Comment by TrackerFF

My take is that this all comes down to the stores being franchises.

Yes, franchisor hold a lot of power, and in the big picture the franchisees are small owners and a move like this ($200k of merch they haven't paid a dime for) can affect the PnL quite a lot on the local level. It seems like the average Bricks and Minifigs franchise store has annual revenue of just $600k. At that's revenue. Another search shows that their margins are around 10%-20%

If these franchise owners managed to pull of this, and sell the collection for $200k on top of the expected annual revenue, that would put their store margin for that year around 45%-55%!

I'm guessing Bricks and Minifigs, the corporation, just assumed this would fly quietly under the radar, and let their franchisees.

I think it just comes down to greed. A couple of franchisees figured they could make a killing, and become one of the most profitable franchise stores with no effort.