EXCLUSIVE Moment 'fare dodger' is warned he could be committing fraud after only paying for short part of his journey

Daily Mail​

09-06-2025

This is the moment a train passenger was caught travelling on a discounted ticket without his money-saving railcard - before being reported for suspected fraud.
The man was stopped by a revenue protection officer at the barriers at London Waterloo station after arriving on a South Western Railway (SWR) service.
He had bought the ticket with a railcard discount but failed to present the card, meaning he faced a penalty fare of £100 plus the price of the full single fare.
But the officer became suspicious when he found that the ticket from Vauxhall to Waterloo had been bought only 20 minutes earlier, and not scanned at Vauxhall.
When the passenger provided his identity details and address, the officer noted that he lived in Sunbury-on-Thames, much further down the SWR line in Surrey.
This meant the officer suspected that the man may have been attempting a 'short fare', which is where passengers only buy a ticket for part of your journey.
Commuters on SWR often travel into London from much further afield but buy an e-ticket from a stop near Waterloo such as Vauxhall for a cheaper fare. This means they can try to go through the barriers at Waterloo and avoid paying for the full journey.
The incident is the latest to feature in the popular Channel 5 programme Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law, which is airing on Monday nights at 9pm.
It saw officer Jack challenge the passenger who arrived at Waterloo on a ticket from Vauxhall, telling him: 'We're checking for railcards'.
The man tells Jack: 'Railcard? I don't have the railcard on me. Do I need to buy another ticket then?
'I know that if you go on the website, it can show you that you've got a railcard – does that make sense - because it's a physical one not a digital one.'
But when Jack starts looking into the ticket more closely, he discovers it was bought about 20 minutes earlier and was not scanned at Vauxhall.
The passenger says: 'I realised I was coming here because I was meeting my girlfriend or whatever. I live round Vauxhall.'
Jack then asks the man for his details, which he provides, but his address is listed as Sunbury - not Vauxhall.
Jack tells him: 'I'm going to be very blunt and very honest with you. Your address is in Sunbury, your ticket hasn't been scanned in at Vauxhall. When I report this about the railcard, they're going to investigate the ticket as part of that.'
The passenger is then told that if it is found he travelled from elsewhere, he could be handed a more expensive penalty. He simply replies: 'Perfect, yeah, cheers.'
And in a sign he has been through the process before, the man adds: 'They normally take quite long with this though, don't they? Takes a couple of weeks.'
Asked by the officer again whether he travelled from Sunbury, the man says: 'No, no, I travelled from Vauxhall.'
Jack then reports him to the fraud team, telling the programme: 'This person in particular hasn't scanned in his QR at Vauxhall. Bought it 20 minutes ago which indicates to me he may have travelled from further.
'So the railcard that he did put on the ticket, he wasn't carrying with him, so we've reported him under that fact, and then we're going to ask the fraud team to investigate the rest of it.'
The case is then sent to SWR's fraud department for further investigation, with the man facing prosecution if he had not been truthful about where he travelled from.
MailOnline has covered a series of incidents featured in the Channel 5 documentary, which comes as Robert Jenrick highlighted fare dodging another London station.
The shadow justice secretary posted a video on social media last Thursday in which he confronted people who forced their way through the ticket barriers at Stratford.
He asked one person 'do you think it's alright not to pay' and challenged another to 'go back through the barrier and pay'. At the top of an escalator he said to one person 'do you want to go back and pay like everybody else'?
Mr Jenrick later told the BBC that he wants authorities to 'step up' and 'reassert these basic rules', adding that he wants transport bodies to understand 'that these things are not small rule breaks', and said he was 'unapologetic' about sharing the clip.
But the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association union said the video was 'not only inappropriate but also potentially dangerous for passengers, staff and the individual involved'.
Further incidents featured in the Channel 5 show have included passengers trying to push through barriers to avoid having to touch in or out.
Others resort to violence if they are caught, with shocking videos filmed at stations showing passengers attacking police officers or punching security guards.
Some try doing 'doughnut tickets', which is where you buy a short ticket for the first part of the journey, to scan the QR code on your entry barrier; and then another short ticket for the last section, to scan out at your destination station.
This can lead to a much cheaper fare because you do not pay for the lengthier middle section of the trip - meaning there is a hole in the journey, hence the 'doughnut'.
Separately, a report released on Wednesday found fare evasion is becoming 'normalised', with train staff telling the inquiry that they are struggling to cope with 'aggressive' passengers who refuse to buy tickets.
Travellers are using 'a range of techniques to persistently' underpay or avoid paying and see it as a 'victimless crime ', according to the Office of Road and Rail (ORR).
Staff enduring abusive behaviour when asking fare-dodgers to present their tickets are warning that evasion is becoming 'increasingly more challenging to tackle'.
The report had been commissioned to look at concerns some passengers were being unfairly prosecuted by train operators over genuine mistakes when buying tickets.
But it found fare evasion is a mounting problem now costing taxpayers £400million a year which is resulting in higher fares and less investment cash to improve services.
Meanwhile TikTok influencers are brazenly showing Tube passengers how to illegally travel for free by 'bumping' through the station ticket barriers.
Young men are filming themselves laughing and joking with each other as they push through the wide-aisle gates in videos liked by hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The gates, which were first installed in 2008 at a cost of £12million, are normally used by wheelchair users, older people, parents with children and travellers with luggage.
But they are increasingly being used by fare dodgers who either push through the gap in the middle, or quickly follow someone in front of them who touches out.
'Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law' is on Channel 5 on Monday evenings at 9pm