Hanoi police discovered Tuesday a large volume of canned corn and mustard originating in China but placed with fake labels to dupe consumers that they are from the U.S. and Japan.

A team of economic police was on a patrol around Lang Ha Street when they found a man carrying a suspicious package on his motorbike.

Police pulled the biker over for checks, and found 20 cartons of canned corn labeled as Del Monte with no papers or receipts.

Dong Van Khien confessed to police that he was hired by Nguyen Duyen Toan, who owns a warehouse on Lang Ha Street, to carry the products to a bus station, where they would be transported to the northern province of Ninh Binh, 100km south of Hanoi.

Police then called on Pham & Associates law firm to check if the canned corn cartons were authentic Del Monte products.

The law firm confirmed that the California-based Del Monte Foods company does not have any relation with the seized products.

Officers then raided the warehouse of Toan, where they found another 1,412 cans of the bogus Del Monte corn. These products have labels claiming they were canned in the U.S.

There were also 837 unlabeled cans of corn, and 360 cans bearing Chinese labels at the venue.

Officers also confiscated 2,500 fake Del Monte labels and cartons, and nearly 700 mustard tubes originating in China but stored in packaging, claiming they are Japanese-made.

“All of the confiscated products as well as the packaging and labels are fake, which were made in China under Toan’s orders,” said Thanh Kien Trung, deputy head of the Hanoi economic police.

“After the Chinese-made products arrived in Vietnam, Toan would place the misleading labels on them to sell as U.S. products.”

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