If you’re not familiar with the LEGO scandal, the tl;dw is that this YouTuber Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) has been investigating a stolen set of LEGO worth ~$100-200k (depending on who you ask) and the local police dept and criminal justice system has been colluding with the criminals (all members of the local Mormon church) to get him to STFU. The long version is, very long. You can check his channel for more.
Previously the local police dept managed to get a warrant to raid Ben’s rental home with guns drawn and arrest him, based on what is clearly fabricated evidence. Here they appear to have done it again to get access to his Google account.
The linked video is mirrored on Peertube and timestamped to the relevant section.
Ben does also provide a copy of the subpoena in the video but I cannot vouch for its’ validity, and he has used placeholder evidence before, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, the part that was relevant to this community was that in the course of their investigation they subpoenaed Google, and Google handed over basically his entire life to them. I’m sure this was very useful in their investigation.
I don’t necessarily blame Google here for complying with a subpoena, but the moral of the story is to stop giving Google your data, because everything you say and do can and will be used against you in a court of law, with or without legitimate justification, and the more stuff you give them, the more ammunition you’re providing the prosecutor.
This is also not exclusive to Google. Anything not local, self-hosted or encrypted a la Proton can be subpoenaed and the provider will have to comply. It just so happens that Google probably has more information about literally everyone in the world than any other particular entity.
So is the youtuber the one who got his lego stolen? Or is he just a journalist reporting on this story?
He’s reporting on it and trying to help the victim get restitution.
Call Batman
We could only afford Benman
Ed Mansell consigned a massive LEGO Star Wars collection to the Salem Bricks & Minifigs store in 2023; payments later stopped and inventory allegedly vanished.
The franchise collapsed in 2024, new owners took over, and both sides disputed whether the LEGO sets were still in the store.
Bryan Mansell sought help, leading YouTuber Reckless Ben to investigate, confront BAM Corporate, and release viral videos in 2026.
Chaos followed: arrests, leaked police footage, conspiracy theories, and over $500k raised for Bryan.
The Gormans sued BAM Corporate; BAM Corporate filed a TRO, gag order, and a federal RICO lawsuit against Reckless Ben and others. That legal action against Ben was an egregious overreach. Couldn’t post anything, talk about anything to go huge distances from any BAM store in existence. RICO lawsuit is like what you charge mobsters with.
The case moved to federal court in June 2026, with multiple civil and criminal proceedings still ongoing.
Ben is a YouTube entertainer that found out about this situation. He’s more activist than journalist. I think the original owner sold the collection to Ben.
The original owner didn’t sell it to anyone. It was on consignment with Bricks n Minifigs. Hence the whole issue to begin with.
There was some «sale» as a part of the process. But yeah.
Clarifying for the curious because it’s been a whole saga: Original owner (Brian) of the legos did consignment deal with BAM, and it was going well til new owners took over, but when it went sour with new owners Ben got involved.
During one of their many creative attempts to resolve the matter, they decided to have Brian “sell” the legos to Ben and some of his friends (I think it was 10k worth of legos each because that was the threshold for small claims court.)
So yea, there was a “sale” as part of the trying to recover them process, and yea, the original consignment deal with BAM is what started the whole ordeal.
At one point they did a thing to sell them to Ben so the owner could duck out.
Apart from what everyone else here has said LegalEagle did some videos on this, and the big takeaway was that everybody needed to get a lawyer ASAP instead of trying to plead their case in the court of public opinion via podcast/youtube videos/whatever. Reckless Ben got the audio from his court case and used it to make a youtube video (he was representing himself). This whole thing went from ordinary mess to Great Big Mess with no signs of anyone trying to dial it down.
It think this is the one depending on how far the rabbit hole you want to go down:
I’m not entirely clear on why this guy stuck out his neck so far over a situation that was never his to deal with in the first place.
Content
I mean just so you know this dude is making bucks off of YouTube views. Now, idk it its like a boatload of money but he is compensated for his time that way.
That said though imagine how bleak the world would be if no one stuck their neck out for anyone over something that didn’t involve them. We should all try to help the common man if we can.
Its his job?
Never let yourself become dependent on something a company has control, if at all possible. They will use it as leverage to coerce concessions from you that drive you further toward controlling nothing at all.
Don’tbe evilYeah, again, even if they are evil in general, I can’t necessarily blame them here. They were complying with the law.
And who makes the law in the empire?
Exactly. And if the law doesn’t suit their needs, change it until it does.
Yea I watched the video today and it was a good wake up for me to continue my process to move from google. I have started some time ago already but have been doing it in increments. I still have an android phone and moving away from it will be a pain.
GrapheneOS is a dream, if you have a Pixel.
So … let me get this straight … you give money to Google to buy a Pixel … so you can de-google your new Google phone by installing GrapheneOS.
Yeah never made sense to me either, its the only device they support. Other options are /e/os and lineage is from my knowledge on other limited device options.
CalyxOS is back too and also supports older hardware than Graphene.
I’m not seeing much of a difference between the two, it’s basically the same list.
Graphene doesn’t support Pixels older than the 6.
It is pretty easy to pick up a second hand phone on eBay
Yeah … I can’t wait to discover what bacteria come crawling out of there.
Sounds like a phobia
Aside from 1. Buying second hand, or 2. Waiting until Motorola releases their GrapheneOS phone, then yes. Unfortunately.
Ironically, Pixel is the best hardware to degoogle.
There is the Fairphone with /e/os its great and easily repairable.
fairphones can also run LineageOS if you want to go a step further and remove gapps. for the really bold, you can run postmarketOS on fairphone 4 or 5 to remove android entirely. there are sacrifices in android functionality, but with serious gains by way of Linux desktop to counter those.
My exact reasoning to avoid GrapheneOS.
To my understanding you can have a functional phone with LineageOS+ Motorola and a few other brands.
Lots of other brands, Lineage supports hundreds of models.
But not hundreds of mobile modems
What do you mean by that? I assume you don’t mean radio firmware.
Oh, yes, it’s radio, sorry for the brain fart
It’s good to have reminders of what is and isn’t private.
Google accounts aren’t “free”.
The rules seem to be so loose and open to interpretation around privacy etc. What makes self hosted data different? Surely that’s not a major barrier to big tech, the government, the lawmakers etc.?
If they really wanted to, I’m sure they could just decide, “as of today we can take your self hosted data, so we will swing by at 4pm to collect it”. 4pm comes, they are at your door, what are you gonna do? They come and take your data, you know it’s wrong, what are you gonna do?
I just worry that even the holy grail of privacy, i.e. self hosted data, is going to be of little consequence to them. If people want your data bad enough, they will do wherever is needed to get it. Change laws? No problem. Reduce rights? Yep we’re in it. And so on.
It seems like the only truly safe way to store your data is by not putting it anywhere other than in your head.
You have rights, kinda. You can refuse to hand over data if they have no warrant.
If you are compelled to hand over data, it can be fully encrypted. You cannot be compelled to give them the key as long as the only place it’s stored is in your head.
Thanks.
If I found myself in a situation where I had a key in my head and it was what they were looking for, I’d worry about what other ways they might screw me if I didnt give it up. They would find a way.
It’s all really bleak at the moment. First time in my 46 years of life that I’ve genuinely worried about how the world is evolving.
It is bleak, but if you’re at the stage if being tortured for an encryption key, you’re already fucked.
It’s a good idea to keep data local. It’s an even better idea to encrypt it. But it’s not going to completely protect you from a fascist government.
What makes self hosted data different?
You can’t be compelled to testify against yourself.
4pm comes, they are at your door, what are you gonna do?
If they have a warrant, they can have it. It’s encrypted anyway. If they don’t have a warrant, it’s not admissible in court anyway. Let em have it.
I just worry that even the holy grail of privacy, i.e. self hosted data, is going to be of little consequence to them.
It’s outside of their control. Nothing they can do. Encryption is legal.
If they don’t have a warrant, it’s not admissible in court anyway. Let em have it.
Oh it’s definitely admissible in court if you willingly hand it over. If they have no warrant, they have no legal right to enter your home, and you don’t need to talk with them. But that doesn’t apply if you invite them in and let them start developing probable cause of a crime.
That’s true. I misspoke. I mean if they try to take it without a warrant. You can decline but you can’t stop them.
Thanks, appreciate the clarity.
I hope its as simple as that.
It’s not. This reply is incredibly naive. They can compel you to give the password to your phone, why wouldn’t they be able to compel you to give the password to your encryption? There’s a reason so many cases are solved via phone contents even though that’s “testifying against yourself”. If they have a warrant and you refuse you’ll definitely be charged with obstruction. Also in court there’s a concept where if you refuse to provide evidence the court/jury is instructed to assume that it’s as bad as it can possibly be, making sure you’re going to lose.
That’s what I thought, hence the “I hope…”. I wasn’t hopeful with the “I hope…” 😁.
I just don’t trust nowadays that there are enough or sufficient safeguards for people, regardless of what way their data is stored. OK you might hold out and not give them your encryption key from your head, and on that singular point you technically win, but at what cost with the litany of other things you will be nailed for, as you have outlined. You can think about that win from your prison cell I guess?
Loss is almost predetermined in situations like this.
Most of this seems to relate mainly to the US, and I dont live there, but this shit is still frightening.
I would guess this is the case everywhere. If there was, “I don’t want to give you evidence” loophole so many people would walk away no problem. I mean, this literally how Alex Jones lost. They refused to comply with discovery so the judge said you lose, let’s go to the judgement phase. There was no trial.
This reply is incredibly wrong. They cannot compel you to give your password. This is super basic 5th amendment stuff. Start reading.
There is/was a guy being held in jail because he wouldn’t give his hard drive encryption password. https://goldsteinmehta.com/blog/limits-on-federal-civil-contempt
18 months is a long time.
After looking into it more there seems to be a “circuit split”. US vs Brown said passwords were protected, so it seems undecided.
Your particular instance seems to be unique in that they knew for a fact that the drives has child pornography. Both from the testimony of the sister and from the logs of the Mac that they were attached to.
Sort of. If law enforcement already knows the information that would be unlocked by the password they can compel you to unlock it through the “foregone conclusion” exception. They can also compel you to unlock a fingerprint scanner.
Just say you don’t remember it.
Nothing they can do. Encryption is legal.
Until the change laws so that you have to hand over keys, passwords etc.
Passwords are protected under the 5th Amendment, as it’s something “from your mind” that would fall under self-incriminating. Hence why people say if you’re at a protest with your phone put it into lockdown mode so you have to input a code/password to open it as they can legally force you to use your thumb/face to unlock it.
We’re pretty fucked up as a nation right now, but in order to repeal or nullify a previous amendment you’d have to get a fuckton of states or representatives to agree and we literally can’t agree on shit, so it’ll never happen (Hell, Prohibition is literally the only amendment we’ve ever repealed in 250 years).
No law can revoke that and you’d have an easy case if someone did force you to give passwords.
This is hilariously wrong. The reality is they can use biometrics to open it without a warrant. They can and will force you to unlock it with a warrant.
Any lawyers reading this post are either cackling or bashing their head into a brick wall.
Motherfucker I said that biometric ISN’T protected and that you SHOULD go password only for that exact reason. ANd I wasn’t talking about warrants and subpoena, that falls under the 4th Amendment. 5th is self incrimination.
Passwords are protected under the 5th Amendment, as it’s something “from your mind” that would fall under self-incriminating
That argument falls apart quickly if you use a password manager and have it generate your passwords though.
Edit: and it assumes due process in the justice system, something that seems to be eroding.
Still need the password for the manager
What does a password manager have to do with anything?
because then the passwords generated by the password manager (which, let’s be honest, is how most people use them) are no longer a “thing from your mind”
Do you have legal precedent for that?
Story is interesting, the video is a chaotic abomination of bad storytelling.
Seems he wants to appeal to gen z and alpha iPad baby brain.
LOL yeah it is.
Link to article?
IIRC The Civil Rights Lawyer from Audit the Audit is helping him out. Shit is fucked if it has his attention. Hope it turns out ok.
It’s good to give us city folk a look into rural politics.
Oh ive been following this. I said to myself from the get go he should not be using any big tech products at all. This is what happens.
This is the first I’ve heard of the situation so I could be wrong, but he was introduced as a youtuber. If YouTube (a big tech product) is the source of his fame and income, isn’t it silly to say he shouldn’t be using any big tech products at all?
There is obviously room for compromise and nuance, like limiting the info he gives them, but I don’t think that’s what you’re advocating for
Youtube has also been being difficult with his videos, telling him to delete and reupload (thereby losing millions of views) to remove blurs that Ben never put there etc, its all very nefarious. I’m inclined to believe the Mormon Mafia textends into YouTube /google, but thats just a guess. Corruption runs deep.
Yes he basically has to use YouTube, but that wouldn’t stop him from also being more secure in other ways, not using gmail, using secure phones, etc. In the end, theyve 100% been illegally using flock cameras to track him anywhere he goes. Scary man.
Its too bad there is no other video platform normal folks can use.
I’m inclined to believe the Mormon Mafia textends into YouTube /google, but thats just a guess.
I think the simpler answer is a combination of two things: the Mormon Church and it’s top members have more money than God, and paying off Google to do your bidding is probably a lot cheaper than we expect.
If you’d self hosted, it would still happen. Just in that case, on stead of Google handing over your data, you’d have to do it yourself at the risk of being jailed if you don’t.
The point it: if its data, you can be forced to hand it over. The only way to not having to hand over emails is it not store any emails at all anywhere
In this case theyd need to know that the data is there and what to exactly subpoena. Or can they say give me all your data?
True but they’d need a warrant and you could have it encrypted.
In the end they’ll get it if they want it tho
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Given the US is currently rotting from the top down and the bottom up I wonder if this guy will get lucky and find some help from the middle that isn’t yet so corrupt.
He has a civil rights lawyer with a youtube channel helping him on the criminal charges and has hired some other lawyer to help with the civil charges (hence the move for those to federal court). So he’s getting there.
Why would Legos cost so much?
I think it’s the largest single collection of Star Wars Lego.
Also, people like collecting things and will pay money for rare and unique items.
It was a very large collection of unopened boxes that aren’t made anymore.
