CONFIRMED
This is the plain-language edition of Who actually took over the Keizer store. Same facts, same grade, none of the case or filing numbers, and nothing hidden in boxes. Every claim below is stated again on the cited edition with its full sourcing attached.
Here is the simplest way to say it. BAM took a store away from a family, sold it, and called the people who bought it independent owners. They are not independent. By BAM’s own paperwork, the two buyers are BAM’s own people: one is the man BAM pays to recruit new franchise owners, and the other is the contractor BAM hired to count up the store’s inventory on the night it took the store. Those same two men own a little chain of companies, all named “Baker Bricks,” and the store where the seized LEGO collection turned up for sale is one of theirs. On paper the sale was arm’s length, a deal between strangers. Underneath, the seller and the buyer were the same operation.
You do not have to take anyone’s word for this, because BAM’s own documents name them. Its own franchise booklet says one of them has been its franchise recruiter since the spring of 2023, more than a year before he supposedly bought the store as an outsider, and it even lists him as someone allowed to sell franchises for the company. The other one, in BAM’s own sworn court complaint, is the contractor it brought in to inventory the store the night it repossessed it, the man who walked the shelves and counted what was being carried off, and who then turned around and became a buyer of that same store. The recruiter and the inventory man are the “strangers.”
The two of them set up three companies, all called “Baker Bricks” with a city name in front, all within about four months of 2024: one in Eugene, one for the Salem store, and one clear across the country in Florida. The things that tie them together are not ones a real stranger would share. They all use the same Utah post office box for mail. They carry the same two names. And the Salem company was created the day after the seizure, listed at the address of the store that had just been taken. They also use the same paperwork-filing service as their agent, though that is a big commercial service BAM itself uses for its own store, so it is background, not the tie. What settles it sits on top of all three: a parent company whose reinstatement paper, filed in the court case, names both men as its owners. That paper is the cleanest proof there is that the “independent” buyers are really one thing, and that both men are inside it.
Only one of the three, the Eugene store, actually sells to the public online. The Salem store’s own web page has a single “Shop Online” button, and that button does not go to any Salem shop. It goes to the Eugene store. And this is not some leftover from the old owner: the button shows up in saved copies of the page from while these two men ran it, and it is not there in the copy saved before the seizure. So what you have is a bunch of doors to take stores in, and one public door to sell the stuff back out. That is exactly the door the seized Salem collection came out of, showing up on the Eugene shelves about five weeks after the store was taken.
The gap here is BAM’s own to explain. Its franchise booklet says it took back no Oregon store in 2024 and sold none to a franchisee in 2025, and it says nothing at all about a store sold to a company owned by its own recruiter and its own contractor. And the company clearly knows how to disclose a store sale, because three months earlier it disclosed selling a different store, in Canby, to an outside family, and even wrote down the profit. The Salem sale, the one to its own people, is the one that is simply missing. What that resale did to the value of the family’s collection is a separate question, and we are leaving it open. That the seller and the buyer were the same operation is not open. That part is on the record.
The fair counterpoint. BAM says in court that this was a real, good-faith purchase, and no judge has ruled on any of it; everyone here is presumed innocent. A company is allowed to sell a store it took back, and it is allowed to sell it to people it knows. Doing that quietly when the buyers are your own staff is a conflict you are supposed to disclose, but it is not automatically a crime. That these two men own the buyer is proven from the records; whether the plan was to strip and hide the seized collection is something this page does not claim. Two careful notes: the records show the recruiter as a sworn owner of the buyer and as the person who made the police report, not the sharper thing others have said about what he personally did with the LEGO; and this Brandon Best is not the Brandon Comer who appears elsewhere in this story. This is a careful reading of public paperwork, not a verdict.
Every fact here is stated again with its sources attached: start with the cited edition of this update, then The store for the seizure and resale, The takedown for the police-report side, the cast for every name and grade, and the map for how it all connects.
Primary sources, all public: the founding paper of the parent “Baker Bricks” company, filed in the federal court case; BAM’s own sworn complaint in that case; the Oregon and Florida business records for the three “Baker Bricks” companies; BAM’s own 2026 franchise booklet; and the Salem store’s own web page, live and in the Internet Archive.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam