A total of 35 people suspected of forging thousands of accounting and finance textbooks have been detained by Shanghai police.

More than 20,000 books of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) were confiscated, with the total value reaching 200 million yuan ($31.5 million), according to the city's Yangpu district police department.

In March, local police received a report from BBP, a British accounting training organization, saying that pirated copies of ACCA textbooks were being sold on website Taobao.com.

Police carried out investigations and identified one of the suspects, a man surnamed You, who sold nearly 200 textbooks at his online store on Taobao.

Following the investigations, police found a network of people dedicated to the illegal printing of the textbooks. The illegal network covered Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong and Anhui provinces.

Shanghai police caught the 35 suspects in 17 places, and confiscated over 100 printing machines.

Contact the writer at wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn