Steve Green Collection
Object or Group Name
Steve Green Collection
Case Summary
In July 2010, Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby chain of American craft stores, travelled to Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, to inspect a massive hoard of ancient artifacts. With him was his advisor Scott Carroll, a scholar of ancient languages whose cellphone’s ringtone was the theme from Indiana Jones.
Green and Carroll met with two Israeli antiquities dealers at the apartment of Hassan Fazelli, an Iranian antiquities trafficker based in Sharjah. The dealers offered Green a trove of ancient artifacts: 1,500 cuneiform tablets, 500 cuneiform bricks, 3,000 clay bullae, 35 clay envelope seals, 13 extra-large cuneiform tablets and 500 stone cylinder seals, according to a federal forfeiture complaint.
The artifacts bore several hallmarks of the illicit antiquities trade. They were “displayed informally,” according to the complaint – “spread out on the floor before him, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.”
The artifacts allegedly belonged not to any of the three dealers present but to a fourth, another Israeli dealer who claimed they had come from his “family collection.” Regarding provenance, the dealers claimed the objects had been “legally acquired in the late 1960s” from “local markets.” Bizarrely, they also said the objects had been sent to Mississippi for storage in the 1970s and had most recently been in Washington DC before being shipped to the UAE for that day’s inspection. The objects were being sold at a deep discount. Carroll estimated the objects were worth approximately USD $11,800,000, but were being offered for sale for just USD $2,000,000.
After Green returned to Oklahoma City, where Hobby Lobby is headquartered, the company’s in-house lawyer contacted Patty Gerstenblith, a leading expert in cultural property law. In August 2010 Gerstenblith travelled to Oklahoma and gave a presentation to Green, Carroll and the company lawyer on the laws governing the purchase and importation of cultural property.
"I would regard the acquisition of any artifact likely from Iraq (which could be described as Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Parthian, Sassanian and possibly other historic or cultural terms) as carrying considerable risk," Gerstenblith told them. Green and his advisors were given detailed guidance on the dangers of antiquities acquisitions, and then chose to ignore it, court records show.
From January 3rd to 5th, 2011, five FedEx shipments arrived in Oklahoma City from the UAE, but they were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. The shipments contained a combined total of approximately 223 cuneiform tablets and approximately 300 clay bullae. Approximately 227 cuneiform tablets and approximately 2,700 clay bullae were shipped by express post from the UAE and Israel to the same Oklahoma purchaser.
The seizure triggered a federal criminal investigation of Green and his collection that would consume federal investigators for years, and eventually lead to the seizure of more than 10,000 looted antiquities, but no criminal charges.
In July 2017, federal authorities in the Eastern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture complaint again the 5,500 ancient objects that Green had bought for USD $1,600,000. Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the objects and pay an additional USD $3,000,000 to resolve the civil complaint.
Around the same time, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, in coordination with U.S. authorities, arrested four antiquities dealers for their alleged connection to the sale: Alaa (Alan) Baidun (48), Ibrahim (Nabil) Hroub (50), Yosef Hroub (56), and Taher Barakat (55). Israeli court documents confirm that Alaa (Alan) Baidun is the “Israeli Dealer #1” named in the American civil forfeiture case against Hobby Lobby, while Hroub and Barakat are “Israeli Dealer #2” and “Israeli Dealer #3.”
Each dealer was indicted by the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office in June 2019 on charges of money laundering, forgery, and the sale of illicit property, among others. Filings from Baidun’s October 2019 appeal state that he was approached by Hobby Lobby regarding the purchase of the Iraqi tablets and that all parties involved knew the tablets were from Iraq. According to court documents, Hobby Lobby asked Baidun to order forged provenance documents from antiquities dealers Ibrahim Hroub and Taher Barakat.
The seized artifacts were returned to Iraq in 2017.
Green and Carroll met with two Israeli antiquities dealers at the apartment of Hassan Fazelli, an Iranian antiquities trafficker based in Sharjah. The dealers offered Green a trove of ancient artifacts: 1,500 cuneiform tablets, 500 cuneiform bricks, 3,000 clay bullae, 35 clay envelope seals, 13 extra-large cuneiform tablets and 500 stone cylinder seals, according to a federal forfeiture complaint.
The artifacts bore several hallmarks of the illicit antiquities trade. They were “displayed informally,” according to the complaint – “spread out on the floor before him, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.”
The artifacts allegedly belonged not to any of the three dealers present but to a fourth, another Israeli dealer who claimed they had come from his “family collection.” Regarding provenance, the dealers claimed the objects had been “legally acquired in the late 1960s” from “local markets.” Bizarrely, they also said the objects had been sent to Mississippi for storage in the 1970s and had most recently been in Washington DC before being shipped to the UAE for that day’s inspection. The objects were being sold at a deep discount. Carroll estimated the objects were worth approximately USD $11,800,000, but were being offered for sale for just USD $2,000,000.
After Green returned to Oklahoma City, where Hobby Lobby is headquartered, the company’s in-house lawyer contacted Patty Gerstenblith, a leading expert in cultural property law. In August 2010 Gerstenblith travelled to Oklahoma and gave a presentation to Green, Carroll and the company lawyer on the laws governing the purchase and importation of cultural property.
"I would regard the acquisition of any artifact likely from Iraq (which could be described as Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Parthian, Sassanian and possibly other historic or cultural terms) as carrying considerable risk," Gerstenblith told them. Green and his advisors were given detailed guidance on the dangers of antiquities acquisitions, and then chose to ignore it, court records show.
From January 3rd to 5th, 2011, five FedEx shipments arrived in Oklahoma City from the UAE, but they were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. The shipments contained a combined total of approximately 223 cuneiform tablets and approximately 300 clay bullae. Approximately 227 cuneiform tablets and approximately 2,700 clay bullae were shipped by express post from the UAE and Israel to the same Oklahoma purchaser.
The seizure triggered a federal criminal investigation of Green and his collection that would consume federal investigators for years, and eventually lead to the seizure of more than 10,000 looted antiquities, but no criminal charges.
In July 2017, federal authorities in the Eastern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture complaint again the 5,500 ancient objects that Green had bought for USD $1,600,000. Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the objects and pay an additional USD $3,000,000 to resolve the civil complaint.
Around the same time, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, in coordination with U.S. authorities, arrested four antiquities dealers for their alleged connection to the sale: Alaa (Alan) Baidun (48), Ibrahim (Nabil) Hroub (50), Yosef Hroub (56), and Taher Barakat (55). Israeli court documents confirm that Alaa (Alan) Baidun is the “Israeli Dealer #1” named in the American civil forfeiture case against Hobby Lobby, while Hroub and Barakat are “Israeli Dealer #2” and “Israeli Dealer #3.”
Each dealer was indicted by the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office in June 2019 on charges of money laundering, forgery, and the sale of illicit property, among others. Filings from Baidun’s October 2019 appeal state that he was approached by Hobby Lobby regarding the purchase of the Iraqi tablets and that all parties involved knew the tablets were from Iraq. According to court documents, Hobby Lobby asked Baidun to order forged provenance documents from antiquities dealers Ibrahim Hroub and Taher Barakat.
The seized artifacts were returned to Iraq in 2017.
Number of Objects
5,500
Object Type
Information Artifact
Culture
Mesopotamia
Private Collector
Steve Green
Museum Name
Museum of the Bible
Receiving Country
Iraq
Sources
Hobby Lobby’s Legal Expert Speaks: “I can’t rule out…they used my advice to evade the law.”
https://chasingaphrodite.com/2017/07/10/hobby-lobbys-legal-expert-speaks-i-cant-rule-out-they-used-my-advice-to-evade-the-law/
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, - against APPROXIMATELY FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY (450) ANCIENT CUNEIFORM TABLETS; and APPROXIMATELY THREE THOUSAND (3,000) ANCIENT CLAY BULLAE, Defendants in Rem.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/press release/file/978096/ download
Hobby Lobby settles $3 million civil suit for falsely labeling Cuneiform Tablets
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hobby-lobby-settles-3-million-civil-suit-falsely-labeling-cuneiform-tablets
United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-thousands-ancient-iraqi-artifacts-imported
Documents
MOLA Contributor(s)
Jason Felch
Katie Paul
Peer Reviewed By
Damien Huffer
Citation
“Steve Green Collection,” Museum of Looted Antiquities, accessed October 11, 2024, https://mola.omeka.net/items/show/1264.