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So how did this go down, in your mind? The President of Hobby Lobby got his eyes on some shiny objects, then was told to make the check out to Al-Qaeda, and dec

So how did this go down, in your mind? The President of Hobby Lobby got his eyes on some shiny objects, then was told to make the check out to Al-Qaeda, and decided that it was worth funding terrorism to get the items he'd been lusting after? Also, would you arrest someone who purchased an item at a yard sale that had been stolen at one point? Come to think of it, should I be grilling every yard sale proprietor to make sure that they came into possession of all of their goods legally? Yeah, antiquities are higher stakes, but I would hope that if I purchased a pair of pants that suspiciously looked like they belonged to the neighbor, you wouldn't be so uncharitable to me in the aftermath. Look, it's possible that someone did something maliciously. I'd like to think I'd have acted more above board in this scenario. But this thread reads like plenty of people have their blinders on today and are fishing for some kind of hypocrisy story. "Never attribute to malice...", etc.

angrydev 9y ago
This isn't the same thing as buying a stolen lamp from a yard sale. In fact that's pretty ignorant to ignore the details with this case. FTA: Notwithstanding these warnings, in December 2010, Hobby Lobby executed an agreement to purchase over 5,500 Artifacts, comprised of cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae and cylinder seals, for $1.6 million. The acquisition of the Artifacts was fraught with red flags. For example, Hobby Lobby received conflicting information where the Artifacts had been stored prior to the inspection in the UAE. Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals.
s73ver 9y ago
No. I do attribute this to malice. Or at least to not giving a shit about the law. They knew this wasn't on the up and up. And given that this is the same company that fought for exemptions from the ACA on religious grounds. If they want to claim religion, then they need to follow through with that in all of their business; not just picking and choosing what aspects of the religion they get to follow.
alwayseasy 9y ago
Yes, antiquities from this part of the world that are sold on the black market have higher stakes. The DOJ makes it clear Hobby Lobby acted very suspiciously/maliciously. If you're at a yard sale where you're asked to meet the seller at the back to see the "real goods" and pay in unusual ways, you're exposing yourself. Let's not forget, the president of Hobby Lobby isn't naive when it comes to the law... he navigated a lawsuit to the Supreme Court. Source: "Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals." https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-thousands-ancient-iraqi-artifacts-imported https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civ...
- Brendinooo 9y ago
  The DOJ makes it clear that they broke laws. I'm not disputing that. Clearly they did something wrong, and are paying a pretty penny for it (pocket change for the CEO, but almost twice what they paid overall). And as I said, I'd like to think I'd have acted better. People are making good points in this thread. I'm not blindly trying to defend a company I know very little about; just trying to poke some holes in the groupthink here. A few more points: 1. The BBC article says that they purchased 5,500 artifacts, and the original article says that they forfeited 144 items. So what's the story here - they took some calculated risks and ended up functionally paying 4.6 million for 5,356 items? Or, they were actually careful but unfortunately a little under 3% of the items were bad? Could be either, or neither. 2. Are there any comparable companies/cases? I have no reference point for this story. When someone else bought a bunch of history, what did their buying practices look like, and have they ever been in trouble? 3. Does anyone here know what it's like to buy antiquities? I'd imagine most people who do it legally will have a more rigorous process, but I have to believe that in some cases it's not as clean as going to a Sotheby's auction. 4. Do we know who was responsible for what here? Obviously the buck stops with the CEO so he deserves to be the face of the criticism here, but is it possible that, since this was a process that probably spanned multiple transactions and weeks, he had some help that was less than competent? Doesn't absolve him of anything, and it didn't! His company was fined. But it pokes a hole in the "mustache-twirling" narrative.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"So how did this go down, in your mind? The President of Hobby Lobby got his eyes on some shiny objects, then was told to make the check out to Al-Qaeda, and decided that it was worth funding terrorism to get the items he'd been lusting after?" Almost. From the BBC article and mentioned elsewhere: "But prosecutors said the company was warned by an expert that such items from Iraq were likely to have been looted from archaeological sites and needed to be carefully verified." and "Prosecutors said the purchase "was fraught with red flags", and the company never met the dealer, working with a middleman instead, and making the payments to seven private bank accounts."[1] Any legal counsel or consultants that Hobby Lobby would have used in attempting such a transaction would have apprised them of these red flags. The provenance of the items and the legitimacy of the sale would also have been surfaced with even a modicum of proper due diligence. David Green Hobby Lobby's CEO and the person who oversaw this is worth over 5 billion dollars. It's unlikely they he didn't have the resources to properly vet such a significant transaction.[2] Its worth noting this glaring excerpt from the recent Atlantic article: "Law-enforcement officials report that in 2010, Hobby Lobby’s president, Steve Green, visited the United Arab Emirates with an antiquities consultant to inspect more than 5,548 artifacts. The objects—which were precious and collectively worth millions of dollars—“were displayed informally,” the complaint stated, “spread on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.” They included cuneiform tablets, which display writing used in ancient Mesopotamia, and clay bullae, or balls of clay printed with ancient seals."[3] >"Also, would you arrest someone who purchased an item at a yard sale that had been stolen at one point? " That's a total straw man. To compare buying an item at a neighbors yards sale to buying a large quantity of antiquities from a war torn country for millions of dollar from people you never met is a joke. The "aww shucks we didn't know" bit of false naivete is insulting. The issue of looted antiquities from the region is not exactly an esoteric subject. A google search using the terms "stolen antiquities war Iraq" shows 3.4 million results. What's more likely is that Steve Green's legal council explained the downside risk to him was that if caught he would be slapped with a fine in the low millions. A slap on the wrist for someone of his outsized wealth. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40516932 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40516932 ]2 https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-green/ https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-green/ [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-lobby-smuggled-thousands-of-ancient-artifacts-out-of-iraq/532743/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-l...
petraeus 9y ago
Yes if you buy a $1 million diamond at a yard sale for $5 you may go to jail for being the dumbest person on earth.
- chuckkir 9y ago
  http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/luxury/car-boot-sale-diamond-sothebys/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/luxury/car-boot-sale-diamond-s...
mikeash 9y ago
Your yard sale analogy is a little off, unless the yard sale is in the middle of an active war zone. How do you think this went down? "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it." There's also the issue of inconsistent punishment. If you or I had done this we'd probably be in prison and even the cleverest yard sale analogy wouldn't save us. These guys get slapped with a fine equivalent to roughly three tenths of a second of profits and walk away clean.
- __david__ 9y ago
  > "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it." To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=isis https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=isis I'm not saying it was a good idea.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then" You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right? Al Queda in Iraq(AQI) began in 2004. The rebranding came in 2011 when Arab Spring protests in Syria resulted in that country being destabilized and AQI was able to move in to Syria to re-supply. Regardless of the name changes they would have been part of any legitimate antiquities expert's and dealer's consciences.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right? And AQI was itself a rebranding of a different org that had no prior connection to al-Qaeda.
      - 9y ago
Brockenstein 9y ago
Buying antiquities and the consequences of supporting the black market aren't suddenly new or secret. What is appropriate has certainly been established. Either they chose to ignore laws or they chose to be willfully ignorant. Neither is a very good defense. This isn't a yard sale. What they're doing is a big boy business and involved big boy money. There's big boy consequences for it.
e59d134d 9y ago
There are cases of people going to jail because they donated money to charities claiming to help orphans. Government argument in those cases was that they should have "known better." Only reason executives are not charged with treason is because they are white Christians not brown Muslims.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Only reason executives are not charged with treason is because they are white Christians not brown Muslims Well, rich white politically-connected Christians. And the charge wouldn't be treason, because the charge is never treason, because of the Constitutional limits on attached to treason and the fact that any punishment can be attached to some other offense without those limits.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"And the charge wouldn't be treason, because the charge is never treason, because of the Constitutional limits on attached to treason and the fact that any punishment can be attached to some other offense without those limits." There have been several Americans charged and convicted of treason. Tokyo Rose is a rather well-known one with many references in pop culture: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/asia/28rose.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/asia/28rose.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1904-7.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1904-7.html and also Robert Henry Best who served a life sentence and died in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Best

angrydev 9y ago

This isn't the same thing as buying a stolen lamp from a yard sale. In fact that's pretty ignorant to ignore the details with this case. FTA: Notwithstanding these warnings, in December 2010, Hobby Lobby executed an agreement to purchase over 5,500 Artifacts, comprised of cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae and cylinder seals, for $1.6 million. The acquisition of the Artifacts was fraught with red flags. For example, Hobby Lobby received conflicting information where the Artifacts had been stored prior to the inspection in the UAE. Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals.

s73ver 9y ago

No. I do attribute this to malice. Or at least to not giving a shit about the law. They knew this wasn't on the up and up. And given that this is the same company that fought for exemptions from the ACA on religious grounds. If they want to claim religion, then they need to follow through with that in all of their business; not just picking and choosing what aspects of the religion they get to follow.

alwayseasy 9y ago

Yes, antiquities from this part of the world that are sold on the black market have higher stakes. The DOJ makes it clear Hobby Lobby acted very suspiciously/maliciously. If you're at a yard sale where you're asked to meet the seller at the back to see the "real goods" and pay in unusual ways, you're exposing yourself. Let's not forget, the president of Hobby Lobby isn't naive when it comes to the law... he navigated a lawsuit to the Supreme Court. Source: "Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals." https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-thousands-ancient-iraqi-artifacts-imported https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civ...

Brendinooo 9y ago
The DOJ makes it clear that they broke laws. I'm not disputing that. Clearly they did something wrong, and are paying a pretty penny for it (pocket change for the CEO, but almost twice what they paid overall). And as I said, I'd like to think I'd have acted better. People are making good points in this thread. I'm not blindly trying to defend a company I know very little about; just trying to poke some holes in the groupthink here. A few more points: 1. The BBC article says that they purchased 5,500 artifacts, and the original article says that they forfeited 144 items. So what's the story here - they took some calculated risks and ended up functionally paying 4.6 million for 5,356 items? Or, they were actually careful but unfortunately a little under 3% of the items were bad? Could be either, or neither. 2. Are there any comparable companies/cases? I have no reference point for this story. When someone else bought a bunch of history, what did their buying practices look like, and have they ever been in trouble? 3. Does anyone here know what it's like to buy antiquities? I'd imagine most people who do it legally will have a more rigorous process, but I have to believe that in some cases it's not as clean as going to a Sotheby's auction. 4. Do we know who was responsible for what here? Obviously the buck stops with the CEO so he deserves to be the face of the criticism here, but is it possible that, since this was a process that probably spanned multiple transactions and weeks, he had some help that was less than competent? Doesn't absolve him of anything, and it didn't! His company was fined. But it pokes a hole in the "mustache-twirling" narrative.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"So how did this go down, in your mind? The President of Hobby Lobby got his eyes on some shiny objects, then was told to make the check out to Al-Qaeda, and decided that it was worth funding terrorism to get the items he'd been lusting after?" Almost. From the BBC article and mentioned elsewhere: "But prosecutors said the company was warned by an expert that such items from Iraq were likely to have been looted from archaeological sites and needed to be carefully verified." and "Prosecutors said the purchase "was fraught with red flags", and the company never met the dealer, working with a middleman instead, and making the payments to seven private bank accounts."[1] Any legal counsel or consultants that Hobby Lobby would have used in attempting such a transaction would have apprised them of these red flags. The provenance of the items and the legitimacy of the sale would also have been surfaced with even a modicum of proper due diligence. David Green Hobby Lobby's CEO and the person who oversaw this is worth over 5 billion dollars. It's unlikely they he didn't have the resources to properly vet such a significant transaction.[2] Its worth noting this glaring excerpt from the recent Atlantic article: "Law-enforcement officials report that in 2010, Hobby Lobby’s president, Steve Green, visited the United Arab Emirates with an antiquities consultant to inspect more than 5,548 artifacts. The objects—which were precious and collectively worth millions of dollars—“were displayed informally,” the complaint stated, “spread on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.” They included cuneiform tablets, which display writing used in ancient Mesopotamia, and clay bullae, or balls of clay printed with ancient seals."[3] >"Also, would you arrest someone who purchased an item at a yard sale that had been stolen at one point? " That's a total straw man. To compare buying an item at a neighbors yards sale to buying a large quantity of antiquities from a war torn country for millions of dollar from people you never met is a joke. The "aww shucks we didn't know" bit of false naivete is insulting. The issue of looted antiquities from the region is not exactly an esoteric subject. A google search using the terms "stolen antiquities war Iraq" shows 3.4 million results. What's more likely is that Steve Green's legal council explained the downside risk to him was that if caught he would be slapped with a fine in the low millions. A slap on the wrist for someone of his outsized wealth. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40516932 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40516932 ]2 https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-green/ https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-green/ [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-lobby-smuggled-thousands-of-ancient-artifacts-out-of-iraq/532743/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-l...

petraeus 9y ago

Yes if you buy a $1 million diamond at a yard sale for $5 you may go to jail for being the dumbest person on earth.

chuckkir 9y ago
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/luxury/car-boot-sale-diamond-sothebys/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/luxury/car-boot-sale-diamond-s...

mikeash 9y ago

Your yard sale analogy is a little off, unless the yard sale is in the middle of an active war zone. How do you think this went down? "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it." There's also the issue of inconsistent punishment. If you or I had done this we'd probably be in prison and even the cleverest yard sale analogy wouldn't save us. These guys get slapped with a fine equivalent to roughly three tenths of a second of profits and walk away clean.

__david__ 9y ago
> "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it." To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=isis https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=isis I'm not saying it was a good idea.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then" You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right? Al Queda in Iraq(AQI) began in 2004. The rebranding came in 2011 when Arab Spring protests in Syria resulted in that country being destabilized and AQI was able to move in to Syria to re-supply. Regardless of the name changes they would have been part of any legitimate antiquities expert's and dealer's consciences.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right? And AQI was itself a rebranding of a different org that had no prior connection to al-Qaeda.
    - 9y ago

Brockenstein 9y ago

Buying antiquities and the consequences of supporting the black market aren't suddenly new or secret. What is appropriate has certainly been established. Either they chose to ignore laws or they chose to be willfully ignorant. Neither is a very good defense. This isn't a yard sale. What they're doing is a big boy business and involved big boy money. There's big boy consequences for it.

e59d134d 9y ago

There are cases of people going to jail because they donated money to charities claiming to help orphans. Government argument in those cases was that they should have "known better." Only reason executives are not charged with treason is because they are white Christians not brown Muslims.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Only reason executives are not charged with treason is because they are white Christians not brown Muslims Well, rich white politically-connected Christians. And the charge wouldn't be treason, because the charge is never treason, because of the Constitutional limits on attached to treason and the fact that any punishment can be attached to some other offense without those limits.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"And the charge wouldn't be treason, because the charge is never treason, because of the Constitutional limits on attached to treason and the fact that any punishment can be attached to some other offense without those limits." There have been several Americans charged and convicted of treason. Tokyo Rose is a rather well-known one with many references in pop culture: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/asia/28rose.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/asia/28rose.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1904-7.html https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1904-7.html and also Robert Henry Best who served a life sentence and died in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Best