A California YouTuber known for elaborate pranks and internet crusades is facing criminal charges in Utah after police say he targeted business owners connected to a fight over a missing Star Wars Lego collection.
Ben Schneider, known as “Reckless Ben” on YouTube, posted several videos since last week documenting his quest to recover a massive collection of Lego sets and minifigures for an 83-year-old Oregon man and his son, Bryan Mansell. Schneider has alleged the Lego sets and minifigures are worth over $200,000, and were stolen by Bricks & Minifigs, a Lego resale chain headquartered in Utah. Mansell consigned his sets to one of the company’s stores in Oregon.
The videos have garnered over 2 million views on YouTube, and the Lego resale chain has fought back. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the company accused Schneider, Mansell and others of coordinating a harassment and extortion campaign targeting Bricks & Minifigs franchise owners in Utah and Oregon.
In court filings, Bricks & Minifigs alleges the collection was lost while the Oregon store was owned by Chrystal Law. Law may have sold the collection without payment to Mansell, the company said.
“We are completely willing to sit down and figure out a fair, reality-based way to ensure this grandfather is made whole,” Bricks & Minifigs wrote in a statement. “However, there is a fundamental difference between a good-faith resolution and giving in to a coordinated, viral extortion campaign.”
Court records show the debacle landed Schneider in a Utah County jail, and that he faces misdemeanor charges of stalking, targeted residential picketing, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass against two Utahns he has deemed responsible for the missing Lego sets.
Who owns the Lego sets?
Since the 90s, Mansell and his father have built an elaborate Star Wars Lego universe complete with unopened collector sets and more than 1,000 rare minifigures that he believed would someday help support his family.
But after consigning the collection to a Bricks & Minifigs franchise location in 2023, its whereabouts have sparked a legal feud stretching from the Oregon resale store to Utah courtrooms.
Mansell says his father, Eric, spent years building the massive collection — roughly 780 boxed Lego sets and 1,200 rare minifigures — as an investment for his grandchildren’s future. When he turned over his collection to the now-shuttered Oregon store, the shop highlighted his “incredibly rare” 2003 Cloud City set, and stated it was worth more than $10,000 in a social media post.
“Lego was a toy we shared when I was a kid, and he wanted to share it with his grandchildren,” Mansell wrote in a statement published by the Salem Business Journal. “He chose Lego as an investment and began purchasing sets and figures to be kept new and in [a] box, so that one day they could be sold to help pay for the grandkid’s college education.”
The consignment
In late 2023, Law — the former franchise owner of the Oregon location — agreed to sell the Mansell family’s collection through her Bricks & Minifigs store, a deal the company says violated franchise rules and was never approved by corporate leadership, according to court filings.
Mansell said Law sold sets on his behalf for the better part of a year and that he would pick up monthly checks from her, according to The Salem Business Journal. The sales of those sets are not in dispute. What is in question is the fate of the sets that remained when Law left the store.
The Lego resale company repossessed the struggling franchise and sold it to new owners, according to a Bricks & Minifigs lawsuit, after Law accumulated roughly $175,000 in debt and told the company that she intended to abandon the franchise in November 2024.
Law, however, says Bricks & Minifigs “abruptly seized” her Salem store, forced her out of the business and “publicly accused me of unethical and illegal behavior,” according to a GoFundMe she launched to help fund her legal battle against the company.
At that point, Mansell asked for either the Lego collection back or $80,000, according to the company’s complaint. But the new owners claimed most of the Lego sets had likely already been sold by Law.
Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best
In early 2025, Bricks & Minifigs finalized the sale of the Oregon store to Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best, according to court records filed by Best, Johnson, the company and its owners.
In November 2024, within the first two days after Law was terminated, Mansell called the Oregon store and asked to speak with Law, according to the filing. Best explained that Law had abandoned the store, and Mansell took alleged consignment paperwork to the shop later that day.
When Johnson reviewed the paperwork, he pointed out that he, Best and Bricks & Minifigs were not named in the agreement.
Best and Johnson then allowed Mansell to review the sets on display, and when Mansell could not identify any of the sets as those from his collection, he said Johnson was “lying” and was told to leave, according to the filing. Best and other employees, who had previously worked for Law, searched for Mansell’s collection but did not find it, the filing says.
At one point, the filing alleges, Mansell attempted to obtain payment from Law but was “unsuccessful.”
After taking over the franchise following Law’s termination, Bricks & Minifigs found a small number of Lego sets valued between $2,000 and $5,000 that could “possibly be related” to Mansell’s collection, according to a statement from the company. They offered to return these items to Mansell but the family refused, the company wrote.
“We are hopeful the individuals involved in this private dispute can resolve such among themselves, which we support,” the company said in a statement. “Our goal is to ensure this grandfather and his family are not left ‘out’ or penalized for a localized failure.”
How Reckless Ben got involved
For months after the November confrontation, the company’s court filing alleges, Mansell harassed Johnson, Best and other employees at the Oregon store. He also lodged police complaints, posted negative reviews and contacted a podcast about the situation, according to the filing.
This year, court records allege, Best uncovered information that similar Lego collections to those allegedly consigned by Mansell were “virtually all sold” before December 2024, when the store was still under Law’s ownership, suggesting that Law had sold “virtually all of” Mansell’s collection potentially without compensating Mansell.
Mansell’s contact with a podcast about the dispute led to the involvement of Schneider, known on YouTube as “Reckless Ben,” the filing asserts.
Since the Oregon store began its operations under Johnson and Best as a new franchise, Schneider, Law and Mansell “waged a malicious and intentional campaign of extortion” through sham lawsuits and defamation, according to the filing.
They targeted Johnson, Best, and Bricks & Minifigs across “multiple states,” eventually culminating in recent stalking and trespassing allegations in Utah, where the company is headquartered and where Johnson and Best own private residences, according to the filing.
Criminal allegations and the American Fork Police Department
Recently, Schneider began posting videos accusing Bricks & Minifigs, Johnson and Best of stealing from the elderly Oregon collector.
Schneider and others he recruited, according to the company’s complaint, trespassed at stores, targeted Best and Johnson at their Utah homes, impersonated delivery drivers and church members, and hung a fake “permanently closed” sign on the Oregon storefront accusing the owner of stealing a “family’s life savings.”
Schneider, on his YouTube channel, has cast himself as an internet watchdog exposing corporate misconduct. In a viral May video titled “I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of LEGO,” he accused Bricks & Minifigs of exploiting the consignor.
Videos posted to Schneider’s YouTube account show multiple confrontations with American Fork police, where Schneider alleges he was attempting to resolve the legal dispute by going to Johnson’s Utah County home. Those visits, Schneider says, were part of a legally required “good faith” effort to fix the problem privately.
In a video, Schneider also pushed a theory that the police officers were protecting Johnson and Best, along with the corporate owners of Bricks & Minifigs, because they all appeared to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Schneider was charged in March with stalking and residential targeted picketing after the interactions at Johnson’s home, court records show. Johnson was also granted a protective order against Schneider on May 20, which requires he not contact Johnson and stay away from his home, according to the filing.
Schneider also faces charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing near a Provo business park, court records show. His next court appearance will be held online on June 8 at 11 a.m.
Schneider said in a video that he has fled to Mexico.