The men compromised more than 7000 bank card numbers to buy around £750,000 worth of iTunes gift certificates, which were then sold on at reduced prices on eBay and other online marketplaces.

The scam's mastermind Suhail Tufail, from Rochdale, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges at Manchester Crown Court and was sentenced to five years in jail.

Mohammed Arfan Rasool, Raja Zahid Iqbal, Kibriya Ahmad and Imran Aslam all received jail terms for their parts in the fraud while Anwar Bibi, Mohammed Ali and Ketanbhai Kantubhai Patel were given community orders.

The men were caught after a routine police search involving Rasool, Aslamat and another man at Hull port in 2007 which saw a laptop seized. The laptop was examined, along with two other computers found at Rasool's home, revealing details of more than 7000 cards used to make online payments. These same details were found on computers seized from Tufail and Bibi.

Detective Inspector Neal Colburn, Greater Manchester Police Economic Crime Unit, says: "This was a complex fraud on a large scale. The group thought they had a sophisticated scam to launder money, but the pro-active intervention of the police got in their way."