New Zealand police are questioning a teenager suspected of being part of an international team of cyber hackers that infected and disabled more than 1.3 million computers in the U.S. and the Netherlands last year.

The FBI and police in the Netherlands helped New Zealand police to raid the home of the 18-year-old in the North Island city of Hamilton. He was taken into custody along with several computers, said Martin Kleintjes, head of the police electronic crime center according to the Associated Press.

The teenager known as “AKILL” was the leader of an international spybot ring that has infiltrated computers round the world with malicious software in order to collect information such as bank account and credit cards details.

The New Zealander is suspected to have written software that evaded normal computer spyware systems, then sold his skills to hackers.

"He is very bright and very skilled in what he's doing. He hires his services out to others," Kleintjes said according to the AP.

The FBI estimated that 1.3 million computers were infiltrated and infected worldwide and more than $25 million dollars were illegally embezzled.

The name of the teenager has not been released because he was fewer than 18 when the alleged offenses began. He is now cooperating with the investigators, apparently telling them how the crime system works.

"We have seized a number of computers and are talking with him. We are going for evidence and the case will develop from there. We're still in the early stages of the investigation," said Keintjes.

The teenager was later released after being questioned and had not been charged yet, according to Detective Inspector Peter Devoy, the senior investigator in the case. He hopes that the questioning will lead to international inquires.

The teenager can be charged for having unauthorized access to computers and possessing computer hacking tools. He can face a sentence of maximum ten years in prison, Kleintjes said.

The case is part of an international investigation on hackers who succeed to control thousands of computers and steal credit card information, manipulate stock trades and even crash industry computers, authorities say.

The international investigation started in June leading to eight people being charged.

The New Zealander is suspected of crashing a University of Pennsylvania engineering school server Feb. 23, 2006 together with Ryan Goldstein, 21 of Ambler, Pa. The latter was indicted earlier this month.

According to a September report of Symantec Corp., a leading computer security company, more than 5 million bot-infested personal computers were detected to have at least one attack a day. China seems to have the most infected computers, 29 percent, followed by the U.S. at 13 percent.

However, about 43 percent of the servers used by hackers to manipulate other computers were located in the U.S., according to Symantec.