WORLD BRIEFING / ITALY
Italian and U.S. authorities have broken up an international group that hacked into long-distance phone lines and may have provided funds to terrorists in Southeast Asia, officials said.
Police conducted raids across Italy last week and arrested five suspects linked to a hacking operation in the Philippines. Federal authorities in New Jersey charged three people living in the Philippines in connection with the case.
The group electronically broke into the systems of international telecommunications companies and sold the access codes in several countries in a multimillion-dollar fraud, Italian police and the FBI alleged in separate statements.
By routing conversations from call centers onto the hacked networks, the suspects stole 12 million minutes, worth $55 million, from companies including AT&T;, the FBI said. Italian authorities shut down 10 call centers in various cities, according to police.
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