A computer geek fooled the CIA into handing over 13 million pounds by convincing the US spy agency that he had developed a software to stop al-Qaeda terror attacks, a media report said.

In fact, CIA officials were so convinced by Dennis Montgomery that, acting on a tip-off from him, former US President George Bush ordered passenger jets flying from London to be turned back over the Atlantic amid fears they were being hijacked, the 'Daily Mail' online reported.

There was even talk of shooting down the jets because it was feared the "hijackers" would crash them into US targets in 2003. But the information, like other tip-offs supplied by Montgomery, 57, turned put to be false.

On that occasion, French officials were so angry at the supposed lapse in their security -- one of the planes was headed for France -- that they carried out their own probe in- to Montgomery's technology and found it was a hoax.

One former CIA official said they realised then that they were conned and said: "We got played."

But even as late as 2008 he claimed to have picked up intelligence that Somalia terrorists were planning to disrupt President Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington DC.

The programmer was given contracts worth more than 13 million pounds after convincing the CIA and US Air Force that his software could decipher coded messages being sent among terrorists, the report said. .