A 36-year-old restaurant worker at Shanghai Pudong International Airport was sentenced to one year of probation and fined 100,000 yuan ($15,699) for attempting to smuggle 440 cartons of duty-free cigarettes out of the airport in the trash, a local court announced Wednesday.
The defendant, a man surnamed Wang, started buying cartons of cigarettes at the airport's duty-free shops last October, according to a press release from the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court.
Wang's plan was to hide the cigarettes in a trash bag and have a colleague carry it outside the building with the other garbage, where he could later collect it, according to the court's statement.
Unfortunately for Wang, customs officials saw through the ruse and confiscated the cigarettes.
An initial investigation found that the tax that Wang should have paid on the cigarettes amounted to 88,000 yuan, the court said.
The court found Wang guilty of smuggling common goods.
Considering that he confessed to the charge, the court gave him a relatively light sentence of one year of probation.