Hobby Lobby wants a $7 million refund.
The Oklahoma-based craft chain is suing the Oxford professor who duped the company into shelling out $7,095,100 between 2010 and 2013 for several fragments of ancient Biblical texts which he was later accused of having stolen, according to court papers.
At the time, the company’s prominent evangelical Christian owners, the Green family, were collecting biblical antiquities as they prepared to open the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. The museum opened in 2017.
Obbink, a well-known Oxford-based professor, who also worked for the Egypt Exploration Society, was known to also sell artifacts in private deals, Hobby Lobby said in its Brooklyn Federal Court papers.
By December 2017 he admitted to Hobby Lobby that at least some of the fragments he’s sold them didn’t belong to him, and agreed to refund the purchase price, but failed to do so, the company claims.
“The fact that some unknown number of the fragments were stolen renders all the fragments unsalable and worthless to Hobby Lobby, which stands to lose both the fragments and the entire value of the purchase price it paid to Obbink,” according to the legal claim, which says Hobby Lobby and the EES identified 32 items allegedly stolen by Obbink.
Obbink was arrested in April 2020 for the thefts. Obbink could not be reached for comment by The Post.