The public record on Bricks & Minifigs and BAM Franchising, Inc., newest first https://www.thebammap.com/feed.xml 2026-10-22T12:00:00-06:00 The BAM Map https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261022/2/ 2026-10-22T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-22T12:00:00-06:00

Utah’s Rules of Professional Conduct turn on what a lawyer knows, and they say knowledge “may be inferred from circumstances.” The circumstances here are three papers the firm signed or handled, with dates. Nothing on this page is a complaint to anyone.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261022/1/ 2026-10-22T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-22T12:00:00-06:00

On April 17, 2026, a Utah notary recorded that BAM’s president was “first duly sworn” to the truth of the disclosure document he was filing in Minnesota. On September 9 the same notary recorded only that he signed the amended one. The oath is on the edition that leaves out the Salem lawsuit and the Hillcrest Bank lien.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261021/2/ 2026-10-21T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-21T12:00:00-06:00

In the family war over Legally Mine, the sons went to Orem police on Wednesday, October 14, 2020, were referred to the county on the Thursday, and locked the building on the Friday. The police report, released on October 21, 2026, under Utah’s records act, shows what the police did that week: a referral. Five days later a judge kept the president the sons had fired, and in May 2021 the file closed as “worked out among the parties in civil court.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261021/1/ 2026-10-21T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-21T12:00:00-06:00

Between June 22 and October 20, Wm. Kelly Nash’s firm biography gained a named client, BAM Franchising, Inc. The injunction in its entry is a proposed order his own office filed on August 27, unsigned since. BAM’s certified September amendment told state regulators the same thing, through the same office.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261020/2/ 2026-10-20T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-20T12:00:00-06:00

The file behind the May 2015 Letter of Caution, as the North Carolina State Bar produced it this month: nineteen documents. A lawyer complained for clients who run a veterinary clinic and had met Legally Mine at a seminar that carried continuing-education credit. The company’s answer, signed by a Utah lawyer, says every customer pays at least $100 a month for a plan with “access to our staff attorneys”; the committee wrote back that the company did not dispute the facts. The bar also printed McNeff’s résumé: from 2007 he booked the seminars.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261020/1/ 2026-10-20T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-20T12:00:00-06:00

The court dates the suit March 27, 2026, and the federal rule asks a franchisor for exactly that date: “the initial filing date.” BAM’s amendment of September 9, the document that finally disclosed it, says April 16: the one date that puts the suit after BAM’s April 8 disclosure document and one day before McNeff certified that document complete. An earlier update repeated BAM’s date; it is corrected today.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261019/2/ 2026-10-19T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-19T12:00:00-06:00

In the September 16 transcript Sroka released on October 17, the chief says the Legos never belonged in the search warrant affidavit, the March 8 stop was “clearly not a stop-sign violation,” though he said the officer still had reasonable suspicion, and taking people to the station turns a detention into an arrest “in almost every case.” His department’s May 29 video, which explains the Legos and gives the stop sign as the reason for the stop, is still up. He kept 25 more points for a next meeting; Sroka’s foreword says the leak of the raw transcript means there will not be one. The transcript also has what the federal suit left out, beginning with the department taking the case to the FBI, the attorney general’s office, POST and the county attorney to look for other charges.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261019/1/ 2026-10-19T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-19T12:00:00-06:00

McNeff, BAM’s chief executive, said it by phone on March 10, and Reckless Ben was arrested for stalking 77 minutes later. Nine minutes before the call, Josh Johnson had given the officer what he said was the CEO’s definition of stalking, and the officer said he was “more than willing to screen” charges. The next afternoon an Orem officer told McNeff, with Johnson on the line, to have him call American Fork police “right this second,” and the 911 call that opened the raid case came three and a half minutes later. American Fork is being sued under the same statute, and the suit sues neither man.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261017/1/ 2026-10-17T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-17T12:00:00-06:00

Six valuations of one store, all from BAM’s side, from about $17,000 down to “literally nothing in there.” The debt they were set against was written before any of them. BAM’s own filed ledger lists 403 of Bryan Mansell’s sets unsold on the shelves that night. The inventory document its chief executive said would come “through their attorney’s office” has never appeared in any filing the Publisher holds.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261016/2/ 2026-10-16T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-16T12:00:00-06:00

At 1:24 p.m. MDT on Friday, October 16, Magistrate Judge Dustin B. Pead signed the four paragraphs the Publisher had drafted, word for word: no recipient of a subpoena under the September 30 order produces anything about this site or its operator, BAM serves no further subpoena for it, anything already produced is sequestered unread, and BAM tells each provider within a business day. He added a fifth: BAM’s answer to the motion to vacate by October 23, the Publisher’s reply by October 30. BAM had opposed the stay at 11:45 a.m. MDT as “overly broad.” In the same brief it said what the discovery is now for: an investigation that “has narrowed but has not conclusively identified the source or sources,” records wanted “so that BAM can continue its investigation of the sources,” and an order that the Publisher keep “records of submissions to thebammap.com.” The order BAM drafted had limited the discovery “to the issue of determining the identity of the unidentifiable Defendants.” BAM told the court its claims are against the insiders who signed its contracts. The only two subpoenas it has served are aimed at this site.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261016/1/ 2026-10-16T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-16T12:00:00-06:00

On August 10, the evening before the city’s tax hearing, Daniel Sroka sat down in the mayor’s office in American Fork’s administration building with Mayor Bradley Frost and Chief Cameron Paul, ten cases in hand, and recorded it. The chief concedes that two statements in the department’s May video are wrong: “I’m not quite sure how to correct that.” The video is the only one on the department’s channel, and it is still up. The mayor tells Sroka he is the first resident to sit down with him about any of it, then reads him the email, “probably as many as 800,” and says where he believes it comes from. Published October 14 with Sroka’s permission, the morning the federal complaint quoted it. The whole 45 minutes follows.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261015/1/ 2026-10-15T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-15T12:00:00-06:00

On February 24, 2026 a financing statement was filed in Delaware giving Hillcrest Bank, a division of NBH Bank, a lien on all of BAM Franchising’s inventory, equipment, accounts, bank deposits, contracts, intangibles and goodwill, present and future. The disclosure document BAM issued on April 8 and certified on April 17 does not name the bank. The first BAM paper that does is the September amendment, whose May 31 balance sheet shows $378,884.70 drawn on a Hillcrest line, and $568,188.43 on three lines, against $130,779 at the year end. Five days before the lien, the chief executive put a $300,000 line of credit on his house. Everything on this page is public.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261014/5/ 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00

On May 29 the American Fork Police Department posted a 26-minute video in which Chief Cameron Paul defended the four days in March that four people sued over this morning. The complaint quotes him twice more, at an August 10 meeting with a resident and the mayor and at a September 16 meeting after an outside review. Each May statement is graded here against the record the department itself released. Four are refuted by that record. Five are contradicted by the chief’s own later words. One holds.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261014/4/ 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00

KSL, the Salt Lake Tribune, Fox 13 and ABC4 covered the federal suit four people filed this morning against the City of American Fork and thirteen of its officers. The city gave KSL one sentence and the Tribune none. Two pieces repeat the lawyers’ “Four Utah residents”; the complaint says one lives in Illinois. One puts the chief’s “we didn’t do this perfectly” in his video; the complaint puts it at a meeting months later. And KSL has the department’s account of how the unredacted footage got out.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261014/3/ 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00

The complaint, and the motion a magistrate judge granted on September 30, say this site’s September 23 report of “the dates and specific hotel location of Plaintiff’s upcoming private owners conference” put franchisees in danger. BAM’s conference website, open to anyone, has a Travel page: “Hotel Name: Sheraton Phoenix Downtown,” “Address: 340 N 3rd St, Phoenix, AZ 85004,” the phone number, the parking rates and the light rail stop. On October 13, the conference’s first day, the page was still there, word for word. The same site lists the sponsors, and its vendor portal lists the prices: $12,000 for Gold with the attendee list included, held by the accounting firm that calls itself BAM’s preferred partner. BAM’s books call the money “Sponsor Income.” Its disclosure document says vendor approval weighs “contributions or other benefits to us.” The conference ends Thursday. The subpoenas BAM served on October 5 set the records due Monday, October 19, four days later, and BAM’s October 7 memorandum to the court does not mention the conference at all. Everything on this page is public.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261014/2/ 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00

None of the four was ever charged with a crime. Their 52-page complaint, assigned to Judge Robert J. Shelby as No. 2:26-cv-01008, runs on the police chief’s own words: the search warrant affidavit, he said after a review, was “one of the biggest places where we screwed up.” Nineteen counts: a stop for a stop-sign violation the chief now says did not happen, a two-hour stop with a drug dog after a .000 breath test, a process server trespassed from a property she never entered, a phone seized when its owner declined to talk, a warrant for “stolen merchandise, specifically Lego merchandise,” and an entry with a rifle that handcuffed everyone inside, a 16-year-old included.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261014/1/ 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-14T12:00:00-06:00

On April 29, 2025 the corporate representative who seized the Keizer store and a listed BAM franchise seller answered a collectors’ show’s questions for seventy-six minutes. The next morning corporate’s statement reached the show with a defamation warning. One organization, two channels, read against the record.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261013/1/ 2026-10-13T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-13T12:00:00-06:00

In May 2015 the North Carolina State Bar’s unauthorized-practice committee wrote to Ammon McNeff as president of Legally Mine. At a seminar in the state, it found, the company held out as able to provide legal services; residents paid for them and got “no beneficial assistance” and no refund. He answered the committee, it wrote, and his response did “not dispute the factual allegations.” It found probable cause of unauthorized practice, cautioned him instead of suing, and expected the activities to stop. The letter surfaced in a Missouri class action in 2017. By BAM’s own disclosure documents he ran Legally Mine as president until 2020; he has run BAM since 2018. Everything on this page is public.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261012/1/ 2026-10-12T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-12T12:00:00-06:00

The premiere is Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 8 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. EDT), under the title “Things Have Changed.” Collecting Weekly calls it “an approximately 75-minute interview” conducted in 2025 with the two men who took over the Keizer store, and writes that some statements “conflict with information that has come to light since.” Collecting Weekly’s own email to BAM’s corporate office in April 2025 is the one public account of what they told the show: their “main assertion was that no marked sets were present at the time of their takeover.” Most of what answers it came later, from their own side. BAM’s complaint calls Best “BAM’s representative, Brandon” on the night the store was taken, and Johnson wrote in December 2025, “We have been holding on to what had stickers on them.” It is also the first long account in Best’s own voice to reach the public record, and it was recorded before nearly everything below existed.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261011/1/ 2026-10-11T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-11T12:00:00-06:00

The complaint is Ripoff Report #1039422, posted March 31, 2013 by “AR” of Ohio. Legally Mine’s own legal department sued “John Doe” over it twice in Provo, under a caption naming the wrong court. The first case was dismissed. In the second, Judge Darold McDade signed the company’s proposed findings on December 4, 2015, “No hearing was held in this matter”: $400,000 and an order that the review come down. The company’s proof that the review was false was that it could not find the reviewer among its clients. Service was a posting on the company’s own website and eight newspaper notices pointing to it, none of which mentioned a lawsuit; the reply on the Ripoff Report page that the court also ordered was never posted. No step to collect appears on the docket, and the judgment ran out in December 2023. The review is online today, under the company’s own notice of the suit, beside seven other reports about Legally Mine that it never sued over in Utah’s courts.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261010/1/ 2026-10-10T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-10T12:00:00-06:00

On October 10 Coach’s Archives read out an email it says came from a current Bricks & Minifigs owner. The question is the writer’s, who says the store “can barely afford to keep our doors open” and that there is “so much time left on our franchise agreement.” BAM’s own agreement has changed twice on what a terminated owner owes. Through 2020 an owner BAM terminated for default owed royalties for the rest of the term or three years, “whichever comes first.” The 2021 form dropped the three years and charges for every one of “the remaining months in the term.” The 2023 form doubled the term from five years to ten and raised the renewal fee from $2,000 to $5,000, and BAM’s own marked copy shows the old figures struck through. Since 2021 the disclosure document has listed the section that lets an owner end the agreement as “None.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261009/3/ 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00

Tattle was in Chrystal Law’s Salem store the night BAM took it, November 14, 2024. BAM’s own complaint says BAM “assumed possession of the premises and all assets located within the store” and that Law “was escorted out.” On October 9 Matty AppleSeed published texts in which Josh Johnson, who verified that complaint, says of the bird: “I gave it to a girl that worked at a veterinary office.” Of what he told her: “I think all I said it was abandoned.” A clinic in Salem confirmed on a recorded call that a bird was dropped off, and says one of its vets took her home. BAM’s chief executive, who verified the complaint with Johnson, told a live stream within three days that the bird was “taken to a no-kill shelter.” Law says no one from BAM ever called her. Whether the clinic’s bird is Tattle has not been verified.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261009/2/ 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00

BAM has two deadlines coming in its federal case against Reckless Ben: October 15 to oppose the defense’s request to add 27 quotations from Josh Johnson, a plaintiff who verified BAM’s complaint, and October 16 to answer the anti-SLAPP motion itself. On October 9 BAM and the defense filed a joint motion that would remove both. It asks the court to order that the request “shall be granted.” BAM’s 28 days to answer would start over when the defense files a supplemental memorandum, which would move BAM’s answer back at least three weeks, and six or more if the defense uses the 21 days it is given. Between its last filing on August 27 and this joint motion, the docket shows nothing filed by BAM. On September 19 Matt McNeff told franchisees BAM would file an order to show cause “On Monday” and that “there will be sanctions.” Neither is on the docket. No judge has signed the order.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261009/1/ 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-09T12:00:00-06:00

On September 19 Matt McNeff, BAM’s chief operations officer, told franchisees the Tucson store “will be shut down and will be remaining permanently closed.” Of Sarasota he said: “similar to Southeast Tucson, we will be taking the appropriate steps and actions necessary to protect the brand and to protect the franchisees.” Four days later the lock on the Tucson store was changed. On October 2 an email told customers of the Sarasota store “our Sarasota store is closed.” On October 7 a second email followed, and the name its replies go to had gained a word: “Corporate Bricks & Minifigs Sarasota.” Both stores have now spoken for themselves. The Tucson store’s website reads “New Location Coming Soon” and tells its customers “you have not seen the last of us.” The Sarasota store posted on October 9: “COSMIC CRITTER TOYS IS OPEN!” Neither names BAM. The Tucson website gives no new address and no date.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261008/1/ 2026-10-08T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-08T12:00:00-06:00

Gregory Belmont is the reader in New York who asked the court on October 2 to keep the names behind this site unread until a judge rules. In June, in BAM’s case against Reckless Ben, the clerk had filed his papers with a note that no response was required unless the court ordered one; none was ordered, and Judge David Barlow denied his motion as moot on July 29 after he withdrew it. This time Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead requested BAM’s response three days after he filed. BAM’s answer, October 7: he is “not a party, a subpoena recipient, a website operator, or a source,” and if the court acts “on its own initiative” the order should leave him out. Belmont’s reply, October 8, takes that condition and attaches an order the court could enter on its own: records identifying “the operators, editors, authors, or sources of thebammap.com” would go only to BAM’s lawyers and “remain unopened unless the Court authorizes a screening procedure.” DFJ read the reply live that afternoon. The court has not ruled.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261006/1/ 2026-10-06T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-06T12:00:00-06:00

The Thomases’ lawyer said on a call JEST published October 6 that Legally Mine had “been sued in Texas.” The courts’ own dockets show that suit and five more, in Idaho, Missouri, California, Washington and Ohio: two judgments collected against the company, three cases settled or stipulated away, and an Ohio fraud suit served on the day in 2020 that the Thomases’ lawyer first put the company on notice, dismissed by the plaintiff fifty-five days later. The Ohio panel later recorded that the company was “unaware of any complaint filed against Legally Mine by an Ohio client related to the services provided by Legally Mine.” While the Missouri class action naming Daniel McNeff was pending, BAM’s May 2019 disclosure document named him as its chief executive and said no litigation was required to be disclosed. Arkansas’s unauthorized-practice committee had listed the company’s own lawyer under “Cease & Desist” in 2016; a session under the company’s logo was on an accredited Little Rock program in February 2026.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261005/4/ 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00

The court sent the notice on October 5. The preliminary hearing was to have been September 30; the day before, the county told Judge Thomas Low “The State was unable to subpoena a witness,” and the docket shows the postponement granted the same day. The new date is 77 days later. Nothing on the docket held here lifts the stay-away condition of March 10 or the protective order of May 20.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261005/3/ 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00

The review says “I have no reason to believe the negative comments because of my experience.” It went up eight days after Legally Mine wrote, on the same profile, that a Florida business owner’s company “was mistakenly included in a dissolution request.” The bureau’s terms, as they now read, have every reviewer certify “I have no personal or business affiliation with this business” and send the reviewer’s contact information to the business. The review has been up for fifteen months.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261005/2/ 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00

Since at least 2014 the document had told buyers a franchisee “may also offer” consignment services, and had promised BAM’s own “specifications for programs we have developed” for them. The first line is in the version of the 2024 document that BAM’s own marked copy starts from, dated “as of 10.3.24,” six weeks before BAM’s incoming operators took the Salem store with a consigned collection inside. It is gone from the 2025 edition. The second line went a year later. Both strikes are in red in BAM’s own marked copies, and the franchise agreement in the current edition still says “Franchisee may also offer: consignment services.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261005/1/ 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-05T12:00:00-06:00

A public map listing puts the store at 356 E State St. BAM’s own complaint describes four days of police calls in March at and around the American Fork home of Josh Johnson, one of the nine people BAM lists as selling its franchises. On April 17 Ammon McNeff certified that BAM’s document did “not contain any material omissions”; its litigation page listed one matter, from 2019. On May 27 he verified BAM’s complaint against Benjamin Schneider, known as Reckless Ben, which says Schneider’s statements caused “damage to Plaintiffs’ ability to recruit new franchisees.” Three weeks later BAM’s law firm refiled the document with that page unchanged.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261003/4/ 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00

On September 23 someone took the lock off TJ Roberts’s store at 8110 South Houghton Road, went in, fitted a new one, drilled the handle and hung a key box on it. He was still the tenant. Five days earlier BAM’s West Coast coach had told another owner, “That was us. We bought out the lease, closed them down.” The landlord’s office told Roberts no lease had been signed; the landlord, by his account, says she sent no one. On September 29 he called 911; the department’s dispatch record logs the call as “CIVIL ISSUE” and closes it in the same minute, no officer sent. That evening it accepted his written report as “Trespassing,” number P2609298526. In Arizona the power to retake a commercial space belongs to the landlord or her agent. On his account the landlord says it was not her, and her property manager told him to call the police. BAM has not said whether the locksmith was its.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261003/3/ 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00

That is the company’s own account, in a joint filing with the Ohio State Bar Association, from the 343-page file of Ohio’s Board on the Unauthorized Practice of Law that JEST obtained from the clerk and this site has now read in full. The file holds the plan itself: the blueprint Legally Mine drew for a Canton dentist, the four companies it filed for her, the partnership agreement its non-lawyers built from a form, and the contract that said “ALL SALES ARE FINAL.” The bar’s complaint concerned one couple, hers. The company acknowledged “more than 50 other Ohio clients,” whom the filing calls “non-complaining victims,” and agreed that “It is unlikely that harm would be identifiable prior to the ultimate failure of an asset protection plan.” It proposed a $5,000 penalty, a refund to one couple, and, as the Board read it, a way to keep doing business in Ohio through contracted lawyers; the Board refused that as “a facade of legality” and required that every Ohio client be offered a full refund. The clause filed with Ohio’s Secretary of State for the dentist is the one Dan McNeff told a seminar “effectively blocks the judge.” By BAM’s own disclosure documents, the men running Legally Mine through most of it, Dan, Ammon and Matthew McNeff, were running Bricks & Minifigs.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261003/2/ 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00

The owner of the former Sarasota franchise, now Cosmic Critter Toys, posted a second public account on her own Facebook page on October 2, by the time stamps the video shows. Coach’s Archives, the second channel of EchoBase Network’s host, reported it on October 3 beside the customer email this site published on October 2. Her first account, the message she and Jon Martin wrote on the day the store reopened, is on this site in full: nearly three years without breaking even, a ban from the company’s main channel, the months of abuse aimed at her staff. The October 2 post keeps all of that and adds what sat between: their savings and retirement money in the store; a Facebook post about the controversy that Bricks & Minifigs told her to take down; removal from corporate channels after she spoke on EchoBase in August; formal notices, then a termination notice; and her own fear of what the next letter will say.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261003/1/ 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-03T12:00:00-06:00

In 2018 Legally Mine bought most of BAM Franchising from its founders, on credit. BAM’s audited statements give the share count. Legally Mine’s own filing gives the pledge. Daniel McNeff’s own letter, on a federal docket, describes the loan. A Utah court decree, on terms he signed, puts BAM “under the umbrella of Legally Mine.” The federal Franchise Rule makes a franchisor name any company that controls it. In 2019, 2020 and 2021, BAM’s disclosure documents told buyers there was none.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261002/3/ 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00

Cronkite News is produced by Arizona State University’s journalism school and airs on Arizona PBS. Its October 1 story went to two independent LEGO shops near Phoenix. Michael Stark, who owns Brixperience, said the controversy has sent him customers and that he feels for the franchise owners. Arizona Brick Co. in Chandler said its sales have not moved either way. The story quotes no one from Bricks & Minifigs. It treats the Salem dispute as one franchise’s problem. BAM’s own balance sheets carry the Salem store as a corporate store.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261002/2/ 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00

The store at 4047 Clark Road in Sarasota, Florida, left Bricks & Minifigs on September 19 and opened that morning as Cosmic Critter Toys. On October 2 its customers got a text, and an email with the same offer: the store is “closed,” here is 10% off at four Bricks & Minifigs stores around Tampa Bay. The email went out under the Sarasota store’s own name and street address. Three of the four stores belong to the company of Doug Phares, who sits on BAM’s marketing advisory council. The nearest Bricks & Minifigs, 39 miles away in Port Charlotte, is not on the list. BAM’s own rule for franchisees: “prohibited from soliciting and marketing in general to customers by any means outside your Territory.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261002/1/ 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-02T12:00:00-06:00

Belmont is a reader in New York. He swears he has never contacted this site and does not know who runs it. On September 30, the day a magistrate judge let BAM subpoena the records behind this site, he began asking BAM’s lawyers to hold off. First he asked them to wait until noon Mountain time on October 2. They declined. Then he asked only that anything identifying the site’s “operators, editors, authors, or sources” stay unread until the court rules. That is the request counsel “saw no legal basis” to grant. On October 2 he asked the court to order it. The court has not ruled.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261001/2/ 2026-10-01T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-01T12:00:00-06:00

Johnson is one of the six plaintiffs suing Reckless Ben and one of the two men who verified the complaint. On October 1 the defense put 27 quotations from his recorded call with Matty AppleSeed in front of Judge David Barlow and filed the recordings with the clerk as Exhibits 1 and 2. On who refused to return the collection: “Brandon never said no.” On his co-plaintiffs: “I don’t have anything to do with Matt and Ammon.” On the company: “I’m completely walking away and washing my hands of Bricks and Minifigs.” On the man he is suing: “I really like Ben.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20261001/1/ 2026-10-01T12:00:00-06:00 2026-10-01T12:00:00-06:00

BAM Franchising has a federal court’s permission to subpoena the names behind this site. This fund pays for the defense.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260930/1/ 2026-09-30T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-30T12:00:00-06:00

BAM filed the motion Monday. Judge David Barlow referred it Tuesday. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead granted it Wednesday, in three pages. BAM may now subpoena “third-parties, including Vercel, Inc. and Go.Daddy.com,” for “subscriber information, account records, IP address logs, deployment records and any other information” that might identify the people it is suing. The order requires no notice to anyone and sets no time to object. And the knowledge base the complaint calls “accessible only through individual accounts” was open to anyone on September 26. On September 30 it asks for a login.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260929/2/ 2026-09-29T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-29T12:00:00-06:00

Utah County charged him in March. The court put him under a stay-away order on March 10 and a protective order on May 20. The preliminary hearing, where the State must first show its evidence, was set for September 30 at 10:30 a.m. in Provo. On September 29 the county filed a one-page motion, stipulated by both sides, asking to postpone it: “The State was unable to subpoena a witness, and the parties request additional time to work on a potential resolution.” It names no witness and sets no new date.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260929/1/ 2026-09-29T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-29T12:00:00-06:00

Every Bricks & Minifigs store has to hire an accountant, from vendors the company approves. The disclosure document BAM gives every buyer calls the accountant “the required vendor” and has never named one. On an accounting firm’s website, BAM’s chief financial officer describes the firms “that we recommend,” tells of having to “intervene and ask questions related to franchisees” the firm serves, and vouches for its work. A second firm says it keeps BAM’s own books and several stores’ as well. A third calls itself “the preferred accounting firm for Bricks and Minifigs,” and in 2018, the year the requirement began, went into business with Legally Mine, where BAM’s chief executive, president and treasurer then held office. Five passages from BAM’s disclosure and its chief financial officer’s own words are set beside the record below.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260928/1/ 2026-09-28T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-28T12:00:00-06:00

On Monday, three days after suing ten unnamed John Does, the company filed an ex parte motion asking Judge David Barlow for leave to subpoena Vercel, which hosts this site, and GoDaddy, its domain registrar, “including but not limited to” them. The subpoenas attached to it ask for the names, addresses and phone numbers of anyone who “edited, authored content for, or otherwise controlled” this site, the billing records and “payment information” on its account, the logs of every address used to run or post to it, and “All Communications between the Hosting Provider and the Website Operator.” They are returnable October 16. No defendant has appeared, so the motion went to the judge alone.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260927/1/ 2026-09-27T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-27T12:00:00-06:00

BAM sold The Last Relic its Wesley Chapel, Florida company store in 2022, and by its own count was still owed about $80,000 from the sale when its lawyers ended his franchise on December 12, 2024. They did it with the letter they had written for the Messers a year earlier, down to the greeting and the document number, and offered to cancel everything he owed if he handed over the store. Brandon Best and Josh Johnson incorporated the company that took it that day. Four months later Ammon McNeff swore to a disclosure document that denies BAM finances franchisees, counts no terminations in 2024, and omits the lawsuit against the Messers that he had verified.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260926/5/ 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00

BAM’s own register counts 387 of Mansell’s sets unsold the night it took the Keizer store. On a livestream on September 26, he showed what the settlement sent back: about 35 sets, none of the valuable ones, seven that were never his, among them “certified used” store stock and a set released after he consigned. The minifigures he consigned new and individually bagged are still waiting to be picked up, “tossed in a single ziploc bag.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260926/4/ 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00

Johnson is one of the six plaintiffs suing Reckless Ben and one of the complaint’s two verifiers, with Ammon McNeff. On a recorded call published this week, he contradicted it on who kept the Lego, when the cupboard sets turned up, what he owed the consignor, who the buyers were, and what they paid. Those are the facts the rest of the complaint stands on. By October 16, BAM must answer a motion that asks the judge to weigh the plaintiffs’ own admissions.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260926/3/ 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00

Johnson is a plaintiff with BAM Franchising and both McNeffs in the racketeering case against Reckless Ben, a franchise seller named in the disclosure document BAM filed this month, co-owner of the company that took over the seized Salem store, and the complaining witness in the State’s case against Benjamin Schneider, set for a preliminary hearing on Wednesday. On an hour-long call that Matty AppleSeed recorded and published, Johnson said he owes Schneider an apology, that his videos “are awesome,” and that “Ben can go after Bricks and Minifigs all he wants.” He said the Salem store came free, that “Ammon didn’t want to give Bryan his Legos back,” that “they convinced me” to pay a Florida store’s bills for six months, and that “90% of them are underfunded.”

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260926/2/ 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00

The complaint, filed Friday afternoon in federal court in Salt Lake City, names no one. It says the defendants are “current or former franchisees, employees, or other persons” under contract with the company, and it asks for subpoenas to Vercel, Google, Slack and YouTube to learn who they are and who runs this site. This month, in the disclosure document every prospective franchisee now receives, the company explained why its case against Reckless Ben is material to a buyer even though “The named defendants are not franchisees.” On Friday it filed a case against franchisees. Its own paragraphs say it already has a suspect in its own logs. The help desk it tells the court is private is open to the public today, at the address the complaint prints. It is the fourth legal instrument aimed at this site in sixty days, and the first that asks for nothing to come down. What it asks of this site’s host is a name.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260926/1/ 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-26T12:00:00-06:00

Pick your state and the year you signed. The guide opens your state’s franchise statutes, BAM’s own addendum for your state in that edition, the conditions the state put on BAM’s registration, and what the disclosure document said beside the record. Every line carries its source. No franchisee is named.

https://www.thebammap.com/updates/20260925/2/ 2026-09-25T12:00:00-06:00 2026-09-25T12:00:00-06:00

The Bricks & Minifigs store at 658 South State Street in Orem has belonged, on paper, to the company’s chief executive and his family since 2017. In December 2024 the company bought it from them. The purchase appears in two sentences in the notes to BAM’s audited financial statements, with no price and no name. The same statements record the company paying an unnamed shareholder $3.08 a share, on a 7.5 percent note, in a year it lost money and its balance sheet showed a deficit. Seven passages from BAM’s own filings are set beside the record below.