BEIJING - Chinese police have arrested 18 people suspected of forging and selling fake invoices and confiscated more than 2.5 million such fakes, the Ministry of Public Security has said.

Police in East China's Fujian province began investigating a criminal gang suspected of making fake invoices and transferring them to the provinces of Zhejiang, Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan after receiving a tip-off earlier this year, said a statement from the ministry on Thursday.

Under a unified deployment by the ministry, police from those five provinces seized all the suspects engaged in the invoice fraud on April 9, according to the statement.

Police across the country have uncovered 29,000 cases of fake invoice-related crimes and confiscated 1.3 billion fake invoices since 2008, said the ministry, adding that the amount of confiscated fake invoices has dropped sharply.

The ministry has vowed to continue an iron-fisted crackdown on such crimes, while reminding people to report to police once fake invoices are found.