let him go, but he wanted to scare them first. And the reason, again, was because they're annoying, they're sneaky. And he's just now representing. Yeah. The harassment code. This doesn't meet that definition. I'm probably going to let them go. But he doesn't let them go. So we have here. Even if the initial stop might be lawful, the prolonging of the stop can be unreasonable. And that prolonging without any lawful basis is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So what do they do next?

Guest 2 [01:59:06] You say anything or.

Guest [01:59:07] No,

Guest 2 [01:59:10] I don't think his radio works. Anything weird?

Matt Gillespie [01:59:17] Got anything weird?

Guest 2 [01:59:22] He popped gum.

John Dehlin [01:59:25] Come over to talk to him.

Guest 2 [01:59:27] His eyes kind of look a little.

Guest [01:59:30] Were you aware that when you decide to chew a piece of gum in front of an officer that you lose your Fourth amendment rights? Yeah, I wasn't aware of that either.

Guest 2 [01:59:39] Yeah, I saw it in the other one, so I'm not surprised that they were doing it as a group. How old are they all?

Julia [01:59:46] They're all.

Guest 2 [01:59:47] They're all underage. Try to get right in his face. They're 19 and 23.

Julia [01:59:58] Hey, look at me.

Guest 2 [02:00:00] Yeah, we could ask him because you snowed it on either guy guy, Right. Yeah. So, I mean, conjointly, if he's drinking, this guy's probably the one that purchased it for them. Right. Much if I. I just get in close to him. I mean, without getting in his car. But.

John Dehlin [02:00:20] Yeah,

Guest 2 [02:00:24] at the Furry Tail, I'm interested

Guest [02:00:27] to know if that's code for something involving strategy with the narcotics dog. I. I don't really know, but it's such an odd thing to say, especially at that point in the conversation. I don't know if any of you are familiar with that area. Is there an area called Furry Tail? Because it just stuck out as odd to me.

Guest 2 [02:00:51] Okay, I'll. I'll talk to the driver again, see if I see something. And then can you just make the passenger find an id Because I can't find it anymore.

Guest [02:00:59] If you're wondering why there's no audio, it's because either this officer muted his camera or the version that the police produced omitted the audio. So we don't really understand what happened here other than what we can see. And it's that they gave Tyler a series of tests, and obviously he was never charged or arrested with anything. From this event. So he must have passed. Which was consistent with their discussion that they didn't really observe anything. They just. They speculated.

Matt Gillespie [02:01:39] Just for your information, I'm Officer Croton.

Guest 2 [02:01:41] I'm a key nine officer.

Matt Gillespie [02:01:43] Officer Hawkins had asked that I ran

Guest 2 [02:01:44] my dog grinder vehicle to an open air open set.

Julia [02:01:48] Oh,

Guest [02:01:52] so it doesn't sound good. Stop letting these cops get away with what they're doing. Okay, so maybe Tyler almost seemed to consent.

Police Hold A Minor For Search Without Evidence

John Dehlin [02:02:03] Okay, I'm gonna pause. Just. I want to process what we've seen so far. So, for those who don't know, the fourth amendment is, you know, it was added as the number four amendment to the US Constitution back in the, you know, 1780s. It's clearly a result of the British government, you know, using unethical law enforcement tactics or behaviors on the colonists. Right. It was important enough then that they made it number four in the Constitution. Unreasonable search and seizure. You can't just break into someone's home and search and turn everything over or whatever. Or, you know, you got to do things like get a warrant and have probable cause and those sorts of things. I don't know the law. I'm not a lawyer. But clearly the fourth amendment's important, or it wouldn't be an amendment to the Constitution. And so they're detaining these kids. It's nighttime now, and they're like, well, did you fight? Did you see anything weird? Oh, I don't know. He popped some gum. His eyes looked a little glossy. And then it's like, oh, did you. Well, you smelled alcohol. It's like they're trying to create a story that maybe the older guys bought alcohol. What, for the. The kids that would be under 21.

Matt Gillespie [02:03:25] Yeah. For Morgan, for Christian.

John Dehlin [02:03:28] And then all of a sudden, the audio's redacted. So they're literally censoring audio. I guess they would claim maybe it was for. To protect the. The kids. I don't know, but it just seems super sketchy. What's your reaction, Matt? And then I want to hear yours.

Matt Gillespie [02:03:47] They, like, for the redaction, they say, well, we did this because. To protect names or there was an address or something. But later on, when we do hear what's said, no, that's not the case. But, yeah, they. They are just looking. Just looking for anything. And you're talking about the time, and it's dark, I think, based on. Clearly established he was looking at the time things, and, like, they were there for at least an hour and a half, something like that.

John Dehlin [02:04:13] Somebody writes three hours in the comments? Three hours.

Matt Gillespie [02:04:17] Second stop. The second stop was three hours. This one was like an hour and 15 hour and a half, from what I recall. And it, like, really should just been a couple of minutes.

John Dehlin [02:04:26] Yeah. What did they do? What did they do to deserve this stop?

Julia [02:04:30] Yeah. So. So if I'm getting this correct, so. So the boy, Christian Morgan, this Mormon boy or not minor, I don't know how old he is. He shows up at the guy's house, Johnson, and the guy, the police says, you smell like alcohol. And he's like, no, I haven't been drinking. There's no evidence that this boy has been drinking. Just something that the officer says he smells. And then. Then they pull these guys over and do it. Do this huge search without evidence. Like, there's no bottles, there's nothing. There's no alcohol. I don't know. Like, the guy pops gum, and he's like, there's evidence that. It just seems really canine. Yeah. Is that this one or is that the next one?

Matt Gillespie [02:05:08] No, the dog's here.

Julia [02:05:10] Oh, he's here. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:14] Did the American force Police department press release guy that shares his video later, didn't he say that originally they were stopped for running a stop sign or running a red light or something?

Matt Gillespie [02:05:25] That was a different one. Okay, Stop, like, so many times.

Julia [02:05:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:31] Okay. All right. Well, I'm. I'm sorry. I don't have all the facts. I'm learning this along with y', all, so I'm just trying to understand why they were stopped at all. So do we know why this stop happened?

Animal Arrest in American Fork

Matt Gillespie [02:05:42] Because they saw Christian Morgan walking towards the car, and they're like, okay, let's. I mean, it just that the. The logic, the reach, it's like, so what? He's getting in their car.

John Dehlin [02:05:56] Okay, yeah, this is this.

Matt Gillespie [02:05:58] But he actually ran away when he got to the. Because he saw the cops showing up, and so he ran off, and the cops let him go.

John Dehlin [02:06:05] This is super sketchy on the part of the American Fork Police Department. All right, let's keep playing, because this is when he pulls the dog out, right?

Guest [02:06:14] And. Or agreed to the dog to go around the vehicle. So that would almost stop what ended up happening with the prolonged seizure. Because at this point, does it now turn into a consensual encounter? That is where there could be some legal discrepancies, something to look into. But what I do know is from the time they determine that there was no crime earlier in the night, so the time that they prolonged it up to that point is still a Fourth amendment Seizure. So I'm not too concerned about that. But what's interesting here is they've already removed the other individuals from the vehicle and now they have this dog going around the vehicle not once, not twice, but a couple of times before the dog finally alerts. So it would be interesting to me in discovery to see how is this dog trained? Is it trained, for example, that if they were to go around an object a number of times that they automatically alert, was there some kind of signal or something that this officer gave? It's really hard to see without that information. And more importantly, something to get in discovery is going to be every time that this specific dog was involved in a search, how often when that dog hit, was it accurate? Could show whether or not it was actually reasonable to for these officers to rely on that dog hitting. Of course, they proceed to search the vehicle and they find nothing whatsoever. So in the end everyone was free to go.

Reckless Ben On Latter Day Saints

John Dehlin [02:07:57] So really quickly, there's some comments that I think are worth playing because there's people that know this case maybe even better than definitely better than me. But I just wanted to share a couple things. So let's see. Okay, so I'll go to the start. Okay, so, so Chris, Chris Richter, 642 says stop sign was first stop. Second was with Christian Morgan. The second stop was with the drug search. And, and so August Thompson, 3964 says this is the second stop. So thank you viewers and listeners. FC Baker writes, this is literally harassment. They're wasting their time and money. And then Sourpuss Candy writes they can cue the dog to make a false positive and that's they're going to go on to talk about that. And, and then, yeah, Tammy Cam8759 writes, Ben was just on Latter Day Saints, I'm a Nevermo and I hoped you would do this. So yeah, just so everyone's clear, like some people are mad that I don't have all the details straight. I, there's no way I had time to prepare for this. That's why I got Julia and Matt here as well. But also what we're trying to do is make the Mormon people aware of this story. And so we're going over stuff that most of you already know. One, to give a Mormon reaction to it. But two, we've got to explain this stuff to the world of Mormons who have no idea that any of this is going on because we're not followers of reckless Ben or Lego geeks like Matt. And so for those of you who are angry or frustrated or impatient with my lack of knowledge or with how we're covering this slowly. It's because we're trying to give the context necessary to make this a big deal in Utah and with Mormons, because none of the people listening to this podcast who are regular listeners have any idea that any of this is going on. Is that fair?

Julia [02:10:20] Yeah. I also want to say we would love to have Reckless Ben on here. I hope it's okay to speak for you. Like, I've reached out, asked him to come on here, so hopefully he'll respond, so.

John Dehlin [02:10:31] Yeah, totally. And. And I. I emailed him, so hopefully. Hopefully go back.

Matt Gillespie [02:10:35] That would be sick.

John Dehlin [02:10:40] Matt, Julie, did y' all have any other reactions to this video?

Julia [02:10:44] I don't think so. The dog thing is really interesting because, like, circling three times and. And then giving a cue. So I don't.

Guest [02:10:50] I don't know.

Julia [02:10:51] I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [02:10:51] It's the second stop, but the first with the dogs, as far as I know. But, yeah, thanks for getting that right.

John Dehlin [02:10:58] Yeah, yeah, to me, that's. But anyways, it's unreasonable and it's ridiculous and it's unethical, and I. I hope. I hope that, you know, I hope there's some type of repercussions for the. You know. Okay, should we go to the next clip?

American Fork Police: Heroin In The Car

Julia [02:11:22] Was that the. All the. All of that clip?

John Dehlin [02:11:24] Oh.

Julia [02:11:25] Oh.

John Dehlin [02:11:25] Did we not. Did we not finish it?

Julia [02:11:26] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [02:11:27] I. I think we finished it.

Julia [02:11:29] Okay, so I think this next one is the hair. I think this next one is. Is. This would be the third stop, which is the drug stop. Is. I'm not mistaken. I. I feel like he stopped all the time, so it's hard to keep track of. Of everything.

John Dehlin [02:11:42] Okay, so this. Yeah, this. This clip is entitled Heroin in the Car.

Julia [02:11:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:48] So this is. It says vehicle stop 2, heroin in the car.

Julia [02:11:50] It might be.

Matt Gillespie [02:11:51] Yeah, it should be.

Julia [02:11:52] It should be.

Matt Gillespie [02:11:52] Stop three.

Julia [02:11:53] I think it's the second one that's pertaining to drugs.

John Dehlin [02:11:56] Okay. All right.

Guest 2 [02:11:59] But anyways, back to us. The police apparently got a call that we had heroin on us. This officer is going to conduct the

Matt Gillespie [02:12:07] search of your person because.

John Dehlin [02:12:10] Really.

Guest 2 [02:12:11] So he's gonna do that.

Matt Gillespie [02:12:12] I'm gonna put this way.

Guest 2 [02:12:13] And then it'll be. Right.

Julia [02:12:14] Don't.

John Dehlin [02:12:14] No, go ahead.

Guest 2 [02:12:15] Don't reach in your pockets. Okay. The vehicle will be searched. Okay. I'm going to have you stick by with my sergeant. After two hours of searching the car, obviously they found no drugs. So he didn't find. I explained to the police that we didn't have drugs. And the reality of the situation is, is that bricks and minifigs is so desperate at this point that they're willing to do anything to get us arrested so they don't have to pay for the property they stole. And the police was arguing back with just some of the worst comebacks I've ever heard. Which is why I think the police actually redacted this audio in this clip. Because if they kept the audio in, then the world would get to see how stupid the American Fork Police Department is.

Suspects in the Heroin Case

John Dehlin [02:13:08] Okay, so.

Julia [02:13:09] So here we see this, the tie back in with the Law Gorman. Is it Gorman Law. I can never remember where. Law Gorman. Of having heroin. So this is just like a reoccurring theme with Johnson, I guess, is it? Johnson? Who's I?

Matt Gillespie [02:13:23] Yeah. Well, here's. Well, here's the thing is, unless now, because this thing keeps unfolding, unfolding. Julie and I are looking at this and I'm like, oh, my God, did you see this came in? Did you see this came in? But. So I'm not sure. But what. Something I did want to say about the last stop was that was Tyler, that Ben has said he's not a Mormon, but he's a straight edge. He's a straight edge, which means he doesn't do drugs, doesn't do alcohol. And he's like, I took a Tylenol two months ago. But anyway, he said, test me. He's like, drug. Basically saying, I'll take any drug test you want. But they still, you know. Yeah.

Julia [02:14:01] So.

Matt Gillespie [02:14:01] But, oh. What I was going to say is unless unredacted videos have come out that have been. As far as I know, none of the 911 calls have been released. So we don't know. We're assuming it's Johnson is calling. Oh, I see. But as far as I know, we don't publicly know who is calling in saying these guys have heroin. People are dying to get the 911 tapes. Maybe the audience knows.

John Dehlin [02:14:26] So are we thinking that Josh. Josh or Brandon or Ammon or Matt planted the idea of heroin with the police?

Matt Gillespie [02:14:36] Yeah, yeah. Told them someone, like, dropped a dime. Just a bogus reason to shake them down and to stop them. And that's my take on it.

Julia [02:14:48] It's also interesting that the same drug is used, is claimed for both for Chris and then for. For Ben. I wonder if they're. I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [02:14:57] That's like an mo. Some people have even said, oh, he docked. Protest too much. Maybe he Maybe he's involved with the heroin trade somehow. Why does he keep bringing up heroin?

Julia [02:15:06] I don't know. Maybe just the one.

Matt Gillespie [02:15:08] I don't think it's just a hassle. I think it's just a way to. To mess with Ben and try to find something.

Julia [02:15:14] But, like, I've been out of the church. I've been out of the church for several years now, and I still get confused which drugs are which. And so I'm confused constantly clarifying if we're ever the discussion. So, like, maybe this is just something that's like, oh, I know that this is a thing. I don't know. I just.

Matt Gillespie [02:15:28] It's just serious, serious heavy narcotic that's very illegal. And you're usually. People on it are gone. I mean, they're. They're desperate. It's bad. It's a bad thing. It's a bad thing. It's. It's not. It's not aspirin. It's a serious, serious controlled substance.

The Lego Store Theft Comment

John Dehlin [02:15:48] Well, there's so many. We have excellent, excellent commenters that are making comments right now. But I'm just gonna play. I'm gonna play some of the clips because. Or some of the comments just because they're really interesting. So one commenter, very early on dvd, Crockett says that the grandfather is dying. I mean, that's super sad. That's the. The original owner of, of the Legos, right?

Matt Gillespie [02:16:16] Yes. And Brian, apparently the grandfather, the father, didn't know he was keeping it from him because they thought it would like. It would kill him if they told him.

John Dehlin [02:16:24] Yeah, yeah, wicked smart. 74 says the Elko Temple looks like a Lego temple. This is Elko, Nevada. I'm assuming. I picture little Lego people with their Lego temple bags. Donald Rodriguez, 717 writes, the police lied to get a warrant to raid Ben's home. We'll be getting to that soon. This is something Sean Murray, 9964, says. You missed Ben's footage where the cop says, is your name Ben? Even before he talked to the driver. What does that imply, Matt?

Matt Gillespie [02:16:57] They've got his number. They know who he is. And that's really creepy. They walk up, they don't even ask the driver. He's in the back seat. Ben is in the back seat. He's, like, around the Dr.

John Dehlin [02:17:10] So you said they got his number. You mean they knew his name before they started.

Matt Gillespie [02:17:14] Knew his name. And they obviously got it from.

John Dehlin [02:17:16] If they.

Matt Gillespie [02:17:17] I think they already had it. They already had it from Josh, but then they reaffirmed. That when they talked to Christian Morgan.

John Dehlin [02:17:23] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [02:17:24] Because it was right, that was right before it.

Julia [02:17:27] And just to be clear, there's, there's hours of footage with this. And so it's just, we were just trying to pick the ones that are the most important. So like, so yes, we did miss this. But like it's, there's just so much

John Dehlin [02:17:37] and there's the unredacted and the redacted and the combination where they combine. Gordo 6366 writes, can't wait for the upcoming Lego American Force Police American Fork Police Department set. That's funny. I, I, I included that because it's funny. Patrick Go writes, the CEO took over the store and gave it to his friend to steal Legos. So that's the allegation, right, that a viewer is, is making, this is what happens. So it's a fact, no matter how much the CEO wants to lie. So what a listener, viewer is alleging is that the CEO is in on this and that he literally had his friends take over the Oregon store to steal. And that's, that's a, I, that's an allegation. I don't think any of us really know if that's true, but that's someone's opinion. Wordnik A619 says, We're doing a great job of explaining this and trying to be unbiased and fair. So thank you for the affirmation. This is where it gets scary, being a lawful citizen that's concerned about. Another viewer writes, ben's watching on the spoof account, so he's in the chat, man. If Ben, if Ben, if you're watching, we would love to hear from you. We'll have you join our Stream Yard and you can, you can join us live.

Julia [02:18:56] That would be so fun.

John Dehlin [02:18:58] We've invited you to be on the show. Susan McDonald lost all respect for Mormonism and that's what the church needs. The church needs to clean up its act. If there are corrupt police departments in Utah, they've got to realize that this is not a good look and that it just is not going to be good for the church's already horrible reputation if it starts getting around that Utah police departments are corrupt by faithful, active, BYU attending Mormon cops. So anyway, August Thompson writes, I've been watching everything to do with this since it dropped. I'm trying to help clear stuff up. It's a lot of craziness. Y' all are doing great. Other people are saying nice things. Someone writes, this is the second time someone got looked at for heroin involving this case.

Josh Johnson's Stalking and Harassing Case

Matt Gillespie [02:19:52] Neither.

John Dehlin [02:19:52] Neither incident revealed anything. Isn't that a false report? Should the cops go after those who called in?

Matt Gillespie [02:20:01] I think so. I think making a. Making a known false report, yeah, that's got to be illegal. Of course, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not, I don't know Utah law, But it seemed common sense that you can't, you can't do that. I mean, it's like swatting in a way, you know?

John Dehlin [02:20:16] What does that term mean? Swatty?

Matt Gillespie [02:20:19] It's like calling 91 1, making some real dire. Some real bad thing is happening and bringing, like, cops in full force onto someone.

John Dehlin [02:20:27] Okay, we're gonna cover that. We're gonna cover that in a second. Brandy Willis writes, when cops want an excuse, they will manufacture one in way too many cases. I don't want to be anti cop, by the way. My dad was a cop. I love first responders. I generally love and. And value. I'm not a cancel the police type of guy. I'm glad that we have law enforcement in this country and I'm aware that there can be really bad abuses. But I'm. I do not want to be hating on law enforcement. That's not my position. Although I, I want everyone to be honest and ethical, cops included. Open Dopen says these cops are ironically and harassing. And that's interesting because. Yeah, claiming to be trying to prosecute stalking and harassing, but it, it could look to some like they're actually doing the stalking and harassing. And we did get a super, super chat from Cynthia N9W just because. But also, John, watch Ben's videos tomorrow. They're very, very entertaining. I will totally.

Matt Gillespie [02:21:32] You gotta watch them all.

Julia [02:21:33] They're so funny. Like my, My kid was even joining Shoes. Yeah, really good.

John Dehlin [02:21:38] His editor's great. He's brilliant.

Guest [02:21:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:21:40] Mark of Ages writes CEO Ammon did report to the officer that Ben threatened to kill people in the second phone call. What is the legality of this level of false reporting? And we do have a clip coming up of that.

Julia [02:21:53] Well, I don't. Did it say Ben was threatening? Because in one of his other videos, Ben says that they were saying they were making false reports that Ben was threatening. Threatening somebody. Two things going on here.

Matt Gillespie [02:22:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:06] One of the. Okay. One of the.

Julia [02:22:08] We share. We share clips of, of threats being made to Ben, but not the other way around. But Ben has said that those have been circulating too.

John Dehlin [02:22:16] I don't believe that Ben was threatening.

Julia [02:22:17] I don't either.

Matt Gillespie [02:22:18] Yeah, no, no. But that's part of the claim is that he did.

John Dehlin [02:22:22] And then it's been said that Josh Johnson was directly text messaging with multiple officers. That would be so troubling if. True. True. And court records will show that. So I hope this goes to court.

Julia [02:22:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:33] You know. Okay. All right, so let's go to the next clip where they replay this. This. We play differently here.

We Play Differently In The NBA

Julia [02:22:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:42] You want to set this up, Julia?

Julia [02:22:43] Well, they just repeat it again in a different circumstance, so that's just weird to me.

John Dehlin [02:22:47] Oh, this is the second time.

Julia [02:22:49] I think they say it again. Right. Maybe you should play it. But I. I think this is.

John Dehlin [02:22:53] Again, this is dark. Yeah. Okay, let's play it.

Julia [02:22:56] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:22:56] You could end up in jail in Utah when you're from Cali.

Matt Gillespie [02:23:00] Okay.

Guest 2 [02:23:01] Not worth it, right? Yeah, yeah. We play differently here. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I'm willing to cooperate with you guys.

Julia [02:23:10] The first time he says it to Christian Morgan, and now he's saying it to. I can't remember his name. This friend's name.

Matt Gillespie [02:23:14] Tyler.

Julia [02:23:15] Is it Tyler? Okay.

Matt Gillespie [02:23:16] Yeah, yeah. And no, it doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin [02:23:20] Is that, like, we break the law here? Like, what's he saying? We're. We're abusive here. What. What does he mean by we play differently here? We. We follow the rules? More like what. What's implied?

Matt Gillespie [02:23:32] Just that we're in charge and what we. What we say goes.

John Dehlin [02:23:36] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:23:37] Yeah.

Ben Was Arrested Twice For Stealing Money

John Dehlin [02:23:38] All right, well, here's where it gets really, really disturbing. And is this what we mean by swatty swatty when we talk about Ben getting arrested?

Julia [02:23:47] I don't. Is this the time where he gets arrested at the Airbnb?

Matt Gillespie [02:23:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:52] Okay.

Julia [02:23:52] But, yeah, maybe go ahead and play and then we can.

Matt Gillespie [02:23:54] He was. Yeah. Ben actually was arrested twice.

John Dehlin [02:23:57] Okay.

Julia [02:23:58] The first time.

John Dehlin [02:23:59] All right, let's see why then.

Guest 2 [02:24:01] You guessed it. We got. The police called on us again.

Julia [02:24:07] Oh, sure. The paper, the serving.

Matt Gillespie [02:24:09] Yeah, you go.

Guest 2 [02:24:14] Well, they think it's a false

John Dehlin [02:24:18] case.

Guest 2 [02:24:18] What the heck?

Julia [02:24:19] Thank you for holding.

Guest 2 [02:24:20] How can I help you? Trying to speak with someone to verify

Matt Gillespie [02:24:24] if a case is. Just verify if a case is real.

Guest 2 [02:24:32] Yeah.

Julia [02:24:32] Looks like a. A real small claims case in our court.

Guest 2 [02:24:35] Okay. Thank you for your help.

John Dehlin [02:24:39] Thank you.

Guest 2 [02:24:40] I think this phone call was the breaking point for the police. I was rubbing his chin. The police couldn't handle the fact that I was right and they were wrong.

John Dehlin [02:24:58] Am I being arrested really?

Matt Gillespie [02:25:06] Oh, yeah. That was totally bogus. They. They. So he put a sign. He was trying to. By this point. He's trying to. He's trying to serve papers because he said I've done my. I've done my good faith effort to try to talk, to work it out. Didn't work. So now I'm serving this civil suit, and he's. He's following what the law says on how to serve it. He can't get Johnson to get out of the house, so he puts a sign in the public right away that says, I stole this dying man's last. You know, so stole his money, basically, and to taunt him, to try to taunt Johnson to come out. But it's like within his first amendment to put the sign up. But when they arrested him, they actually had the permission of the property owner to hang a bigger banner on the fence saying the same thing. You know, I. I stole this dying man's last hundred thousand dollars. And that's what. That's when they prompted. And I. I still don't understand this. He's like. Because he hung this sign.

Julia [02:26:07] Was it a GoFundMe, though? Is that the go. I'm sorry, There's a lot of players. Was it the GoFundMe sign over the fence? I can't remember.

Matt Gillespie [02:26:14] That might have been it. Yeah. Because it was like, he's like, over a gofundme. I'm like, so. So what's. What's illegal about that? Why can't you have a gofundme?

Julia [02:26:23] But I think at this. But I feel like at this point, he's got this. This. This woman to serve these papers or to help him serve. They go and verify that it's a real case. And I don't think this has to do with the signs yet or if that's already happened or whatever. But I can't remember.

Matt Gillespie [02:26:35] But the rest was over the sign.

Julia [02:26:37] Oh, okay. But they pull him out of the car, right? I just. It's just wild to me that they verify that this is a real thing, and then they arrest him. And he says he didn't know.

Matt Gillespie [02:26:46] That was like a lead up. That was like a lead up to it.

Ammon and Matthew McNeff Sued Their Dad For Tank

Julia [02:26:48] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:26:49] Howdy. 49er says the only legitimate charge they have against Ben is residential picketing.

Matt Gillespie [02:26:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:54] Everything else.

Guest 2 [02:26:55] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:26:55] It's kind of an obscure thing. And that's. That's. I think that's on iffy legal grounds, too.

Julia [02:27:00] Yeah. This whole thing is wild.

John Dehlin [02:27:02] Okay. All right. So that's disturbing. There were a couple comments that I thought were worth sharing that people are interpreting what we do things differently here means. Clancy Knott says it means we make up our own laws here. Brandy Willis says that's a threat John. So basically she's saying we, we do things differently here. Was a threat. Patrick Go says if you hear we play differently here or we don't do that here, you are about to be criminalized by that cop. That's another opinion. Tammy Cam says deep dive. Ammon and Matthew McNeff sued Daniel McNeff, their dad, to take over Legally Mine LLC. Allegedly. So that's basically just saying, yes, brothers are suing their own. No, Matthew McNap is suing his own dad. So it's a litigious family, Is that what it's saying?

Julia [02:28:01] Well, yeah. Ammon and Matthew are suing Daniel, the dad.

John Dehlin [02:28:05] Okay. Ammon and Matthew. So the sons are suing the dad.

Julia [02:28:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:09] Okay. All right, well, I think it's legally theirs. Yeah. All right, play next clip.

Julia [02:28:18] Yeah, so this one he's talking about how he's now figuring out that the Mormon, that the police are members of the church.

John Dehlin [02:28:24] Okay.

Guest 2 [02:28:26] And this call was from Brian, the collector's son who got all their stuff stolen. And he has a theory of what might be going on here. The cops down there are definitely all in with the Mormon community. And being the Briggs and Minifigs is part of that and worth millions. I would not doubt that they have donated hefty sums to the Mormon Church of which all the cops are probably a part of. Yeah, Brandon Best, Joshua Johnson and Eamon the CEO are all super Mormon. Like the CEO even went to the Mormon University. When I looked up all the police officers who were treating me unfairly, they were all Mormon too. And they take care of their own, man. They are like a huge clan that takes care of each other.

John Dehlin [02:29:12] I mean, yeah, there's truth to that. If, if this is a hundred million dollar plus company, that would mean that the, that the executives have paid a lot of money to the church. And I would also say it is in the church's interest, the Mormon Church's interest in Utah to have as many police officers be faithful Mormons as possible. Just because there's so much abuse here, child abuse and other types of corruption, they want as much influence with law enforcement as they could possibly have. So, you know, it just occurred to

Matt Gillespie [02:29:51] me too that the LDS might be upset at this guy for tanking his company because they're losing their 10% of that.

John Dehlin [02:29:58] I don't know, that might be a stretch, but I mean, it is true that we would take care of our own. And it is true that these, these police officers could be buddy buddy with, with some of these guys. And they're kind of scratching each other's back as members of the ins. I don't know.

Julia [02:30:19] Yeah.

Mormons Are Corrupt, Says Commenter

John Dehlin [02:30:20] What's this slide about, Julia?

Julia [02:30:22] So these ones are. Matt, do you want to talk about these ones?

Matt Gillespie [02:30:24] Yeah, these are like some of the incendiary titles and thumbnails that are coming out. This one says how Lego taught the world to hate Mormons again and how their response. I don't even know what the rest of it is. And the other one says Reckless Ben exposes. Exposes massive Mormon mafia and police corruption.

John Dehlin [02:30:44] So this is just bad press the church is getting. How about these?

Matt Gillespie [02:30:48] These are all comments from different YouTube videos that I've been watching as part of the research. And not, you know, there's a lot of comments.

Guest [02:30:58] I.

Matt Gillespie [02:30:58] Now I will say I think they're not as prevalent now, but maybe it's because it's more in the legal realm. But over and over you see Mormon mafia, Mormon conspiracy cartel.

Julia [02:31:09] Yeah, yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:31:10] Isn't just the police. The entire system is run by a Mormon cartel who all look out for each other. It's been an open secret for years. And this one talks about that they're running a mafia system. There's. And there's more. We can. And I. And I don't mean to, you know, I guess I don't want to offend Mormon folks, but I just wanted to show that these are kind of like, you see these statements, you know, why are they protecting these thieves? The answer is Mormon mafia. And I just see these type of comments in. In all these videos across. So they're the. This whole, you know, how the. How the corporation, how the police have been acting has really reflected poorly on. On Mormons in general. And I just think the folks in the Mormon sphere need to. Need to understand that. That this, that this is what's going on. And it's a. It's a really bad look.

John Dehlin [02:32:08] Another commenter says now it's out in the open that a cult controls the police force. Insane. Over some plastic blocks. Get the children away from these people. Like, I don't know. Okay, there's more. People no longer trust Bam. Mormons or the American Fork Police Department. Mormons are corrupt. The entire history is steeped in corruption. Mormons plus police plus corporation equals RICO case. Like, I don't know. To some extent this is probably overblown, but there's also maybe something to it.

Matt Gillespie [02:32:43] Like, I think that's an outsider's perception. You know, there's a lot of comment. Not all of them, of course, but there's a lot of that in There. And there's a real. This. To me, this is a bigger scandal than others in recent memories. As far as tarnishing the name or tarnishing the organization.

John Dehlin [02:33:04] Yeah. Whether or not this is my opinion,

Matt Gillespie [02:33:07] whether or not it's fair, that's what's going. That's what I see in the comments.

John Dehlin [02:33:11] Yeah.

Utah Police Department Explains Why Everything Is Redacted

Julia [02:33:13] Okay, so this next clip is probably the one that I find the most disturbing about the. The videos being redacted. And Ben calls them out on it.

John Dehlin [02:33:22] All right, let's play it.

Guest 2 [02:33:25] Oh. So I caught up the police station to find out why all the redactions

Julia [02:33:29] are done pursuant to the Utah state code. We don't redact things just because we feel like it or, you know, just because something looks funny. Everything is redacted pursuant to Utah State code. And other than that, I. I can't really delve into any more detail, but

Guest 2 [02:33:44] the police made a mistake. They actually accidentally forgot to mute this police officer's audio. So when you sync the two clips together, I can actually hear what they're saying here. Is it an occasional crime? Is it disorderly conduct? Why is he upset about it? I mean, I guess, but that's not. Yeah, this police officer is right. Just because this might make Josh upset does not make this poster illegal. So I decided to let the police department know that. That some of the redactions they made aren't exactly what they're claiming they are. I think you guys might have accidentally forgot to redact another clip that was at the same time. And when I synced the two clips together, I was able to see what they were saying, like what the redaction was. And he was talking about how what we're doing actually isn't illegal and how the police officer might be wrong. And so it wasn't about a protecting a victim. It wasn't any personal information. And so I was wondering. It seems like there might be a lot of stuff like that that got redacted, maybe to protect the police officers, not to protect the victims, if that makes sense.

Julia [02:34:49] And so, yeah, we don't do that. So, like I said, anything that's redacted is pursuant to Utah State code.

Guest 2 [02:34:54] I can tell because when I sync the two clips together, I'm actually able to see that that's what the redaction was.

Julia [02:35:00] Okay, well, that didn't happen.

Guest 2 [02:35:02] That. That definitely didn't happen.

Julia [02:35:06] No, I don't do that, Ben. I follow the Utah state code, like I just said.

Guest 2 [02:35:11] Okay. I don't know. It seems like the police department redacted this Entire conversation. Because right here, the police are actually admitting to themselves that none of this is illegal, but they're still going to try to arrest us anyways. It seems like the only reason they're getting rid of this audio is to protect the police officers from getting fired.

John Dehlin [02:35:34] Julia, tell us why that. What was so disturbing about that?

Julia [02:35:37] Well, that definitely didn't happen. Ben, like, just. Just. It's someone. He's showing us the footage. We've got the video of the police officers. We've got the audio clipped in. Like, we can see that's what he's saying. Like that. You can see his mouth. He's all lining up. And like, she's just. Like, that didn't happen. Like, I don't know. It's just really frustrating.

John Dehlin [02:35:55] I mean, it could be she doesn't believe that they would do that. You know? Know what I mean?

Julia [02:35:59] But she's also saying, I don't do the one editing these things. Oh, she's.

Matt Gillespie [02:36:04] I. Yeah.

Julia [02:36:04] I don't. I don't understand that.

John Dehlin [02:36:06] She's the one who was editing.

Julia [02:36:07] That's what it sounds like. I don't do that.

John Dehlin [02:36:09] And it's really clear in that clip that. That they. That Ben unredacted, basically, that. That one of the officers was saying, what you're doing isn't right, in effect. And the other officer is trying to fish for reasons to arrest him. Right.

Julia [02:36:27] I feel like this happens to Ben all the time, though. He confronts, like, this is the law. This is how it works. This. He brings the Oregon Law book and he's like, this is how it works. And he's constantly being told, no, it's not. No, it's not. Like, this doesn't happen, or like, it's just really frustrating seeing all this play

John Dehlin [02:36:42] out and he just calls people on it.

The Unredacted Body Cam Footage

Julia [02:36:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] Yeah, that. That is super. That is super disturbing, that clip.

Matt Gillespie [02:36:49] For me, it's. And again, as an outsider and just looking at church history and everything, this is like classic gaslighting.

John Dehlin [02:36:58] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:36:59] Yeah. We never did a thing. We never said we'd cut our necks. We never. You know what? I think you've said it on your. Your show. You know what was an anti Mormon lie is now in the Gospel topics essay buried in a footnote somewhere. Yeah, we didn't do that.

John Dehlin [02:37:15] Yeah. So we have such great viewers. So August E. Thompson writes, and now that the unredacted body cam footage has been released, we know that's what happened. The PD is claiming that all redactions were specifically at the request of the D.A. the district.

Matt Gillespie [02:37:37] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:37:40] The D.A. meaning the district attorney.

Julia [02:37:45] Maybe she can clarify. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:48] Huh.

Julia [02:37:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:49] Yeah.

Julia [02:37:50] So. So with this next video. This is my. These are my. Ed. If we're ready to move on.

Ammon Mormon Is actively Suing Brian Mansell Over Leaked

John Dehlin [02:37:55] Yeah. Yeah. Here's a question, Ryan. Blair Rigby writes, I want to know how the heck Ben got the unredacted videos. He describes the leaked body cam footage origins by saying someone hacked into afpd. Seems unlike.

Matt Gillespie [02:38:11] Yeah. Big question. What? You know, is he just saying that, or how do you get it was there? Maybe he brainwashed. He's got someone else in his Lego cult on the. On the American force.

Julia [02:38:22] Oh, he does say that.

John Dehlin [02:38:24] There's another one. Ammon Mormon is actively suing Brian while saying he wants to make Brian whole. How do Mormons square this, Julia?

Julia [02:38:35] I don't know. That doesn't make any sense. I just found out that he's suing him. Brian Mansell.

Matt Gillespie [02:38:39] He's saying, I'll. I'm willing to let Brian out of the suit, but he's not gonna let Ben or any other 15 they call him.

Julia [02:38:47] What is he. Did he. I. I didn't find the lawsuit. But what is. What is Ammon suing him for? Is it for defamation? Is it. I. I don't understand. What.

John Dehlin [02:38:57] I don't know. Maybe someone says the AFPD confirmed they themselves accidentally leaked them. I'm not joking.

Julia [02:39:05] So if you have a source for that, can you leave that. Yeah. In the comments? Okay.

AFPD Leaks Dropbox Data

John Dehlin [02:39:11] So this next is so fun to get this stuff real time. Somebody writes AFPD put the Dropbox link in their email. They downloaded the unredacted files before they deleted it. Oops.

Julia [02:39:25] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [02:39:26] All right. Wow. This is all. Isn't it crazy? People are feeding us real time.

Julia [02:39:30] Yeah. That's really nice.

Matt Gillespie [02:39:31] It's awesome.

Police Redacted EVERY CLAIM Josh Made About Ben!

John Dehlin [02:39:32] What's the next clip?

Julia [02:39:33] Okay, so this one is my edit. So I took Ben's video and I just clipped every single time that you. That he's presented with redacted video. So that's just. This is just a compilation of these little clips.

John Dehlin [02:39:44] All right, let's play it.

Guest 2 [02:39:48] And the police was arguing back with just some of the worst comebacks I've ever heard. Which is why I think the police actually redacted this audio on this clip. Because if they kept the audio in, then the world would get to see how stupid the American Fork Police department is. And then the police department illegally redacted this conversation too. My guess is that they acknowledge that it's very obvious we don't have drugs on us, but they were Going to try and pressure us into giving some type of false confession. Anyways, sadly, we can't see the police officer serve Josh because the police department redacted all of it. And then for the rest of this footage, the police redacted all of the audio. Anyways, the cops probably felt pretty stupid when they searched our entire house and didn't find any stolen legos. Again, the police illegally redacted this conversation to avoid them looking stupid, But I'm pretty sure that's what they were talking about.

Matt Gillespie [02:40:38] We'll also be able to hear Josh's

Guest 2 [02:40:40] side of the story because I think

Matt Gillespie [02:40:41] he's said a lot of lies to you guys.

John Dehlin [02:40:43] It'll be.

Guest 2 [02:40:44] And I never talked to Josh, but it'll be documented in the report as well. Okay, thank you so much. But the detective was lying. The police have illegally redacted every single claim Josh has made about me. And when I finally go to court, I'm going to be completely blind to what I'm even being charged for.

John Dehlin [02:41:02] Yeah, that's a problem.

Julia [02:41:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:06] So. So Ben. Ben's gonna be going to court.

Matt Gillespie [02:41:09] Oh, yeah. He's got several court cases. His first one is July 1st.

John Dehlin [02:41:14] I mean, that could be a international news spectacle if this keeps growing. Right.

Matt Gillespie [02:41:20] You know, I thought Julia was based. I didn't realize she was based near the Garden of Eden. And I thought she was in Utah. Also, I said, get your press credentials now, because it's going to be a circus. And there's going to be, like, busloads of Ben fans are going to be at the Utah county courthouse.

Julia [02:41:37] Maybe we'd have some listeners sitting in or something. Police.

John Dehlin [02:41:41] If the police officers in the state are smart, they'll drop these charges.

Matt Gillespie [02:41:46] Yeah. The person who said that. That they were redacted due to the D. A. That is just another spine.

John Dehlin [02:41:55] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:41:55] If the DA Is behind that.

John Dehlin [02:41:58] Yeah, because that would be corrupt.

Matt Gillespie [02:42:01] Yeah. There's just another level. Another level of. Of corrupt, because we haven't even talked about the judges yet.

John Dehlin [02:42:07] Yeah. Okay, let's go ahead and do the next clip, shall we?

Julia [02:42:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:12] This is where Josh claims Ben. Josh claims Ben stole the legos. Yeah. All right, that's interesting. Ben stole the legos. All right, let's hear this.

Police Search My Home For Stolen Legos

Guest 2 [02:42:25] But I had no clue that it was about to get way worse.

Matt Gillespie [02:42:39] Police department.

John Dehlin [02:42:39] Make yourself known.

Guest 2 [02:42:53] Don't move like that. You understand me? Don't move like that. Okay. Yeah. This cop pulled my arm so far back, it dislocated my shoulder. He claims it's because I was attempting to make an escape or something. Don't move like that. You understand me? Don't move like that.

Matt Gillespie [02:43:07] Don't move.

Guest 2 [02:43:08] Quick, everybody just chill. But if we go back a little different, it you can see I was being completely still when he grabbed me, and I actually made zero quick movements. So this police officer is just straight up lying so he can give me a serious injury.

John Dehlin [02:43:23] Included in the warrant.

Guest 2 [02:43:24] Our Lego. Yes. The police department got an official warrant to search our house for stolen Legos. I should have seen this coming. Josh did threaten me in the last video that if I go out and actually try to sue him, and he's gonna come out and say that I'm the one that stole the Legos. Okay, let's do it.

John Dehlin [02:43:42] You, man, you stole them.

Guest 2 [02:43:44] I stole the Legos.

John Dehlin [02:43:46] Yeah, you're thief.

Matt Gillespie [02:43:47] Dang.

Guest 2 [02:43:49] Okay, you can shut the up. That's your choice.

Julia [02:43:52] Oh, my God.

Guest 2 [02:43:53] I'm gonna fast forward a little bit just to give you guys some context, but I actually got a copy of this warrant. The reason they were searching our house was it says there is now certain property or evidence described as any stolen merchandise, specifically LEGO merchandise. Evidence of illegal conduct on us that we stole the Legos.

John Dehlin [02:44:17] So much is disturbing there. The fact that they're squatting this guy for Legos with guns drawn, breaking into his house. The fact that they're dislocating his shoulder when he was just.

Julia [02:44:32] I will say. I will say Ben says in another video that he had been in a. I don't know if he was, like, on a zip line or something. Oh, I thought it was on his zip.

Matt Gillespie [02:44:40] Well, he's. He's busted his shoulder a bunch.

Julia [02:44:43] He's. He's put his right shoulder out, so it's easily dislocatable. He says for normal people, this probably wouldn't have dislocated their shoulder, but for me, for him, it did. And, yeah, so he wanted to.

John Dehlin [02:44:53] There still was some force, right?

Julia [02:44:55] Well, there must have been the other issue.

Matt Gillespie [02:44:58] Yeah, the other issue was the cops said, oh, you made a sudden move.

John Dehlin [02:45:02] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:45:02] You lunged.

John Dehlin [02:45:03] Not see a sudden move there.

Matt Gillespie [02:45:05] No, no, the. The other. There's a lot of aspects with this Airbnb one that is super duper creepy. Is that in the affidavit to get the search warrant, the Airbnb owner says they overheard Ben and his guy and his people talking about stolen Lego. And people are like, does this guy have cameras and this thing? Or is this guy like the Six Million Dollar Man? And Julie, I know I'm being an old guy again, but does he have, like, supersonic hearing somehow. People are creeped out, or they just say, well, that's just a lie or what, you know, But. And this is wrong to get a guy to swear to this. And we'll also get to it. The fact that. I guess it was a. According to some legal people, it was a search warrant. There was no arrest. There was. It was not supposed to be an arrest. It was just to seize evidence, basically.

Julia [02:45:56] Yeah. Also, I want to talk about his language. This is Josh's phone call.

Matt Gillespie [02:46:00] Not Mormon.

Julia [02:46:01] Yeah, super. Not Mormon. To say all the things that he was saying.

John Dehlin [02:46:05] Like, I mean, I guess Mormons are humans, too. And there's some Mormons that swear and some that don't. But, I mean, if these guys are active, faithful Mormons, you shouldn't be lying and falsely accusing people of stuff. You certainly shouldn't be swearing like that. When I was a faithful Mormon.

Julia [02:46:23] But also to just turn around and say, well, you stole them. Like, he has. No. There's nothing to base that on. It just seems so silly.

John Dehlin [02:46:30] And then to have the cops just believe that.

Julia [02:46:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:34] And then to swat the guy and then to just look.

Julia [02:46:40] Yeah. For guns drawn. Is that. Yeah. Yeah.

Airbnb Host Arrested for Stalking

Matt Gillespie [02:46:47] Outrageous. That's why this thing is blowing up.

John Dehlin [02:46:50] Like, I am terrified to go into Utah county right now a little bit.

Julia [02:46:54] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:46:54] There's. That's another comment you see all the time. Utah sucks. I'm not. Utah's off my bucket list. Blah, blah, blah.

John Dehlin [02:47:01] Tip for tool says. It seems like two separate warrants were filed. One was for arrest of Ben due to sending someone else for stalking. Second was due to mention Airbnb owner mentioning stolen Legos.

Matt Gillespie [02:47:19] That could be. Yeah. There could be two warrants.

John Dehlin [02:47:25] Yeah. But this is just creepy and scary. Anything else you want to say about that?

Julia [02:47:31] No, I think I was. That was good. Just while that. How the stories keep kind of changing from the CEO and the. The. The bam side.

John Dehlin [02:47:40] Yeah. The fact that somehow they. They must have gotten a. I mean, the American Force Police Department must have gotten a warrant to be able to swat this guy with guns drawn and basically break into his house.

Matt Gillespie [02:47:52] And a judge signed it.

John Dehlin [02:47:54] How would a judge have signed such a fake, spurious allegation?

Julia [02:47:59] I don't know.

Matt Gillespie [02:48:01] Did he do any mafia?

John Dehlin [02:48:06] You know, I think. Go ahead.

Matt Gillespie [02:48:09] They just took. I mean, it could just be they just took this guy's side. No matter, you know, whatever he says, he. He's. He has some standing in the community. He's. He's a. He's an owner.

Julia [02:48:21] He's a business well, and we'll. We'll talk about that too in these next slides. Because I'm really curious about what everyone else thinks about what this chief of police is saying.

Chief of Police Explains Why He Said Mormon Stories Needs an Audio

John Dehlin [02:48:30] This is the American fork Police Department. YouTube.

Julia [02:48:33] They have. They have one video.

John Dehlin [02:48:37] The video subscribers.

Julia [02:48:39] Yeah, it was. So the video was published on May 29th of 2026. And I looked at the description and it says, like, when they joined. And I think that means, like, when this was created, the YouTube thing, and it happened. It was. They joined YouTuber. They created this April 23rd of 2026, which is just. I don't know if they created it so that they could release this video. I don't know when all the timing happens, but like, it's. This is just the one video that they have.

John Dehlin [02:49:04] Okay, so this is it. And we're just gonna. What. What is this clip?

Julia [02:49:07] This is just a little clip of him explaining one of the portions of this. And I just want you to listen how long.

John Dehlin [02:49:14] The whole video.

Julia [02:49:15] 26 minute video.

John Dehlin [02:49:16] Okay. You're just playing a clip and you want people to listen to his vote. Tonal vote.

Julia [02:49:20] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:49:21] Okay. All right, let's listen to it.

Guest 2 [02:49:26] Johnson claimed that it's soft.

Julia [02:49:29] The volume is turned up.

Guest 2 [02:49:30] By the way, business partner, personally responsible under the agreement.

Matt Gillespie [02:49:35] Mr. Johnson also reported there were LEGO

Guest 2 [02:49:37] sets believed to belong to Mansell that remained at the store.

Matt Gillespie [02:49:41] According to Johnson, they offered to return those items, but Mansell refused, abused, and continued demanding compensation.

Guest 2 [02:49:49] Mr. Johnson alleged that Mansell had hired

Matt Gillespie [02:49:51] Benjamin Snyder to harass stock, vandalize the store, threatened to murder the manager of the store.

John Dehlin [02:50:00] Naturally, everyone's complaining that they can't hear it, but I think you were trying

Julia [02:50:04] to point with that. So I. I am seeing people saying like, oh, this is like general conference voice or this is asmr. Like, this is how loud it is. Like, I had to download it. Cause I was getting frustrated because I couldn't hear. I had to download it and crank up the sound. So like. So in these next clips, I show I have cranked up the sound. But just. That's just so interesting to me. A lot of people have commented on it. Even Ben did a reaction video and he even had to say, I'm not trying to mock this. I just have a. I'm just sick. Because he was speaking in a softer tone as well. I just wanted to point that out.

John Dehlin [02:50:32] Somebody said, Mormon Stories needs an auto audio engineer. Julia played that soft intentionally.

Julia [02:50:37] I did that intentionally.

John Dehlin [02:50:38] Warn people next time ahead of time.

Julia [02:50:40] Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:50:41] So that they know. Anyway, what's the summary of, of the video, Julia.

Ben Was Arrested Twice For Stalking Another

Julia [02:50:45] So of the 26, I guess I can go through them each point. This isn't everything that he talks on the 26 minutes, but one of the things he says Johnson believed that Ben was sending individuals to his home to harass him in the form of rubber ducks. He says that he didn't like that this box of rubber ducks was sent. Ben and his friends were pulled over for not stopping fully at a stop sign. They denied any involvement in delivering the package. So they did deny it at first. They were trespassed. They were trespassed from Johnson's property. Another day, Johnson reported that another male. This is the young Mormon kid, Morgan or Christian Morgan, showed up at his house to harass him and he was issued a trespass warning. And so he's just ringing the doorbell. He's just waiting at the door. One officer said that they believed Ben's friend was on drugs because his eyes were glossy. After a three hour search, no illegal substance was was found. Ben later admitted that he had sent Morgan. So he's admitting this to Johnson's house and later admitted to sending the package of ducks. Johnson's wife reported that a woman with a fake wig that was really curly wig was taking photos of the house and exposed and expressed concern. Johnson said he was going to shoot someone if this harassment continued. Ben was arrested twice for stalking another. One of Ben's friends was attempting to destroy evidence on his phone when in reality the the friend was just trying to shut off to lock to put the lock screen on. The owner of the Airbnb claimed that Ben had stolen the Lego and had them in his res in the residence. One Police reported that Ben had tensed his arm and grabbed him. Ben later claimed that his shoulder was dislocated. But the image on the screen that we saw showed that it had an L on it. And this Ben says this is just a stock image. I just grabbed a random image because I went, I got arrested. He's like, I don't, I'm not going to show my X ray on there. They were like, oh, maybe he's faking this injury because it's the wrong arm. So that was an interesting thing. And then they said Ben was arrested again for stalking charges. So this is just kind of the summary of all the things that this police chief was saying.

Matt Gillespie [02:52:40] Ben said, of course that's not my X ray. I was, I didn't, they didn't take me to the hospital. I was in jail.

Julia [02:52:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:49] So he just used the stock footage of his X ray and there. And literally the. The american fork police department is claiming fraud.

Julia [02:52:56] Yeah, but he was like, I. He was like, I think better of my listeners that they would just assume that this is a stock photo.

John Dehlin [02:53:02] That's weak. That's such a weak argument. So what's. Matt, what's your overall assessment of. Of the summary of this video that Julia just gave?

Matt Gillespie [02:53:11] Yeah, it's basically. It's catching. It's catching a lot of the lies or the misinformation. Either the chief was misinformed or he's. He's backing his guys too hard or he's just flat out lying.

Julia [02:53:23] That.

Matt Gillespie [02:53:23] That's different. The different views of it. But because you can see, basically Ben has the receipts to say, nope, that's not right. That's not right. And that's not right. And it's just embarrassing. It's embarrassing for that. For the chief of police.

Julia [02:53:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:53:40] Julia, what was most troublesome to you?

Julia [02:53:43] I don't know. The. The parentheses. I put a lot of my own thoughts in the parentheses here. But the. And we'll talk about this again. But he says that he. This chief of police is saying this. I think it's Johnson. I keep getting their names confused. Johnson is saying, I will shoot someone if they keep coming to my house. Like. And then you arrest Ben like this. Where does this make sense?

John Dehlin [02:54:03] Yeah. All right, let's play. So what is this next clip? This is your audio, correct?

Stalking and Targeted Residential Picketing in Utah

Julia [02:54:08] So I just corrected it. It's. He just gives. So basically the 26. It seems like the main focus of this 26 minute video is. Is stalking. Is. Like he is. This is a nuisance. He's just stalking and harassing. So this is just the main piece of it that I have corrected the audio for.

John Dehlin [02:54:22] All right, so we'll play a little bit of his audible voice.

Guest 2 [02:54:27] While officers were speaking with the involved parties, A sign was also located on the park strip across from Mr. Johnson's residence. The sign depicted Mr. Johnson holding U. S. Currency in both hands while standing in front of an elderly man lying

Matt Gillespie [02:54:41] in a hospital bed.

Guest 2 [02:54:43] The sign contained the statement, I stole

Matt Gillespie [02:54:45] a dying man's life savings.

Guest 2 [02:54:48] Snider admitted he had placed the sign earlier that day.

Matt Gillespie [02:54:52] Officer s. Advised snider that based on

Guest 2 [02:54:55] the ongoing conduct being reported and observed, officers believed his actions were approaching the

Matt Gillespie [02:55:00] statutory elements of stalking. Under Utah law, an individual commits stalking

Guest 2 [02:55:07] if the individual intentionally or knowingly engages

Matt Gillespie [02:55:09] in a course of conduct directed at

Guest 2 [02:55:12] a specific individual based on the totality of the known facts. At the time, officers established probable cause

Matt Gillespie [02:55:21] that Schneider had committed the offenses of stalking and targeted residential picketing under Utah law. Schneider was subsequently arrested and transported to the Utah County Jail.

Guest 2 [02:55:36] I mean, I recognize that people are frustrated.

John Dehlin [02:55:38] Oh, sorry.

Guest 2 [02:55:39] Angry. And may feel that justice has not been served.

Julia [02:55:43] I feel like it's done.

John Dehlin [02:55:44] Okay. So I don't like to make fun of people for stuff that they can't control. So I. On the one hand, it's not in my values to, like, make fun of the guy for his voice. So I don't want to jump on that bandwagon, per se, unless. And I'll say I've never heard a cop talk like that before. Talk. I've never heard a cop talk like this before. And it does remind you of, like, Mormon general authorities and kind of Mormon voice.

Julia [02:56:15] Also, for those who are just listening, this is just a man, a chief of police in his. In his uniform and he's at a pulpit and the background is completely white. I don't know if that's normal. I've never seen something like that before. It just seems kind of weird. But. But that's just.

Guest 2 [02:56:29] What.

Julia [02:56:29] For visual reference in the.

John Dehlin [02:56:32] Go ahead, Matt.

Matt Gillespie [02:56:33] I was going to say in the videos when, when his video was first released and I heard it was so soft. Of course, I'm patting myself on the back and I'm in the comments, I going. I think that I was calling it Mormon voice. I like. I think this is Mormon voice. That it's a thing. I think he's talking in this low kind of this cadence, this low, steady cadence. And it's like to try to show some kind of calmness or an authority.

John Dehlin [02:57:00] So that's. As an outsider, as a Mormon, as a non. Utah, that voice struck you as odd?

Matt Gillespie [02:57:07] Yeah, absolutely. People are like, this is creepy. And people like, you know, commentators were. They didn't get it. They couldn't understand. They're like. And we've got clips of that. I don't know if we can show it, but there's some pretty funny reactions are going to.

John Dehlin [02:57:23] I think we may skip those because. Because they're pretty savage. And I, I just, I don't love being savage on the podcast, you know, making fun of people. But I think it was. We are getting a lot of comments. Fundy voice, meaning fundamentalist voice. That's kind of Warren Jeff's voice. Anyway, it did. It does feel like a weird, creepy voice. Again, if it's his real voice, I don't want to make fun of him, but it was odd. That's my awesome Strikes. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [02:57:59] Yeah. My. So my question is when I heard that. Because I'm like, am I the only one who's hearing this? And. And is this. Is this a thing? And I'd asked Julia about it and because people, they just. They're not understanding otherwise. It just. To anybody on the outside, it's absolutely. Just sounds creepy.

John Dehlin [02:58:18] Yeah. Okay, well, let's go ahead and play a little bit of this. Has been reacting to the chief, but it's actually some other youtuber reacting to Ben reacting to the chief. Is that right?

Matt Gillespie [02:58:33] Yeah, it's another legal guy, Bailey of the Runkle.

Josh Johnson on the Threatening to Kill Cops

John Dehlin [02:58:36] Okay. All right. So I. I am interested to hear what Ben. Thanks. About it. Let me go ahead and add the footage really quick.

Matt Gillespie [02:58:48] However, to do that, we are first required to serve him court papers.

Guest 2 [02:58:52] So we did what the law told us to do.

Matt Gillespie [02:58:55] We got a process server and we

Guest 2 [02:58:56] went to his house to do this the legal way. However, Josh did not want to do this the legal way. Instead, called the police on us.

Matt Gillespie [02:59:03] Joshua Johnson contacted police and reported he was going to. To shoot someone. As a result of the ongoing harassment,

Guest 2 [02:59:11] multiple officers immediately responded to the area. Josh was so scared of going to court that he would rather shoot us than accept these court papers. Josh's logic here is that if he can murder the process server and if he can murder me, then he can get away with his crimes because.

John Dehlin [02:59:28] So the audio. The audio is not great. I'm just going to cut. Cut that one, Julie, because the audio is not adjusted well enough. It was too soft.

Julia [02:59:36] Sure. Yeah. That one. That one was really quiet.

John Dehlin [02:59:38] I don't know why that one was summarized. What just got said. Basically. Basically that. That he threatened Josh. Threatened to murder or to. Or to shoot Ben. Is that right?

Julia [02:59:49] Yeah. There was another part of that where he. The chief of police with the white background, he was saying he was served papers on a certain day that it hadn't. Because he says he's a time traveler. Matt, do you want to explain? What. I can't remember the exact timings of all of this.

Matt Gillespie [03:00:04] Yeah, I think. Unless I forget if we had two clips. But yeah, Ben is like. He's hilarious. He's like. He's like, too bad that murder is illegal.

Guest 2 [03:00:14] And.

Matt Gillespie [03:00:15] And then later he says, well, the date. They're trying to say that. That on March 10th, this thing happened, but in reality it's March 13th. So I know the answer to that. It's because Josh is a time traveler, and he's just. He's just great at, like. He's pointing out he's Pointing out the inconsistencies and the baloney and what's being said. And he's doing it in a really funny way.

Julia [03:00:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:00:41] Okay. And so the takeaway there is that the cops are getting the facts wrong and that the cops should be busting what, Josh for threatening to kill.

Julia [03:00:52] Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

Matt Gillespie [03:00:53] And he's got proof to say these guys what. What the. What the chief of police is saying is not correct. And here's. I've got the receipts to show it's not. Yeah.

Airbnb Owner Had A Connection With the Police Department (

John Dehlin [03:01:03] Okay, so this next clip is that there. This was a weird clip that the Airbnb owner had a connection with the American Police Department. Yeah.

Julia [03:01:14] Hopefully the sound is good.

John Dehlin [03:01:16] Yeah.

Guest 2 [03:01:17] Do you remember we were doing hydro with the guy with the Deagle?

Guest [03:01:20] Huh?

Guest 2 [03:01:20] Remember when we did Hydra Drone with the guy with the Desert Eagle? Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:23] This is his Airbnb. He's in my truck right now.

Guest 2 [03:01:27] It's not sm.

John Dehlin [03:01:28] And I told people that he was like, what the. That's so funny.

Guest 2 [03:01:34] Detectives are going to have Oram come and look at these guys to see cuz they have video surveillance of all their guys. So we will keep them on ice until we can start stripping resources. But sounds like the other shifts rolled in. They're starting to take calls.

Julia [03:01:47] Does.

Guest 2 [03:01:47] Which is good.

John Dehlin [03:01:47] Okay. Make sure everything's cleared up.

Guest 2 [03:01:55] This. Yeah, it was great. And the fact that they were coming

John Dehlin [03:01:57] out when we were walking up, the

Guest 2 [03:01:59] main kid had his phone recording, so I shut it off. But the other kid had a GoPro.

John Dehlin [03:02:08] So on the one hand, I would expect in a small town for people to know each other. Police officers have friends too. And so what's the big deal that the Airbnb guy knew and worked with the police officers? So on the one hand, isn't that just small town stuff? Is that a scandal? Is that even Mormon?

Matt Gillespie [03:02:29] I am that people, you know, people just are saying, yep, that's all part of the cabal. But I think it's because the Airbnb guy supposedly he. He's attesting to Ben saying he has stolen Lego and the cops seems too close.

Julia [03:02:45] Also, if I have a question. If the. If the Airbnb man, if the person is calling the police officers and saying that he's overheard or he's seen these Legos or whatever he says, why is he in the cop's car? Like if this. I would assume that this is just a call that they don't really have to have more conversation with this individual. But I don't know. I just. I Just thought that was interesting. That he was in the police officer's truck.

Matt Gillespie [03:03:07] Yeah, I hadn't caught that. That the owner was actually in the truck. That's something I had missed. Something that this footage doesn't say is he mentioned Orem and Provo, but actually earlier he's saying Orem, Provo and Sandy.

Julia [03:03:21] Pds.

Matt Gillespie [03:03:22] They're all talking to each other because Ben or his people had been like visiting those shops. So they're on the radar with all these cities and they're all talking to each other.

John Dehlin [03:03:33] How odd that is for like neighboring towns to be in communication.

Matt Gillespie [03:03:37] I don't know how close they are.

John Dehlin [03:03:38] The other thing, just small town stuff.

Matt Gillespie [03:03:41] The other thing about this video is that at the end, how he's talking about basically quashing their ability to record anything. Yeah, I. I snatched that kid's. I snatched his phone and this other kid. I got his GoPro. You know, I'm like, wow, okay. That seems like, you know, I don't know. Again, I don't know what law enforcement, if that made. If that's standard, you know, to get people to surrender that. But it just didn't come off very good tree sabres.

John Dehlin [03:04:08] You cut off the part when cop says, oops, shouldn't have said that. Other cops said something like, what if those douchebags stole the Lego?

Julia [03:04:20] No, I didn't. I. Yeah, we should have a big.

Matt Gillespie [03:04:23] It was a long clip. Yeah.

Julia [03:04:25] And then. Did you want to explain hydra?

Matt Gillespie [03:04:28] Yeah. So in the comments, people was like, what is Hydra Now? I. I found that it's like a. Just a police activity, like a simulation and like a high stress thing. Like maybe you're doing like a school shooter type of deal or it's interesting that Utah, the National Guard has a thing called hydra. They're just trying to see the connections. And some even people even said, well, maybe they're saying hydro. And there's a thing called you dip your guns. Hydro dipping. I don't know what it is, but people just, they're trying to draw connections because they're like, what is he talking about when he says, you remember that guy from hydra? And that's just. There's just speculation about what the connection is, how they do know each other.

John Dehlin [03:05:09] So kind of paramilitary kind of stuff.

Matt Gillespie [03:05:13] Possibly. Yeah. Or they're just. They're shooting buddies because there's a Desert Eagle and people going, why, why would you know, why does somebody have a Desert Eagle?

John Dehlin [03:05:20] Okay, what is this, what is this saying, Julia?

Joshua Johnson Makes Threats to Kill People

Julia [03:05:25] This next one is a comment that was left on this man's this, this clearly established video. Somebody says the Airbnb owner is a principal at a local school and like all others involved was. Was a graduate of byu. And then they, they doc kind of dox this person. And I don't, I don't want to do that. So I remove those parts.

Guest 2 [03:05:42] But.

Julia [03:05:42] But they're saying that they are a member of the church. And so.

John Dehlin [03:05:45] And again, this is Utah. It's Utah County. Most everyone's Mormon, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Julia [03:05:51] Yeah, it was just interesting to note the connection with the police officer for sure.

John Dehlin [03:05:56] Okay, so Joshua Johnson makes threats. Should we play this clip?

Julia [03:05:59] I think we should. Yes.

Guest 2 [03:06:01] It's the legal way. Instead, called the police on us. Joshua Johnson contacted police and reported he was going to shoot someone as a result of the ongoing harassment.

Guest [03:06:10] Harassment.

Guest 2 [03:06:12] Multiple officers immediately responded to the area. Josh was so scared of going to court that he would rather shoot us than accept these court papers.

Matt Gillespie [03:06:21] Josh's logic here is that if he

Guest 2 [03:06:23] can murder the process server and if he can murder me, then he can get away with his crimes because there'll be no one to sue him in court. However, sadly for Josh, murder is illegal.

John Dehlin [03:06:36] Okay, yeah, we covered that already.

Julia [03:06:39] I just still think it's interesting because, like, it still doesn't make sense to me. And then they're saying later that. That Ben is. Was making threats to the store manager.

Guest 2 [03:06:47] Guys.

John Dehlin [03:06:48] Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Julia [03:06:49] Oh, just. I just think that's really interesting that they're. They just kind of turn the story around and trying. Oh, Ben is it. Ben is trying. Ben is the one threatening to kill us or to kill people. Whereas we have this police chief saying that this is the case. So this is a. This is a. An episode that I found that. Or that I guess Matt, you shared with me where he's discussing. This is. This is. Ammon Gnath is on this podcast. I don't know. I should have grabbed the name of the podcast.

Matt Gillespie [03:07:13] It's a cob. Acob. A couple of brickheadz.

Julia [03:07:17] So he's addressing the Mormon. The Mormon mafia. So these two individuals at the top of the screen are. Are part of the channel. They're not. They're not bricks and minifig at all. Then you have Ammon at the bottom.

John Dehlin [03:07:30] Okay, I don't know.

Guest 2 [03:07:31] I'm not going to touch on the.

Guest [03:07:32] Really.

Guest 2 [03:07:32] This is being pulled into it too. So I'm just going to say. And Brent, you tell me your thoughts.

John Dehlin [03:07:36] I don't want to speak for you, but we're not going to get Into,

Guest 2 [03:07:39] I don't think religious pieces here at all. I, I just, I'm not comfortable with it. And I understand why you guys want to.

John Dehlin [03:07:45] Might want to do that.

Guest 2 [03:07:47] And so I, I will say though, just that being said publicly, like Brent

John Dehlin [03:07:51] and I are not more.

Guest 2 [03:07:52] They asked us to confirm this isn't some big conspiracy. We are not Mormon. I know, but people are saying that,

John Dehlin [03:07:57] so it's like we are not. We have no connection.

Guest 2 [03:07:59] This is the first time Emmett and I have ever talked, period. We have no connection to it. So I did want to answer that, and that's the only time I'm going to touch on that because I just, I don't know. It's not, I'm not comfortable with that,

Matt Gillespie [03:08:09] you know, and, and I know I'm

Guest 2 [03:08:11] not here to, to pontificate, you know, too much, but I gotta, I gotta tell you, you know, like, some of the messages that I've seen that have been sent to me, I, I find it pretty difficult how, how bigoted and

Matt Gillespie [03:08:23] like hateful a lot of people can be. You know, we have franchisees from all

Guest 2 [03:08:27] walks of life in our franchise system

Matt Gillespie [03:08:29] that, that we love dearly and, and

Guest 2 [03:08:31] we want them to be just as

Guest [03:08:32] safe as anybody else. Sure.

Guest 2 [03:08:34] Who might be lds, who, who might. Who aren't, who are whatever they.

John Dehlin [03:08:37] Yeah, I'm with you.

Guest 2 [03:08:38] I would like to zoom past, but I did want to say, like, again, there are no American Fork Police ties that anybody's going to find.

John Dehlin [03:08:44] Correct.

Guest 2 [03:08:45] That ties to the, to LDS or. I mean, look, the state of Utah

Guest [03:08:50] is 50 to 60% LDS.

Guest 2 [03:08:52] Is it a thousand percent? Louisiana is 50 to 60% Catholic. That doesn't mean that everyone that is Catholic, you know, like, does everything that the Catholics want, you know, like just because xyz like people, people look for, it's confirmation bias.

Guest [03:09:06] They just look for things that they

Guest 2 [03:09:07] want to believe and then they find every proof and evidence under the sun

Matt Gillespie [03:09:11] to try and make whatever they want to believe accurate.

Guest 2 [03:09:13] And it's just not the case.

Matt Gillespie [03:09:15] People will need to go outside and touch grass a little bit more often, I think.

John Dehlin [03:09:18] I mean, I'm, I'm mixed on this point. I think on the one hand it is very easy for people that don't like Mormons or outsiders, people that love, you know, Ben or whatever, to just fill in all the holes and assume there's this really big grand conspiracy. So it'd be easy to overestimate the conspiracy that may or may not be going on here. And it's also very possible that there is A coordinated effort, and there seems to be some evidence that there is. So I don't know if any of us really know how coordinated this conspiracy really is with law enforcement. What do y' all think?

Ammon on the American Fork Police Protesting

Julia [03:09:59] It just feels like to me that I don't know of any instance where the American Fork Police sided with Ben. I feel like it's all leaned in Bam's favor. So I just am curious about that. I just feel like that's not. That shouldn't be happening.

Matt Gillespie [03:10:14] For me, the takeaway from that is while that. While. So they invited Ammon on, and the people in the comments were going, why aren't you pushing back on this guy? Why aren't you challenging him? And then people are saying, you must be part of the Mormon conspiracy. Prove to us that you are not Mormon. That's what was going on. That's why they felt. He's like, okay, I've got to address this. And I'm like, wow, the. The assumption from the viewers was, well, obviously, if he's backing this guy, if he's not pushing at him at all, he's part of the same conspiracy. Ergo, these guys are Mormons, too. And I'm like, wow, this is wild.

Julia [03:10:54] Yeah. Okay, so this. So this next one is just showing where I got my next source, and if you guys wanted to see more of these unredacted videos from the police, wow.

Bones and Minifigs ripped off on YouTube

John Dehlin [03:11:06] Here it's Bam sucks brick and Pig sucks. And it's got almost 12, 000 subscribers.

Julia [03:11:13] Yeah. Yeah. And so that's. If you want to go and see these videos. You just.

John Dehlin [03:11:18] Has that been going on a long time, Matt? That. That YouTube channel, or is that brand new?

Matt Gillespie [03:11:22] And I don't know. I'm guessing it.

Julia [03:11:24] Here, let me check, because it can show you the.

Matt Gillespie [03:11:26] Okay, yeah, that'd be great. Because people have been talking about how they've been ripped off before this, and so maybe it is a. Maybe it is a thing. I've never. I have to say, I've never personally done business with any. With any bricks and minifigs.

Julia [03:11:40] It says. It says, joined August of 2024. So it's been around for a little while. I just. I'm assuming that it's gone up in views lately.

Stalking My Neighbors: Call the Police On My Stalker

John Dehlin [03:11:49] This next segment's disturbing. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [03:11:52] Yeah, no, just the police acknowledging. Just. Yeah, I think you should just play it. It's just an unredacted part of it.

John Dehlin [03:11:58] Again, one of the two owners of the. Of the Oregon store. Right.

Matt Gillespie [03:12:03] This is Josh.

Guest 2 [03:12:04] Yep. Yeah, we're able to see a lot Actually, the footage starts with me going to Josh's house so I can serve him his legal court papers. Josh knows that if he goes to court with me, he's going to lose. So instead. Instead, a much easier option is he calls the police on me to prevent

Matt Gillespie [03:12:18] me from serving him.

Guest 2 [03:12:19] His name is Ben Schneider. He's stalking my house. Will you come to my house, please, and come get them? I'm not going to have stalkers. Are they there right now? They're. Yeah, they're on the side of the house, kind of. One of the dispatchers made a note here saying that you were going to shoot someone. I'm done with this, officer. Can you please help me and my family and Nick to stop? Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:12:45] Okay, so this is. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [03:12:48] Oh, no, you can go first.

John Dehlin [03:12:51] So this is going to be about. Isn't this partly about whether or not the. The case that Ben, you know, tries to get the police to act on was legitimate or not? Right.

Julia [03:13:06] Yeah. And we. There's more clips that follow along with this, too.

John Dehlin [03:13:09] You just play the next one.

Julia [03:13:10] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:11] Okay. Have you looked at the papers?

Guest 2 [03:13:15] I've talked to the Kaiser Police Department. There's no. There's nothing filed. So, no, I'm not accepting service. Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [03:13:23] It's fake.

Guest 2 [03:13:24] It's not real. That's completely fine. That's.

Matt Gillespie [03:13:26] You have that right.

Guest 2 [03:13:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:29] So he's lying because we. We do know that it's a legitimate, you know, filing.

Julia [03:13:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:35] Are you allowed not accept service? I thought you have to accept service when somebody serves you.

Julia [03:13:42] Well, what Ben was saying, he kind of replays this. He's like, it takes you three seconds. All you have to do is legally say, like, this is for you. Like, you have been served. And they can choose to drop it on the ground or not really accept it. But I think there has to be some kind of like, face to face communication. I'm not sure how the law works exactly.

John Dehlin [03:13:57] Well, he's completely lying to the police when. With video recording, you know. Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:14:04] So apparently Ben or his server can't get close enough to. He's. They're calling the cops on him before. Before they can approach the house, is the deal. But I've wondered, though, something I've always wondered about is this. Maybe because they've been fooled before, because Ben is like, done stuff and they're like, these are fake papers. This isn't a real case. And he might genuinely think it's bogus and he's just getting, you know, that's a possibility. But the threats and all that. That is. That's overblown. I don't. I don't. I think he's lying about that. He's just.

Guest 2 [03:14:36] I.

Matt Gillespie [03:14:36] In my opinion, he's just nervous about getting caught.

Julia [03:14:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:41] All right, let's keep playing.

Guest 2 [03:14:45] Hold on.

Cops Try To Serve Papers In Utah

Matt Gillespie [03:14:46] All right, what are you wanting done today? Besides obviously talked as much as you humanly, possibly 10. I can screen charges.

Guest 2 [03:14:55] I'm.

Matt Gillespie [03:14:56] I'm open to screening charges through our attorney. I'm going to go talk with him, give him his paper back.

Guest 2 [03:15:01] Since you do not want this, can I just peek at it? What was that?

John Dehlin [03:15:04] Can I peek at.

Guest 2 [03:15:06] Kind of puts me in a little bit of a bind.

Julia [03:15:08] It's fake.

Guest 2 [03:15:08] There's no lawsuit in. Okay. So anyway, I'm gonna give this back to him and.

Matt Gillespie [03:15:13] Trespasser.

Guest 2 [03:15:14] Because here's the thing. Like, think about this logically. Do you think the process server would show up with a guy that's been harassing a YouTuber to serve papers in Utah? They sent a lady in, and the

John Dehlin [03:15:27] lady's like, oh, I'm gonna murder you.

Guest 2 [03:15:28] To the. To Amanda, the manager, he called the store a billion times, threatened the employees.

John Dehlin [03:15:36] What just happened there?

Julia [03:15:37] Okay, so he's trying to serve in the papers, and he's like, I. These are fake. He's like, but can I have a peek? Which is really interesting to me because he's like, the. Then the place is like, oh, I don't think I should give this to you, because that puts me in a bind. But then he's like. He's saying this is all fake, that she's. This woman is impersonating a process server. And if you just go to the next slide, I really. Ben points this out, too.

John Dehlin [03:15:55] That's so dirty. It's like, I. I don't. I don't want to accept service, but can I have a pee?

Julia [03:15:59] Can I have a pee?

Matt Gillespie [03:16:02] Something should be said about the cop, too, about serving. So the cops in this thing were in the different jurisdictions. They have been pretty much clueless. And he's like. While he's talking to Ben, he's like, well, maybe I can bring the papers to him. And Ben's like, yeah, that's great. Now a police department, they don't. From what I understand from the legal things I've seen, is they do not have a duty to serve papers. That's purely at the discretion of either what. Whatever their. Either the. The officer or whatever their department policy is. Now, typically, a sheriff department, a sheriff's department, they serve paper. But a regular city policeman that's just not a thing. And so. But. But when he said, well, maybe I can give him the papers, Ben's like, yeah, that's great. I just need you to sign these. These papers saying you did the serving. He's like, he keeps going, okay, now it's done. It's done. And it never happens because the cop comes back, he says, no, he doesn't want him. Yeah, I mean, I think it was a clueless cop as far as how serving works.

Julia [03:17:01] Yeah. So if you. If you just throw up the next slide. I want to just read it. Okay, so this is from Serve now, this website. And it says, become a Utah process server. Requirements to come a process server in Utah. And this is kind of small writing, so forgive me. Process servers in the state of Utah are not required to be licensed. These summons and complaint may be served in Utah or any other state or territory of the United States by the sheriff or constables or by the deputy of either by a United States marshal or by the marshal's deputy or by any other person 18 years of age or older at the time of service and not a party to the action or a party's attorney. So it's three simple things. You have to be 18 years or older. You have to not be affiliated with the party, which he had just met this woman earlier that day, and then she wasn't anybody's attorney. So. So him saying that this is a fake. Yeah, it's all fine. This is all totally fine. So him saying this is a fake process server, she should be arrested. This is silly.

John Dehlin [03:18:04] Like, yeah, yeah, I'm getting a lot of people in the comments saying that's not a thing to opt to receive or not to receive. Because I. I don't know. I've never heard that before, I guess. August E. Thompson writes, if a lofts or takes the papers and says he will give them to him, he is putting himself in a bind by refusing to give him the papers when he asks for a peek. This is a good comment. Gordo writes, can I peek at it? Yes, of course. Just hand it to him. And he served anyway. What did you want to summarize from that slide, Julia?

Julia [03:18:43] Just this. This woman was all. Met all those requirements. She was. She handed them the idea. She showed that she was older than 18. She's not affiliated with the party. Even the. Even Johnson. He's like, I don't recognize this person. And he was recognizing his friends and like, anyway, so just not a party to this. And then not in anybody's attorney.

Ben Snider Arrested For Cyber Stalking

John Dehlin [03:19:01] So like, yeah, what a disaster. All right. And this. This clip's just unreal. Bang.

Guest 2 [03:19:10] But anyways, the police officer ends up going back to talk to Josh.

Matt Gillespie [03:19:14] They're screaming some charges.

Guest 2 [03:19:15] Okay.

Guest [03:19:16] Yeah.

Guest 2 [03:19:18] But we're just kind of working through it.

Matt Gillespie [03:19:20] Looks like this is a real case.

Guest 2 [03:19:22] It just hasn't gone to court. Okay. It's a real case. Who's it against? Against you. Him versus you. Ben Snider, idiot. I mean, he's just racking up the charges and we're working together. So basically the consensus is we were all wrong here. However, let's just arrest Ben anyways. Like, letting them go cannot be an option here, guys. Like, there's got to be something for. For cyber stalking, bullying. Like. Like all. All of the different things. Like, there's got to be something to.

Guest [03:19:55] To.

Matt Gillespie [03:19:56] To arrest them and.

Guest 2 [03:19:57] And send a message that this is not appropriate. This is not. Okay. I. I've been agreeance with you again. That's why we're kind of working through this right now.

Guest [03:20:09] Hello.

Matt Gillespie [03:20:10] For me?

John Dehlin [03:20:11] Okay. Okay.

Guest 2 [03:20:13] Find you back. Am I being arrested? You're under arrest right now.

Matt Gillespie [03:20:16] Really?

Guest 2 [03:20:30] I love you. I love you.

John Dehlin [03:20:34] There we go.

Julia [03:20:41] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [03:20:45] So why is he saying I love you to the American force?

Julia [03:20:48] Because they. They arrested him. They got him. They got him. They got rid of him.

John Dehlin [03:20:52] Isn't that disgusting?

Julia [03:20:53] Also, was that Ammon on the phone?

Matt Gillespie [03:20:55] Yes, that should be noted. It was. He got Ammon on the phone and then dictated to the cops. He's telling him what's legal and what's not. He's dictating to the police. Oh, well, this person's impersonating a server, a process server. That's illegal. Go get them.

John Dehlin [03:21:12] And the comments. Bob writes disgusting. Paisley278 writes unbelievable corruption. Mary Cat writes sickening. You know, plunge economics writes gross. Patrick O writes. You know, these videos show a conspiracy. I mean, that is incredible. Right?

Julia [03:21:35] There's this other comment. I don't know if you can start Ordo's comment as we did. As you commanded, Mr. Joshua. I thought that was funny.

John Dehlin [03:21:45] Oh, this one we did. Citizens are directing the work of the police force.

Matt Gillespie [03:21:52] Yeah, yeah. The whole screening charges, too. Screening charges. I take that shorthand for like, we're making stuff up to see what we can nail this guy with. What, screening charges? Maybe somebody knows that legal term. I don't know if it is one.

Julia [03:22:07] Yeah. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:22:08] And then to top it off, we have to have to play this clip about someone being on the high council. So who's Talking to who here?

Julia [03:22:17] The police are talking to Josh. Josh is saying, oh, I'm on the High Council. I think they're talking about the Mormon kid.

Oh, I'm On the Stake High Council

Guest 2 [03:22:24] He thinks if you drop. He's on shirt and tie. Have you seen him in church before? No, he didn't.

Julia [03:22:30] No.

Guest 2 [03:22:31] Get his driver's license if he has one. He doesn't live around here. I'm on the High Council, and so

John Dehlin [03:22:39] I don't know how Josh is in the High Council.

Julia [03:22:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:44] This guy, this corrupt guy is literally in the steak height. Like, steak High Council.

Matt Gillespie [03:22:51] Well, so.

John Dehlin [03:22:53] Well, he was. So for those who don't know,

Julia [03:22:58] a

John Dehlin [03:22:58] Mormon congregation is called a ward. So that's like two or 300 people. And then 10 to 12 congregations or wards make up what's called a stake. And the stake is led by three stake presidency members and then 12 members of the Stake High Council. It's a very prestigious place. Powerful position to be in a Stake High Council. And this apparently corrupt, allegedly corrupt individual is literally been chosen by his Mormon stake leadership as one of the 15 most righteous and worthy men in a. In a 15 or a 12 congregation area. That's stunning to me and not surprising.

Matt Gillespie [03:23:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:23:48] Whoa, that's wild. All right, Julia, so you've got some conclusion slides.

Bam Gets Restraining Order Signed Against Ben and His Friends

Julia [03:23:55] Yeah. So this is just sort of. This case is this. Everything's still going. Like, even just yesterday, I was like, oh, Matt, we have to watch these new videos and we have to add these two. But the. A restraining order has been. Matt, do you want to talk about the specific.

Matt Gillespie [03:24:07] Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. So now Bam Is moving against a. Ben and all his. And Brian Mansell and all of Ben's buddies.

John Dehlin [03:24:19] They're all getting sued. They're all getting sued.

Matt Gillespie [03:24:23] Well, they're getting. They're getting a restraining order signed out against them. A temporary restraining order. Now this is. Let's see, it was signed on. This is interesting. On. On the 28th by the 4th Circuit Court Judge Tony Graff Jr. And he is the guy. This is interesting. He's the guy that's in charge of the Charlie Kirk murder case. That's who's been assigned to that. So I thought that was kind of wild. It's ex parte, which means that only one side. We're only listening to one side. There's. And we're. We're filing this. It's telling them, like, he has to take down all his. Ben has to take down all the videos. Anything that shows anybody with banned people in it. A lot of people read it, like, basically, like our feelings Hurt. So you have to take it down in this affidavit. In this, it's saying, again, there were death threats, which, you know, no one's really seen the meat behind that. Also, it says that this restraining order part of it is saying, well, we can go ahead and do this because this is not going to cause any legitimate harm to Ben and all. So you look at, like, what the concerns are, and this, this is another legal guy called lawful Masses. And he's saying, since it's ex parte, there's no immediate rebuttal. You're just taking one side and evidence of death threats. You know, where are they? Now? I can say that I think that Bam has evidence, but an angel buried it under a hill. But yeah, people, where. Where is this? And, you know, maybe someone will say they saw it with their spiritual eyes and they can back it up. They quash. The biggest. Now the biggest part, the biggest part of this that's a problem is that it's like this lawyer was saying, this is not usual. You don't quash speech like before a case.

Guest [03:26:22] You.

Matt Gillespie [03:26:22] That's what the whole thing about libel suits and defamation is. Have people say what they will, then you hash it out in case later. You don't. You don't close down the press. You don't stop the press to hide, to keep it from people. And that was what was disturbing to him. And the last thing is how, if this guy's a youtuber, this is how he's a. He's. He does slacklining. Ben does slacklining. And I guess there's like a. There's a. There's a professional circuit for that. But YouTube is like considerable income for him.

John Dehlin [03:26:51] How would.

Matt Gillespie [03:26:51] How would taking him being forced to take down stuff, how would that not be harmful?

John Dehlin [03:26:58] Yeah, well, I'm not an attorney, but, you know, a temporary restraining order is basically saying, hey, until we can really adjudicate this, I need a restraining order. And usually, as I understand it, if there's real eminent harm, the judge might grant an immediate temporary restraining order. And then as soon as possible, hold a hearing to allow both sides to give their opinions. And then the judge will actually decide whether there's a formal restraining order. So I'm not sure if we know enough to say whether Tony Graff has. Has acted out of line here. I. I do hope that both sides get to argue their sides before an official standing order is released and is allowed to stand. It is interesting that Ben's being ordered to take down all the videos.

Matt Gillespie [03:28:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:28:01] What about the Free speech implications of that. A lot of it's just footage from the American Fork Police Department and his analysis. I mean, why is the judge taking all this video content down? I don't get it. Fortunately, these days, as soon as you release something on the Internet, everybody copies it, downslow downloads it, and then re. Shares it. And so we're doing our part to at least keep up the parts that we were able to assemble today. Yeah, it seems like the judge and the judges. You know, my understanding is judges, they can't have all the information, and if they're worried that there might be some safety concerns, they're going to rule on the side of safety. And originally. And I think that's probably a good thing if there really are legitimate death threats. But in this case, the death threats weren't by Ben. Right?

Matt Gillespie [03:29:02] Well, that's what they're alleging, at least

Julia [03:29:03] if he has they. No, I haven't seen it. I haven't. I don't know if anything's been posted of any evidence for that.

Reckless Ben Criticizes Judge Robert Griffin and Judge Tony

John Dehlin [03:29:10] Yeah. So that seems like the band people might be misrepresenting to the judge what happens. And if that's true, I. If they're misrepresenting, I hope they get in trouble for that. Right.

Julia [03:29:22] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:29:23] Yeah, that's what we're trying to find out. Do they? Is there. Where is the legitimate threat?

Julia [03:29:28] He does. He does say that he went thread. Threatened Amanda's life, I think, in the original store. Right. Salem. In the Salem store. But Ben, I think, films himself every time he goes in or anytime he sends somebody in. And I. That's. Obviously, we don't see that. I think Ben would have shown that. But of course, he could have edited out, I guess you could say. But as far as I know, he hasn't actually made any threats.

John Dehlin [03:29:48] Yeah, I don't. I don't see why any of that footage needs to be taken down.

Julia [03:29:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:52] Until it is, there's more proof. So. So I. That. That does seem disturbing based on what I know.

Julia [03:29:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:30:00] Let's just go ahead and cut. What is this? Judge Robert Griffin.

Julia [03:30:03] So just really quick, there's these next three slides. So Judge Robert Roger Griffin, he signed the Airbnb search warrant. It wasn't an arrest warrant that we. That we pointed out earlier. And then the next slide.

John Dehlin [03:30:15] Yeah, that. But that search warrant bugs me.

Julia [03:30:17] Yeah. And then you have Tony G. Graff, who is the signer of the temporary restraining order.

John Dehlin [03:30:24] You said G. Graff.

Julia [03:30:25] Sorry, Judge. Judge Tony F. Graff Jr. Sorry. And then if you show the next slide Reckless Ben, on his Reddit page, he says he shared this post that says seven of eight judges in the 4th district are directly tied to the Mormon religion. And then he lists Griffin and Graff as being Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:30:44] I'm just going to say I went to byu. You know what I mean? Like, Julia, you went to byu, so I do want to. It's just an old fairness. I don't think it's fair to just say that because someone went to byu, they're in the pocket of the Mormon Church and are corrupt. At least I don't think, Julia, you and I are. I mean, some people allege on the Internet that you and I are spies for the church.

Julia [03:31:07] But it is also interesting that Ben is pointing this out because. Because he feels. I think he feels unfairly treated. And I think it's because. And so even if it's true or not, or if these people are ex Mormon or wherever they stand with the church, he definitely thinks that there's sure this unfairness going on.

Matt Gillespie [03:31:21] And I think as an outsider, that BYU is code, Code word for Mormon, even though they. They accept people of all faiths and so forth. It's just. I think that's just common, like street, just a non. A never mode. That's just what they think.

John Dehlin [03:31:36] That's fair. I'm just saying that there are good judges who went to BYU or whatever, or even who are faithful Mormons who are honest and fair and good judges. So we just have to be careful about making too many assumptions there. You know, I. I had a lawsuit, a defamation lawsuit with the judge who was the son of a former deceased Mormon apostle. And I won the lawsuit. And you would think that a son of a Mormon apostle would have, you know, not, you know, been a judge that would preside over something where I would win, but I did. So, you know, we have to be a little bit careful there.

Julia [03:32:16] But I do. I just think overall that this story, you know, whether, you know, whether how much Mormons are involved, this is really affecting the Mormon community in a negative way.

John Dehlin [03:32:24] Yeah. The optics are terrible.

Julia [03:32:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:32:26] So let's.

Julia [03:32:28] So, yeah. So as part of the concluding. Just kind of showing a little bit of a happy ending, even though this is still an ongoing thing. This is his gofundme that. That Ben set up for the Brian Mansell family. And it's helped Brian recover his stolen Lego collection. And as of. I think this was taken. I took this this morning. There is over $400,000 raised.

Matt Gillespie [03:32:48] Wow.

Julia [03:32:48] And then. Yeah. And then in the next slide, it shows the Gofundme that Chris. Chris Law Gorman or Gorman Law. She has over 75,000 that she's.

The Legos That Were Stolen From My Dad

John Dehlin [03:32:58] Wow. So, yeah, I mean, that's great that people are, you know, using their dollars because I, I don't love the idea of just exploiting victims, you know, for clicks. So I do like the idea that this, that some of this is being used to direct support or relief for the victim rooms.

Julia [03:33:20] Right. Although Ben has said that he's still basically, I will not rest until the Legos are in. I don't know who owns the Legos now. I don't know if Brian Mansell still has them or if they're in Ben's possession, but he says he won't rest until they're recovered. So. Yeah, yeah, but. But they have made their money back. So. And then this is another clip where he. Again, he's talking. This is Ben telling, sort of sharing the news that Mansell was able to confront his dad about the loss of this. And because, you know, he's declining in health and they were worried about this kind of killing him, finding out that all this is gone.

John Dehlin [03:33:53] Just for the sake of time. I'm not going to play that. Yeah, it's touching, basically, that the dying grandpa didn't know, but then, you know, was confused and. But, you know, I'm sure he's happy to learn that his life savings is not going to be completely robbed from his posterity.

Julia [03:34:12] Yes, it was a good happy ending there. And then this next one, I know we're. You're wanting to go fast for time, but we. This next one, one of the suppliers for Bam cut ties. This is Minifigs me. And they're saying, like, this is. We just can't. We can't do this in good conscious or. And so they're just, wow. Yeah.

Bag cut ties with LEGO

Matt Gillespie [03:34:30] Now people have been going, when's Lego corporate, you know, real LEGO in Denmark? When are they going to say something? We're more like, when are they going to ditch Bam? As far as I can tell, there hasn't really been any. Unless this happened, like today, there hasn't been any official statement one way or the other.

John Dehlin [03:34:48] We'll be watching for that for sure.

Matt Gillespie [03:34:50] Yeah.

Julia [03:34:50] And John, I hope it's okay if we actually do play this.

John Dehlin [03:34:53] Let's play it. Let's play it. Because Rebecca. Rebecca's amazing.

Julia [03:34:56] This is Rebecca Biblioteca for more minutes.

Josh Johnson's Mormon Calling Leaked

Guest 2 [03:34:57] I know most of you are familiar

Julia [03:34:58] with who Josh Johnson is, the Bricks and Minifigs franchise owner who is embroiled

Guest 2 [03:35:04] in the missing LEGO combo controversy.

Julia [03:35:06] That Reckless Ben has brought to light.

John Dehlin [03:35:08] Well, the latest police footage, which was

Julia [03:35:12] leaked and unredacted, apparently shows Josh telling the police or stating that he was on the LDS High Council in his stake. This is interesting. I have a source kind of close to the situation who is able to confirm that yes, he was was on the High Council for about the last year and a half or so, but he has been released from that position as of June 2, two days ago, from the time that I'm taping this. This is kind of unusual on a Tuesday. Usually these things happen formally on a Sunday, but apparently no longer a High Council member, which is kind of a high up position in a local stake. Did Reckless Fan get him released?

John Dehlin [03:35:58] We love Rebecca Mormon.

Julia [03:36:00] Yeah, she's a great Source.

John Dehlin [03:36:03] Writes the GoFundMe. Doesn't mean that the man cells have their money back. Bam is able to file a lawsuit to demand GoFundMe pay the money to them instead.

Julia [03:36:12] Oh, I hadn't thought about that. That's interesting.

Matt Gillespie [03:36:15] Well, go. It's. It's interesting you bring up GoFundMe because of the response of the CEO of. Oh, no, I'm thinking of Patreon.

Julia [03:36:24] Yeah, that's Patreon.

John Dehlin [03:36:25] Really quickly, I just want to say it's great. I mean, it seems like we should applaud the Mormon Church for releasing Josh if that's what they did. If they released Josh for being unethical, we should celebrate that.

Julia [03:36:41] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:36:42] So they're doing what they're supposed to do or it's, you know, he's not following the rules and, and whatever the bylaws are. And they said, nope, you're not doing this, so we're kicking you out now.

John Dehlin [03:36:50] We don't know why they released it. Well, I don't even know if they released him, but if it's true they released him, we don't know why they released him. It could have been because he's done things that are embarrassing. Certainly his. His conduct is unbecoming of a faithful Mormon.

Guest 2 [03:37:05] I.

John Dehlin [03:37:05] The question I would ask is, does he. Does he experience church? Just discipline. Like I got excommunicated for, like advocating for same sex marriage and female ordination and for having a podcast that talked truthfully about history and having questions about Mormon doctrine. Julia, why'd you get excommunicated?

Julia [03:37:23] Being gay?

John Dehlin [03:37:26] So is the church going to have any discipline? Releasing. Releasing Josh from a calling is one thing is lying and lying to police officers and trying to defraud people you know is fraud grounds for excommunication or Is or, or if not, then being released from his calling is really just a slap on the wrist. That's what I think.

Julia [03:37:48] Yeah. Yeah. I highly doubt they'll punish him or do any kind of disciplinary action. So this next clip is really short. I really hope we play it. It's Patreon. It's Patreon speaking out about this too.

Ben Joshua's Patreon Got Yanked Down

John Dehlin [03:38:00] Oh wow.

Guest 2 [03:38:01] From Ben. So the first thing I want to mention is about the Patreon that Ben has because if you are unaware, a lot of this guy's videos get demonetized, taken down, copyright striked. He has to re upload them. Even on the part one of the bricks and minifigs that he had to put a bunch of little censorship blocks around the whole video. So there's just random things censored in the video. So it really affects his bottom line. So Patreon is where he makes a little bit of that money back. And the Patreon CEO himself went on, made a little 50 second video and talks about how bricks and many figs reached out to him or at least his team to have Ben's Patreon taken down. Right. This is what he had to say.

Matt Gillespie [03:38:45] 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 and minifigs doesn't like that, they can sue us. Patreon out.

Guest 2 [03:39:04] Absolute ball of response.

Julia [03:39:07] I love that.

John Dehlin [03:39:09] Oh, that makes me like Patreon. Right? Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:39:12] It should be noted that they are not a party to the lawsuit, but they were asked by Bam to to yank Ben's Patreon. But they are not actually being sued.

John Dehlin [03:39:27] Yeah, let me play a couple. Let me show a couple comments. So sway 4731 writes longtime fan of Delin and reckless Ben Joshua is clearly on drugs. This is S Way's opinion. Joshua is clearly on drugs. Painkillers, question mark. There have been, you know, opiate academic epidemics in Utah. So I don't know if that's true. It's allegation but she's claiming that Josh is clearly on painkillers. She's saying. I don't see anyone saying that. His mouth, skin color and weird shoelessness. She's speculating but she gave a super chat so I showed it. Thanks for the opinion. Destiny Salazar says really appreciate having Matt here for his Nevermo perspective and Julia making sure to bring the receipts. Yes. Thank you, Matt. Thank you Julia. Thanks John, for platforming this example of corruption by the powerful. Also, great chat discussion today. Thank you, Destiny Salazar for the super chat. I will also say a couple more. So Mormon is. Hey, Rebecca.

John Smith's Release from Mormonism

Julia [03:40:36] Hi.

John Dehlin [03:40:38] They typically do not discipline for corporate fraud unless it's extreme. But for apostasy, they'll get you every time. Time. That's true. Thank you, Rebecca. Check out Mormonish podcast and Mormonism Mormon newscast. It was only for cussing.

Matt Gillespie [03:40:54] He was.

John Dehlin [03:40:55] He was released for cussing. That is a bad thing in Mormonism. At least it used to be. And Radix Dudette says John, etc, thank you so much for shining your light on this travesty. You've got some outcomes so far, Julia.

Julia [03:41:10] Yeah, so if. If I. Hopefully I've got all this correct. If I haven't, please correct me in the comments. But on June 4th or 5th, bricks and minifig announced major changes regarding the Salem store in the Mansell collection dispute. The Salem store has been permanently closed. BAM announced that it had parted ways with the franchise owners Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. BAM stated it had found evidence of significant problems during prior management of the location. So I'm assuming they mean the priority previous owners, Gorman Law. According to the statements discussed widely online, BAM is now offering to work with the Mansell family to identify, return, and compensate for inventory that cannot be accounted for.

BAM Restaurants in Salem, Oregon Shut Down

John Dehlin [03:41:50] Now that's good.

Julia [03:41:51] So BAM is if it's true.

Matt Gillespie [03:41:53] Wow.

Julia [03:41:54] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:41:54] And there's catches too, I think.

Julia [03:41:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:41:57] Okay. So we don't know if they're gonna

Julia [03:41:58] actually know, but if you go to the next slide, this is.

John Dehlin [03:42:02] Yeah, this is his mission buddy. Right now.

Julia [03:42:05] This is the. This is their webpage. This is up right now. I grabbed this this morning. It says Bricks and Minifig parts ways with the Salem, Oregon franchise owners Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson. And yes, this is. This would be Ammon's mission companion. So they're saying they parted ways. That's great. If they have. If you go to the next slide. Reckless. Ben shared a post on Reddit. I can't remember what it was maybe two days or one day ago, but it was in. It has since been removed by the moderator. So. So you can see here on the. On the left side. This is what I was able to screenshot from what existed previously. I there. You can't click on it anymore. And so it just says it's been removed. So. But Ben believes that BAM lied about parting ways with Josh and Brandon. Then he gives his little spiel about that being an incorrect announcement.

John Dehlin [03:42:54] I mean, that would surprise me. If these buddies, you know, held each other accountable in some way.

Julia [03:43:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:43:02] This stuff works, it seems.

Matt Gillespie [03:43:04] Yeah. I'm gonna. Oh, I'm sorry.

Julia [03:43:06] Oh, I was just gonna say he comes with receipts, so I'm assuming that what was there was. Was some form of evidence, or otherwise he wouldn't be saying that, but. What were you gonna say, Matt?

Matt Gillespie [03:43:14] I was gonna say they could. He said, look, I'm gonna pretend that we're not buds anymore, all right? Doesn't mean I don't really like you. Just. We're really gonna still be buds. But we'll come. You know, we'll come back later. I think that's. I wonder if that's what Ben was saying. I didn't know anything about this to. You put this slide together earlier.

Julia [03:43:32] Yeah.

Lego's Statement on Reckless Ben's Criminal Case

John Dehlin [03:43:32] Okay. Final slides, Julia.

Julia [03:43:35] So the Mansell family has not yet won the overall legal dispute, but bam's latest statement appear to be the substantial shift from its earlier position. The corporate lawsuit against Reckless Ben and others is still active. Reckless Ben's criminal cases and related proceedings are still unresolved, and he has his first court hearing on July 1. Johnson and Bess appear to be out of the bricks and minifigs system disputed by Reckless Ben, which I just showed. The key remaining question is whether the Mansell. Whether the Mansells ultimately receive all remaining inventory and slash or financial compensation for items that cannot be located. So. And then. Matt, you. Do you want to talk about this one?

Matt Gillespie [03:44:14] Yeah. This is, like, too little, too late. That's. Some people have this opinion that, okay, that's great. He'll give them back, but it's still not changing their perception or their opinion on what's going on here. And so, you know, they're not happy with Bam, and they still think they still have a perception that the church is involved somehow in some overall conspiracy. So even when it looks like they're trying to make the position right, the. The LDS still has this. This PR headache to me. But I'm hoping, you know, maybe some pressure will. Will happen to. To change things. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:45:00] Well, this is how we'll know how much power the Mormon Church has. Because if the Mormon Church has any power at all, it's going to shut this down. It's gonna. It's going to drop all charges against Reckless Ben. It's going to try and make this story go away. It's going to. It's going to fire all the bad police officers. It's going to clean up not just the American Fork Police Department, but every police department. In the state, because there's just no way this is, this is good for the church. The church does not need millions and millions and millions of people across the world who love Legos believing that the Mormon Church is super corrupt down to its law enforcement in Utah. So.

Julia [03:45:42] And I think a lot of people are finally hearing about Mormonism maybe for the first time because of this story. And this is so negative.

John Dehlin [03:45:48] This, this is makes. And, and by the way, like, if this becomes, you know, if this story continues and there's international coverage of Reckless Ben's legal exploits, this could be catastrophic for the church's reputation.

Matt Gillespie [03:46:02] Right, Yeah, I agree. I think it's a big, the biggest story. It's bigger than other scandals.

Julia [03:46:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:46:08] I mean, this has the potential of being more damaging to the church than the Jody Hildebrandt, Ruby, Frankie Secret Lives or whatever.

Julia [03:46:16] I don't know if that's damaging, but

John Dehlin [03:46:17] I mean, in terms of actual damage. Right?

Matt Gillespie [03:46:20] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:46:21] So I, I hope the church cleans this up because I don't want. I don't want police departments in the state.

Matt Gillespie [03:46:28] Yeah, yeah. And there's people, you know, I showed the negative comments, but there's also comments from faithful folks, and they're like, I'm appalled. I don't want this. I don't want them. I don't. They're not representing me. These aren't my views. And so there's a lot of that, too.

John Dehlin [03:46:44] Yeah, Well, I, you know, there probably are some legitimate criticisms of how Ben, Reckless Ben is dealing with all of this. Is he being unethical? Is he poking the bear? Is he, you know, putting any other people at risk or at harm? Is he breaking the law? Is he lying? Is he deceiving? But I guess that'll come out. And some are asking, is he causing more harm than good at this point?

Matt Gillespie [03:47:11] You know, the other thing is the Gormans have become a subject, a topic too, because Bam. Is basically putting it all on them. It's them.

Julia [03:47:19] Yeah.

Matt Gillespie [03:47:19] They did it. And I don't know if we want to talk any more about them, but that, that, that's. They've kind of been like. People are wondering about what their real situation is, too.

Matt's Lego Cosplay

John Dehlin [03:47:33] Well, I, I need to wrap up tonight because Margi's waiting for me. But Matt, really quickly, Matt, thank you so much for being willing to help us together and for your expertise and your interest. Tell everybody how they can follow or hire you if they like what you. What, what you represent.

Matt Gillespie [03:47:49] Yeah, yeah. I've got a YouTube. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so I'm so pleased, and I hope you say hi to Marky, because, like, I'm a big fan. You probably hear that all the time. Yeah, fine. John, get Margi on. And working with Julia, it's been fantastic to reach me. I have a YouTube channel called Matt's Custom Creations, and it's with two K's. And I just. I just have fun. I'm just a little guy, but, you know, share the joy of lego.

John Dehlin [03:48:20] So people can check out your videos and they can hire you to do custom.

Matt Gillespie [03:48:24] Yeah, yeah. They want a special build.

John Dehlin [03:48:26] Okay.

Matt Gillespie [03:48:27] You know, that's. That's. I can do it.

John Dehlin [03:48:30] Or. Or LARP. Or. Or LARPing slash cosplay costume design. Right.

Matt Gillespie [03:48:36] Yeah. I don't do that so much anymore because of the space it took up. And so I'm like, I better go with lego, because, I mean, I was like, that Transformer, the Optimus prime costume. I mean, it's big. I've made bigger ones and you just couldn't store them all and. Yeah, and it just kind of tore the house up, too. So at least now just tear up one room.

Mormon Stories: The Podcast

John Dehlin [03:48:57] All right, well, Matt, it's great to have you on Mormon stories. Thanks for being a listener. Thanks for supporting us. We probably couldn't have done this without you, so thank you.

Matt Gillespie [03:49:07] Thank you. I'm so glad everybody was begging for y' all to talk about it. I'm glad I could bring it to you and I could join in it.

John Dehlin [03:49:12] It seems like our audience appreciates what we did, so that's good. I was worried about that. I wasn't able to prepare because I was out of town. Julia, I also have to thank you. You accepted this assignment in the middle of another assignment and you just kicked butt and you made this happen. You did so much great work, Julia.

Julia [03:49:31] This was really fun to research. Like, this is really fun.

Matt Gillespie [03:49:33] Well, you must have thought I was a nut, calling you and going, and then this happened and then.

Julia [03:49:37] No, this one. That was great. That was fun.

John Dehlin [03:49:41] You do great work for us. So I just. Thank you so much for all.

Julia [03:49:44] Yeah. Yeah.

Mormon Stories: The American Force Police Case

John Dehlin [03:49:45] All right. And thanks to Rebecca, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Thanks to our amazing commenters. You guys made great comments. We really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who emailed me. I probably had 10 or 20 people tell me to do this story. Thanks to everyone who recommended that we do this. Thanks to all the super chats. Thanks all the donors. We couldn't do this without you. Please like and subscribe. Please comment. Please email us, Please recommend future stories Please everyone email Ben and tell Ben to come on Mormon Stories. We would love to have him on Mormon Stories. Wouldn't that be super fun?

Julia [03:50:19] So fun.

Matt Gillespie [03:50:20] Heck yeah.

John Dehlin [03:50:20] And so please everyone bug Ben until he comes on Mormon Stories. Email him, tweet him, harassment him, stalk him, What? Let's get him on. And then also just thanks to everyone who donates to make this possible. If you want to donate to Mormon Stories to keep it alive, go to mormonstories.org donate y' all should know the Mormon Church is suing us, I believe, trying to shut us down, silence us and bankrupt us. You can learn about that in our previous video we released on this feedback. But if you want to support us in our legal ways to try and defend ourselves against the Mormon Church being litigious, in my opinion, you can go to mormonstories.org legal to donate and support us as well. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We hope that the family gets their money back and we hope that justice prevails. And I think we all owe, you know, Ben, a bit of a debt of gratitude for helping us learn about this case. Because this is shiesty, scary, dark, unethical stuff. And if it weren't for Ben, we wouldn't know about any of this. So I do want to shout out to reckless Ben for bringing this to our attention. So thank you, Ben. You're a legend. Thanks, Julia. Yeah, thanks, Matt. No thanks to the American Force Police Department. Please do better. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.