Police seize fake cigarettes on a truck they stopped on January 2.

Cartons of fake cigarettes found on a lorry at a southern entrance to Shanghai.

A truck carrying 50 boxes of fake cigarettes was discovered at a southern entrance to Shanghai, police said on Tuesday.

If sold as the real thing, the fake cigarettes, purporting to be of theLiqun and Nanjing brands, would be worth over 400,000 yuan (US$60,000), police said.

Police in Jinshan District stopped the truck at a checkpoint on the G15 Shenhai Expressway on the early morning of January 2, and found the driver, a man surnamed Wang, reluctant to let them check the goods he was carrying.

When police found the cigarettes and learned that Wang didn't have a permit to transport cigarettes, he was taken aside for further questioning. He confessed that he was transporting fake cigarettes from Fujian Province to Jiangsu Province, according to the police.

The cigarettes have been seized by the police, while their investigation continues.