In today’s settlement announcement, BAM took an assignment of Bryan Mansell’s claims under the consignment contract and wrote: “BAM may elect to pursue these claims against those responsible.” It never says who they are. The record offers three doors. Pick one and follow it, the way the first Choose Your Alibi walked BAM’s three accounts of the taking itself.
CONFIRMEDEvery quote below is BAM’s: from its August 19 joint statement and companion FAQ, archived and hashed by this site the hour they appeared, from its filings, or from the recordings and police file already published here. CONFIRMEDEach route below closes on something BAM itself published, swore, or signed, most of it on August 19.
The claims BAM bought are claims about a loss: a consigned Star Wars collection that entered the Salem/Keizer store under a written agreement whose title clause reads “Consigned merchandise shall remain the property of Mansell until sold”, BAM’s own Exhibit A, hosted here, and that was never accounted for after BAM’s operators took the store on November 14, 2024. Whoever is “responsible” for that loss is now the person BAM says it may sue with the victim’s own claims.
BAM says it may pursue the assigned claims “against those responsible.” Responsible for the loss of the collection. Who? The record offers three doors. Choose the one you believe, and follow it.
Where they said it: the FAQ, the settlement’s only named candidate: “We believe former owner Chrystal Law-Gorman entered into it as a personal, local arrangement and never informed corporate or the incoming franchisee about the consignment arrangement.” The same day’s wire release says the aim in its subhead: remaining claims “respecting unauthorized consignment deal by former owner of closed store.”
Follow it. Chrystal Law is the consignment’s counterparty, so the contract claims BAM bought do point at her, and she is also, since August 14, a plaintiff suing BAM and its owners personally in the case that continues. For this door to hold, three separate accounts have to survive. Each is BAM’s own.
Three accounts hold this door up. Choose the one to defend.
Where they said it: the FAQ: she “never informed corporate or the incoming franchisee.” It is the only hedged sentence on either August 19 page: “We believe.”
“So, Crystal, ultimately that is a business thing and not necessarily yours. Brandon is taking on the business and takes on all that consignment.”
BAM corporate’s Ki McAllister, on the 7:10 PM seizure-night call, administering the handoff of the thing the FAQ says corporate was never informed of, to the incoming operator the FAQ says was never informed either. The incoming side then spent months proving its knowledge in writing: “We have been holding on to what had stickers on them. We put them in the back,” and, in the recorded police interviews, “those were Mansell’s.”
Where it rests: for the assigned claims to reach her, the Mansells’ release must not cover her. BAM’s statement says the release runs to “any current Bricks & Minifigs franchisee.”
BAM’s FAQ, published the same day, says the Mansells released “any past or current Bricks & Minifigs franchisee.” Chrystal Law is a past franchisee. If the FAQ describes the actual settlement, the claims against her were extinguished before they were assigned, and BAM bought nothing this door can use. If the statement describes it, then BAM’s own FAQ misstates the settlement’s central term on the day it was announced. Either way, the first fight in any suit through this door is BAM against its own pages.
Where it rests: a suit needs her responsible for the loss, not merely party to the contract. BAM’s statement assigns her the “sale, accounting, storage and disposition of inventory.”
Read the sentence they wrote: the Mansells’ loss arose “in part” from the former operator’s conduct, and ran “during the transition from the former operator to the replacement franchisees.” “In part” concedes the other part, and “the transition” is the window in which BAM’s operators held the store, and the stickered sets sat in their back room. A suit through this door asks a court to read “in part” as “entirely,” against the drafter’s own qualifier.
Where the record points: the men in possession of the store, and everything in it, from November 14 on. They told Keizer police the collection was “missing” seven days after the takeover, held “what had stickers on them” in the back, and identified the sets in recorded interviews: “those were Mansell’s.”
Follow it. Custody is the natural place to look for responsibility for a custody loss, and every custody fact in the police file sits behind this door.
Two candidates hold the custody. Choose one.
Where the record points: the “missing” call is theirs; the stickers text is Johnson’s; the identification is Johnson’s; the informal takeover inventory was, per BAM’s own sworn complaint, conducted by “BAM’s representative, Brandon.”
Both of BAM’s August 19 pages release Josh Johnson and Brandon Best by name. The one part of the release the two versions agree on is the part that closes this door. The claims arrived at BAM with this route welded shut, by BAM’s own drafting, the same morning, and the two men are BAM’s co-plaintiffs in the case that continues against the journalist. BAM had already parted ways with both men on the wire in June, attributing part of the failure to “operational gaps during the transition,” the transition they ran; released in August, by name, anyway. The candidates the custody record points at hardest are the ones the settlement protected first.
Where it rests: the company that received the store: Baker Bricks, LLC, dba Salem-Baker Bricks, Inc., as its own federal case caption spells it.
Both pages release the entity too, under the name “Baker Salem,” which matches no caption in either case. BAM’s settlement announcement misnames its own released party, and the misnaming changes nothing: whichever name the release meant, it is the successor’s, and the claims BAM bought cannot reach a party its assignor released in the deal that produced them.
Where the record points: BAM terminated the franchise by letter and its operators took the store that night, with the collection inside. Its Director of Operations administered the consignment handoff on tape. Its own line, on a recorded call: “the lease is technically in our name still.” The point-of-sale data and ledgers that would account for the goods are, per the amended complaint, in BAM’s hands. And the FAQ’s own list of fixes, inventory tracking “from the moment a collection enters a store,” disclosure forms, de-escalation training, describes corporate systems, not one ex-franchisee’s side deal.
Follow it. This is the door the first Choose Your Alibi walked to its end: every route through the taking finished in BAM’s own record.
Three candidates stand behind this door. Choose one.
Where it rests: the door the taking record points at. If responsibility lives here, the claims BAM bought point at the company that bought them.
A claim assigned to the party that owes it is not a lawsuit; it is a receipt. The moment responsibility lands here, the claims merge into their holder and die. The release’s first words already cover “BAM” anyway. If those responsible are behind this door, then August 19 was BAM compensating the victim of its own conduct, taking his claims off the market, and publishing a phrase that points anywhere else.
Where it rests: the officers who ran the takeover and signed the litigation: the chief executive who verified the complaint against Bryan Mansell, and the operations chief on the seizure-night calls.
“Releasing all their legal claims against BAM, its leadership…” is how both pages begin the release. The men who approved the settlement released themselves in its first clause, before the assignment in its fourth. Whatever the claims were worth against the leadership, they were worth it to the leadership, which is who they were surrendered to.
Where it rests: today’s report notes the assigned claims could, in principle, be pointed at Benjamin Schneider, still a defendant in BAM’s own case.
A consignment claim needs custody, sale, storage, or disposition. No page of the record, not the police file, not BAM’s sworn complaint, not either August 19 page, puts the collection in his hands, ever. There is nothing behind this route but the aim itself.
Eight routes in, eight dead ends, each closed by BAM on August 19: released by name, released in the release’s first clause, released on one of BAM’s two conflicting pages, qualified by BAM’s own “in part,” contradicted by BAM’s own tape, merged into the company that paid, or aimed at a man the record never put near the goods. A phrase that survives in a press release and dies in every direction a court could take it is not a legal position. It is aim. And the game’s one rule still holds: responsibility has to live somewhere. Twenty-one months in, exactly one party has paid for this loss, in money, with an apology it calls unqualified. The settlement’s phrase for who should pay is “those responsible.” The record of who did pay has one name in it, and BAM wrote the check.
Sources. BAM’s joint statement and FAQ, August 19, 2026, archived and hashed on publication day · The consignment agreement, BAM’s Exhibit A, hosted · Keizer PD file KZP24020132, published in full; the recorded interviews, reported here · BAM Franchising, Inc. et al. v. Schneider et al., No. 2:26-cv-00593 (D. Utah) · First Amended Complaint, No. 260200029, hosted as filed · Companion: An unqualified apology, today’s report on the settlement · Part one: Choose Your Alibi: Bryan Mansell’s Consignment · Also today: the FAQ, fact-checked and Bryan Mansell did not sign an NDA · The wires: August 19 and June 4 · The living census.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the claims described are allegations in pending civil litigation, no court has ruled on them, and every party is presumed innocent. The legal analysis above is the site’s reading of public law applied to a pleaded record, not legal advice and not a prediction. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law