Bricks & Minifigs: why it's smart to double down on incompetence after inflating assets by $200k (via vintage Star Wars LEGO sets)
I’m just letting you know “voting with your wallet” isn’t real (haha learned this as a youth when *NSYNC’s Celebrity sold 1.1mil copies in a week and Justified missed expectations…).
The average business stopped caring about profits circa 2015. They don’t care about getting money from customers (consumers).
They care about getting money from the banks: debt. It’s a lot more cash than selling a LEGO set to someone a couple times a day.
In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, it doesn’t even matter.
A guy was going to sell a LEGO collection on consignment through a franchised location of Bricks & Minifigs.
Well, that location immediately became corp-owned (non-franchise location) upon receiving the $200k collection.
And now, the organization will not return the unsold sets to the guy who legally owns the sets.
The organization is feigning incompetence and will use the non-existent change management to “prove” incompetence.
That is the part that sucks. That that works. You can commit fraud and get away with it by just repeating over and over again, “You don’t own the sets!” even when looking at the contract that makes clear these LEGO sets are in fact still the guy’s property. Because that in & of itself proves incompetence; therefore, it cannot be fraud.
White collar crime is wild. How many times have you been told it doesn’t matter if you didn’t know it was against the law? The system is designed to keep the white collar criminals rich and out of trouble.
Somehow looking at a contract that says, “He owns the LEGO sets,” and screaming, “NO!” is self-evident of incompetency. But… being really rich and successful in business for many years is not enough to be self-evident that you’re clearly… not incompetent.
ANYWAY! I get frustrated by people laughing at the company going bankrupt (like, people think it’s “justice” that the company will go bankrupt after screwing over a rando). This shows how uninformed everyone is about white collar crime.
Why is Bricks & Minifigs hellbent on not returning the unsold LEGO sets
When you try to get more debt from a lender, from a bank, they look at your financial state, right?
You have a credit card limit you cannot exceed, you know?
Well, businesses have metrics, too, defined in agreements with the lenders, the banks.
If you’re interested in accounting minutiae, we can talk about it. But otherwise, know that the common metric in these lender agreements is easy to manipulate by specifically inflating inventory.
If that does not high-level make sense to you: you’re right.
Again, white collar crime is by design easy to commit and get away with. A company whose whole business model is consignment will get away with being “incompetent” for its accounting practices regarding these LEGO sets that they never even actually owned but are recording down as inventory.
The other reason none of this should make any sense to you:
Having a lot of unsold product (a lot of inventory on hand) — you’d think that would be a red flag when getting debt, no?
Shouldn’t the banks see that as a business risk?! Instead of it being a lever to get them to give you more spending power?!
Again, look at who wrote the laws. “Occupy Delaware,” you know? I won’t go too off on this at this juncture.
Bricks & Minifigs needs the $200k on the org’s accounting books to acquire new debt at favorable rates and/or to avoid violating existing agreements.
Now that everyone knows the truth, they need to double down on incompetence to avoid prison in the event the banks accuse them of committing fraud.
The insane thing is… is that Bricks & Minifigs clearly had intention to do this — which should be enough “proof” that this wasn’t incompetence. This was criminal intent. — when it made the specific location suddenly corporate-owned and not a franchise. It has to do with how the accounting minutiae works.
But it also has to do with pre-emptively setting up the incompetence defense for themselves. Just putting LEGO sets at a franchise on the accounting books is so incompetent they’d never get away with feigning incompetence. White collar crime! It’s circular because it is circular (by design) (and not because I suck at explaining it, I promise).
Why does Bricks & Minifigs need more debt
That cash is used to pay themselves —the individuals— dividends.
Because once those dividends are put in retirement funds (which they are), the money is totally safe -- it cannot be used to pay defendants in lawsuits. It cannot be lost in a personal bankruptcy. It’s unattached the business going bankrupt. Etc.
It does not matter to the average business if the business goes bankrupt. It’s... kinda by design.
Use a laundromat front as a vehicle to get money from the banks. The laundromat front is responsible for repaying the banks. The laundromat front pays the individuals the money it got from the banks. The laundromat front goes bankrupt. It’s fine. The individuals are not personally responsible for repaying the business’s debts. The individuals got rich (and the money is totally safe in retirement funds).
That’s not even a crime, by the way! That’s totally legal!
do you really believe the reason Amanda was ride-or-die was because she understood these financial intricacies…?
lol no
Amanda, I doubt, understands the accounting details.
But I’m sure the average employee knows how important their bonuses (given in the form of dividends) are.
If she’s told, “You lose your bonus if you don’t manage the situation with the Star Wars LEGO sets,” she’ll do what she has to do. That just became her job.
You know?
&&& that is the screwed up thing about all that.
These employees are unknowingly used to commit fraud. Forced criminality.
The employees are exploited and don’t know enough to know that’s what up.
That’s why everyone you know is miserable at their jobs. Being told the only way to get promoted is by performing at the higher level with one’s existing title (unpaid labor!). Being told to do stuff that doesn’t totally make sense.1 Etc. But not massively class action suing employers for abuse and exploitation and labor trafficking.
Forced criminality is labor trafficking.
please let me know if you have any questions or anything on anything otherwise, more to come yours, jansen
For example, when the employee who was crowned Brick Queen shared she was told to find a way to get people arrested — I’m sure in the moment, that seemed to her like an extreme response from her manager. It was easy for her, I’m sure, to not take seriously. But! She noted it. Because intuitively, it struck as not making sense to the point that it impressed upon her memory. She was subconsciously looking to make sense of it, you know? We can see that in the way she reacts when the realization hits her.