"Italy's antiterrorism police and the FBI are still investigating the group's activities in Spain and Switzerland," Brescia police spokeswoman Sara Del Rosario said in a telephone interview. During the five years the scam was operating, Mohammad allegedly sent some €400,000 (US$560,000) to an Islamic charity run by Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Del Rosario said. Khalifa, who was killed in Madagascar in 2007, was suspected, among other things, of funding the Abu Sayyaf group, an organization of Muslim extremists operating in the Philippines.

Many of the calls from the phone centers were made to conflict hotspots in the Middle East and Asia, Del Rosario said. "The stolen access codes offered the added advantage of anonymity to the callers, in violation of Italy's 2005 antiterrorism law," she said.

The biggest victim of the hackers was AT&T Corp., which estimated its losses to the organization since 2003 amounted to US$56 million, Brescia police said in a prepared statement. Other companies targeted by the group were not identified by name.