The arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby has agreed to pay a $3m fine and forfeit thousands of smuggled ancient Iraqi artifacts that the US government alleges were intentionally mislabeled, federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors filed a civil complaint in New York on Wednesday in which the Oklahoma City-based company consented to the fine and forfeiture of thousands of tablets and bricks written in cuneiform, one of the earliest systems of writing, as well as other artifacts prosecutors say were shipped without proper documentation.

In a statement, the Hobby Lobby president, Steve Green, said the company cooperated with the government and “should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled”.

Hobby Lobby became a household name when the US supreme court ruled in its favor in the 2014 case Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, which in effect gave certain “closely-held” corporations the same religious rights as individuals when it granted Hobby Lobby an exemption to a mandatory contraceptives rule.

The Green family had objected to having to provide employees with contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

On Wednesday, Green said Hobby Lobby had begun acquiring a variety of historical Bibles and other artifacts in 2009.



“Our passion for the Bible continues, and we will do all that we can to support the efforts to conserve items that will help illuminate and enhance our understanding of this great book,” Green said.

Hobby Lobby executed an agreement to purchase more than 5,500 artifacts in December 2010 for $1.6m. Prosecutors said acquisition of the artifacts “was fraught with red flags” and that packages bore shipping labels that described their contents as “ceramic tiles”.

Importing Iraqi cultural property into the US has been restricted since 1990 and banned outright since 2004, according to the complaint. Under Iraqi law, all antiquities found in Iraq are considered property of the state and private people cannot generally possess them without authorization of the Iraqi government, the complaint says.

In the Hobby Lobby case, a dealer based in the United Arab Emirates shipped packages containing the artifacts to three different corporate addresses in Oklahoma City. Five shipments that were intercepted by federal customs officials bore shipping labels that falsely declared that the artifacts’ country of origin was Turkey.

In September 2011, a package containing about 1,000 clay bullae, an ancient form of inscribed identification, was received by Hobby Lobby from an Israeli dealer and accompanied by a false declaration stating that its country of origin was Israel.



Hobby Lobby has agreed to adopt internal policies for importing cultural property and training its personnel, prosecutors said.

The illegal sale of historical artifacts is one way in which militant groups such as al-Qaida and Islamic State finance their activities.