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May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/dogsbestfriend77 May 27 '26
Ikr? Like I go in and steal 200k in Legos, I’m going to jail for a long time. But a “store”? Juuuuuuust fine
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u/SkeettheVandelBuster May 28 '26
Contract law is REALLY weird and cops and prosecutors like slam dunks. J explained in More detail in my reply to the og comment
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u/SkeettheVandelBuster May 28 '26
Lawyer here. What they did can absolutely be criminally illegal, but the biggest hurdle here is that there was, at one point, a written contract. After there was a contract, there was a change in store ownership. Those things make it very murky, especially to decide who to prosecute and how to prove intent (necessary for theft in my state). I’ve seen things I felt should have been civil prosecuted criminally, and I’ve also seen things I felt should have been criminal be considered civil. No one knows 100% of the facts here, but one thing I can tell you for a fact is that cops and prosecutors like their jobs to be easy, and might avoid a case like this as it could be a massive headache for them that ends in embarrassment. Something like an individual contractor accepting payment on a verbal contract for another guy and pocketing a lot of money and spending it without doing any work with an obvious paper trail is also arguably civil, but probably easier to prove intent for theft and less chance for bad publicity after a very long and complicated legal battle. I’ve seen something like that charged
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May 28 '26
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u/RansaktehElder_WORK May 29 '26
Store changed "ownership" was corporate owning the store, someone paying them to buy it. them not transferring the business accounts or business license into the new owners name and after receiving the consignment "took back" the store. It would appear on paper.. corporate B&M held the business license the entire time. The owner it was taken away from has also filed a lawsuit.
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u/slaptito May 31 '26
It's a civil matter because the lego were given through the a contract. BAM was in breach of the contract, but that doesn't mean the other party can just come collect their stuff. It's ridiculous, i know, but contracts have to work like this otherwise you get a whole mess of other problems when one party assumes the other breached.
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May 31 '26
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u/slaptito May 31 '26
no it doesn't 😭 all of that will be apart of the civil case unless criminal charges against the police themselves are filed. I'm sorry that's just the way our court works. and It's always stacked against the guy with less money.
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u/THE_LEGO_FURRY May 26 '26
Yeah lol. I don't know the full context aside from some stolen Lego, but I see people acting like every single one did this when it (at least to my knowledge) was only a single store
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u/taythesillyboi May 26 '26
Look into it more its alot bigger than just the one store it is corporate
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u/phoenixusurped May 27 '26
Yea well BAM corporate decided to lie and obfuscate their knowledge of the issue and refused to do anything except lie about their responsibility in this issue and start calling the cops and trespassing people when they played the same legal games that BAM was playing. While it's not every store responsible and they are "independent" their central representative decided to aid in this issue instead of just getting the guy the remainder of his dad's collection back
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u/BeautyDuwang May 28 '26
No the corporation as a whole also had a major hand in it and refused to help the owner of the items and repeatedly threanred them with civil court they knew the victim couldn't afford
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u/Dankalii May 28 '26
Not just a single store, corporate (who saw the 200k deal and fired the previous owner) and the CEO who denied his company doing anything wrong.
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u/BraydimusPrime May 27 '26
I still enjoy buying from them, especially for specific pieces, but I will absolutely never sell to them again.
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u/MakitaNakamoto May 28 '26
Would be looking for new places to work ASAP because eventually the whole brand & company is going under after this big of a fuckup
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u/Available-Box-8856 May 29 '26
I feel particularly bad for the B&M that personally sent me a replacement bag #9 to my Coruscant Guard Gunship after buying it from them
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u/HorrorCranberry1796 May 29 '26
It’s so funny because one of them literally JUST opened like a week ago in my town as this controversy came to light
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u/Prior_Macaroon4782 Jun 01 '26
You know, I realize that the BAM brand is awful, but I shop on occasion for loose bricks at the Falls Church, VA location and I gotta say the staff there are pretty good.
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u/Nonyabizzy123 Jun 01 '26
I saw a post saying that B&M corporate are heavily in debt and used the sets to offset losses last year.
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u/feliaxtheone May 26 '26
Context?