The webpage archaeologyinbulgaria.com gives a very good overview on recent cases of illegal excavations, trafficking of cultural objects, and different strategies against it. If you want to be updated, just subscribe to their blog via email. Reading that roughly 500,000 people in Bulgaria are dealing with treasure hunting and thus destroying the country’s archaeological, historical, and cultural heritage, as an archaeologist estimates, and further, that archaeological objects of c. 1 billion USD of value (…as if we could measure the scientific value only in USD!) are smuggled out of Bulgaria each year urgently cries for action.

However, there’s also the amusing news that Bulgarian antique traffickers and treasure hunters are flooding the European black market with forgeries.