Terrorists planning a massive suicide bombing campaign in Britain posed as charity collectors and took donations from the public, The Guardian reports. The fraudsters raised £12,100 for the Muslim Aid (MA) charity through door-to-door pleas, the vast majority which was kept to finance their 2010-2011 plot.

A British court heard that Irfan Naseer, 31, and Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, both 27, collected the funds on behalf of MA shortly after returning from military training with al-Qaida in Pakistan. The planned attack included a suicide bombing campaign as well as talk of mounting butcher's knifes on a truck and driving through a crowd, an idea taken from the al-Qaida's Inspire magazine.

The jury also heard that the two "half in jest" set up two accounts on eBay's online charity website, also to raise funds for terrorism. Only one of the group's user names, "terrorshop" and "shopterror," was shut down, although the groups were linked to an email account with the name be_terror@yahoo.co.uk."

The group also recruited others for their terror plot. "A Dawah charity shop was going to be used as a cover to recruit more people to their cause and they planned to set up charity stalls selling cakes and perfume in Coventry, Leicester and Walsall," The Guardian added.