Commuter who dodged £20,000 of fares is finally caught after getting too big for his boots
A ‘short farer’ who evaded £20,000 in ticket costs over three years was finally busted by investigators.
The offender avoided paying around £35 for every commute from Surrey to London Waterloo by buying an e-ticket only from Vauxhall to Waterloo.
He also used a 16-17 Saver Railcard to get a half-price discount on the ticket, despite not being entitled to the service.
South Western Railway’s revenue protection team eventually caught the commuter in the act at Waterloo station after identifying him through CCTV.
The man had allegedly been buying ‘doughnut tickets’ to trick his way past train barriers.
This is where you buy a short ticket at the first part of your journey, which you scan at the entry barrier, and then another short ticket for the last section to scan out.
This trick cuts out the middle part of the journey and so cuts down the cost of the train fare.
Vauxhall, near Waterloo, is a common station where those looking to get through the barriers without paying for the full journey buy a ticket from.
The man was caught on the latest episode of Channel 5 documentary ‘Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law’, which showed uncover officers tracing the man at stations he used.
He is one of scores of ‘short farers’ who operate on the train network.
The offender had been investigated for eight weeks by the revenue protection team, who calculated he had wracked up £19,500 in unpaid fares.
The SWR team had access to his full travel history, which showed he purchased two tickets per day with a 16-17 Saver Railcard.
This gave him a 50 per cent cut on the train prices which he did not deserve.
The commuter admitted to all offences and was later offered an out-of-court settlement.
On ‘Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law’, officers travelled with the offender on the train while others waited to apprehend him at the Waterloo platform.
Once he got off the train, they swept in to interrogate the man.
Investigators asked him ‘Why do you have a Vauxhall to Waterloo ticket?’
He responded: ‘Er, just because I didn’t manage to get one in time, so just one to get through the barrier.’
The man then admitted he did not actually have a 16-17 Saver Railcard.
After being cautioned, officers asked him why he had purchased the wrong ticket.
(Picture: Reuters)
He said: ‘Just because I didn’t get one this morning. It didn’t have barriers at the end. There’s not always a service at ****.
‘Sometimes I get on at ***. Then I tried to find the guy, but it was a very packed train.
‘In fairness, I should have got one from the same train station I got on at. it’s just expensive to do so.’
The station named were beeped out by the programme.
There are an estimated seven million trips on SWR network, which runs services between Waterloo and South West England, completed without a valid ticket, out of a total 153 million trips.
The cost of these unpaid fares for SWR is nearly £40million a year.
Across the whole UK network, this cost rises to around £240million annually, according to the Rail Delivery Group.
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