Of course they did. Parents grew up in a former communist country and smuggling in goods, stealing, were all pretty common. The reason you don't hear about it is because if people did those things that would mean that communism is bad and doesn't work. I wouldn't trust the data coming out of a communist country.

During the chernobyl disaster the USSR kept providing false numbers to the world in order to downplay the significance of the event - to the point of sabotaging the cleanup effort and themselves.