Latest news with #ticketInspectors
The Sun
10 hours ago
- The Sun
Moment fare dodger tells rail inspectors ‘don't touch me' in tense clash after ‘falling £1.30 short for his ticket'
THIS is the tense moment a fare dodger told ticket inspectors to not touch him after falling short of being able to afford to travel. The passenger was confronted by revenue protection inspectors at Weybridge station in Surrey after using a discounted ticket for under 15-year-olds, despite being older. 9 9 9 South Western Railway inspectors were alerted after the ticket - which provides half-price travel for children aged five to 15 compared to a full adult fare - pinged at the gateline. The incredible moment was captured by film crews for the latest episode of Channel 5's Fare Evaders: At War with the Law. Shocking footage shows how the young fare dodger refuses to present his ticket after being asked to do so by inspectors. When asked if his ticket was a child ticket by revenue protection officers Sharon and Carlos, the fare dodger brazenly admits to having a ticket but rejects multiple requests to show it. As the tense moment begins to boil over, the young fare dodger exclaims: "You can't actually physically touch me." Then, he begins to make his way along the walkway over the tracks at the station, heading towards one of the platforms. Despite other officers stepping in to try and help stop the cheat, he appears insistent to make it to his train without showing a valid ticket. Finally, officers manage to block him at the top of the staircase of one platform, confronting him continuously to present his ticket. At one point, an exasperated ticket checker asks: "Why don't you just show us your ticket?", to which the fare dodger replies: "Because I don't need to." Despite his continued protest, the young fare dodger eventually gives in, admitting he had bought a child's ticket, despite being over the age of 15. Top Tory Robert Jenrick becomes 'bobby on the beat' as he confronts fare-dodgers on the Tube Sharon explained that the traveller had been short of buying the adult fare by around £1.30 and had therefore opted to buy the cheaper child ticket instead. As a result, the fare dodger was issued with an "unpaid fare notice", which is the lowest penalty enforced in these situations. It means the young passenger was able to travel without a ticket on the day but he would need to pay the fine within 21 days. Sharon explained: "A colleague's been really fair with him. "He's issued an unpaid fare notice, which is the lowest penalty we can give and it's just the price of the ticket that he should have bought." However, if he failed to pay it within the time frame, he would have faced the risk of prosecution. 9 9 9 The show explained that there had been a "huge rise in passengers trying to get away with using half-price tickets they're not entitled to". Another inspector filmed for the show said how sometimes he and other staff are abused verbally by travellers. He said: "Sometimes we get bad language towards us, they will just push through and then we've got to stop them. "We do get that level of abuse from them. And these are kids that are between 14 and 16 and they're effing and jeffing at us. "And I'm like, well, hang on." He added: "You do get people who are unhappy about being spoken to. "No one wants trouble. You hope that everyone is going to be nice, but not everyone is the same, are they? "But then you get customers who do actually appreciate it as well." Just last month, South Western Railway revealed it had recovered a total of £3.4 million from revenue protection work last year. Unpaid fares cost the railway nearly £240 million each year - with South Western Railway estimating roughly 4.6 per cent of users of its network travel without a valid ticket. A recent poll by YouGov found 68 per cent disapproved of deliberate fare evasion, adding they believed it was a serious problem that should be penalised. 9 9 9
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Moment commuter who dodged fares for eight months is confronted by investigaros after racking up £1,650 in unpaid tickets
This is the moment an Elizabeth line fare dodger was caught in the act by ticket inspectors after evading £1,650 in ticket costs over nearly 250 journeys. The passenger who regularly commuted from Harold Wood or Romford to Stratford was confronted with 35 pages of evidence dating back eight months. One of his common methods while travelling through East London was to pay for a fare in Zones 2 to 3 only, rather than the full fare for his journey in Zones 2 to 6. Stratford station is in Zone 2, while Harold Wood and Romford are both in Zone 6. There is a big price difference between travelling in Z2-3 instead of Z2-6 - at £33.50 against £55.90 for a weekly travelcard, or £128.70 and £214.70 for a monthly pass. The annual cost is £1,340 against £2,236. When paying for a single journey, the cost is £2.10 peak or £2.00 off-peak for Z2-3; and £3.20 peak or £2.70 off-peak for Z2-6. On the morning of the sting, the passenger was caught not touching in on the card reader when starting his journey in an apparent attempt to avoid paying entirely. Camera crews captured the moment he was eventually stopped in the latest episode of Channel 5's Fare Evaders: At War With The Law which airs next Monday at 9pm. The clip begins with Transport for London (TfL) revenue protection officers revealing their plan to confront the suspect at Harold Wood station at 5.30am. They have been tracking the suspect after a rule break on an Oyster card was picked up by TfL's Irregular Travel Analysis Platform (Itap), a detection system that identifies fare evasion and revenue loss from patterns in ticketing and passenger data. The investigators say they have totted up £1,651 in unpaid fares across 245 journeys that he had not paid full price for – and wait for him to arrive at the station. After one of them spots him getting off a bus outside the station, they see him walk through the ticket gates and intercept him on a bridge between the platforms. As he approaches, the investigator asks: 'Hi buddy, just need to do a ticket check on your Oyster card.' The man replies: 'I don't have Oyster card.' But the investigator replies: 'You do - so what did you use to come here?' The man insists he used a 'bank card.' However, the investigator says: 'No, I've got a case against you, I see you coming through with the coat all the time. What Oyster card do you use?' The passenger continues to insist he uses a bank card, but he is told: 'You do. So where are you travelling to today?' A passenger is spoken to by investigators at London Waterloo station after only buying a ticket from Vauxhall, as he is finally caught after evading nearly £20,000 in ticket costs When the man replies 'Stratford', the investigator says: 'I know you go to Stratford. On this Oyster card number you go to Stratford and come back all the time. Have you got any ID with you please?' The traveller gives them his name and address but not his Oyster card, claiming: 'I don't have it anymore.' The investigator then tells him: 'I know where you buy your ticket. I know everything about the Oyster card. I will show you all the journeys in a moment.' And the investigator's colleague adds: 'Look, listen, it's not going to go away. The other option is we get the police down and they can come and deal with it, alright? 'So we know you've got an Oyster card, you might as well show us the Oyster card. At the moment you're being obstructive, OK?' After being taken to a private room for questioning, the man eventually hands over the Oyster card and is told he could be taken to court for the offences. The man was then allowed to go on his way but told he would continue to be tracked on the Oyster card – and the case was passed to TfL's prosecution team. MailOnline has already covered a series of incidents featured in the documentary, which comes after Robert Jenrick highlighted fare dodging at Stratford last month. A fare dodger is finally caught at Preston Road station in North West London after he avoided paying for more than 200 journeys using a concession card registered to a female relative The shadow justice secretary posted a video on social media in which he confronted people who forced their way through the ticket barriers at the station. Separately, a report released on June 4 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). Meanwhile TikTok influencers are brazenly showing Tube passengers how to illegally travel for free by 'bumping' through the station ticket barriers.
Daily Mail
30-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
How to catch a fare dodger: TfL's war on ticket evaders as workers launch sting operations in pursuit of brazen passengers who owe thousands
A quick skip through the gate behind someone else; forcing the barriers open with a brutal shove; skipping through open gangways at the end of the day without tapping your card; or even buying a cheeky ticket that covers only a fraction of your journey. Fare evasion is a nigh-on endless occurrence on London 's transport network, costing Transport for London some £130million each year - or more than £4 every single second. But with the help of technology, a growing team of professional investigators and sheer determination, the transport body is fighting back - and putting fare evaders firmly in their place. TfL has some 500 uniformed 'revenue control officers' - alongside an unspecified number of plainclothes inspectors - across the entire network, covering Underground, Overground, buses, DLR, Trams and the Elizabeth Line. They all have the power to demand proof from passengers that they have a valid ticket, Oyster card or bank card. But in the background, TfL also employs a squadron of professional investigators who work in the background to identify those who slip through the net. They build up comprehensive pictures of where fare dodgers travel and when - even down to how many times a week - and feed the intelligence to officers on the ground who can be ready to catch them in the act. A new Channel 5 series has been lifting the lid on how the capital catches fare dodgers - with ticket inspectors granting rare access to all of the tricks they use to not only identify non-paying passengers, but how they catch them in the act. Are YOU a fare dodger? Email anonymously: TfL has an army of 500 revenue officers and a team of crack investigators tackling fare evasion (pictured: a plainclothes inspector watches fare-paying passengers pass through at Forest Green station) Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law has followed investigators working for both TfL and South Western Railway (SWR) as they crack down on those unwilling to pay their way for transport. And where there are fare evasions on a massive scale - as identified by CCTV, human intelligence and ITAP, TfL's all-seeing fare evasion detection system - there are fare inspectors ready to take them to ask. Across episodes shown to date - with more to come - ticket dodgers have been tracked as owing anywhere up to five figures in unpaid fares dating back months or even years. What happens to fare dodgers on TfL? Anyone who fails to tap in and out using contactless, an Oyster card or a valid pass such as a Freedom Pass they are entitled to faces a fine. The standard fine for travelling without a valid ticket or pass is £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 21 days. However, repeat offenders can expect far harsher punishments. TfL identifies repeat offenders using a mixture of intelligence reports, CCTV and its own fare evasion detection tool known as ITAP. Once identified, fare evaders can expect to be confronted by revenue protection officers and interviewed. They may also face court proceedings through the Single Justice Procedure process or via postal requisition. If the evasion leads to prosecution, offenders can face a fine of £1,000 as well as having to pay compensation for the fares evaded. The series has even exposed some of the lesser known tricks that fraudulent travellers have used in order to pay either nothing, or as little as possible. Some were using bank cards with tiny balances to tap in, knowing they couldn't pay the fare, or even buying tickets covering the last stop on their journeys despite travelling from further out. But little gets past the capital's elite teams of revenue officers, who have brought fare evasion down from 3.8 per cent to 3.4 in the space of a single year - a fraction of the 13 per cent rate on New York's subways. Sometimes the stings don't pay off - as in one episode set to be broadcast Monday June 2, where TfL revenue officers, on good intelligence, wait at Forest Green station on the Elizabeth Line to catch a man who regularly passes through without paying. Identified in CCTV by his black and white letterman jacket, the plainclothes inspectors watch and wait, confident he will appear - but find themselves plagued by false alarms. 'You've just got to look for the little nuances about someone,' one of the inspectors says. 'You get a passion for it and you just want to catch them. I think they think it's a victimless crime, to be fair.' They ultimately leave empty handed - but remain upbeat he will appear. The other inspector says: 'You can't let that he's not turning up, when he usually turns up, get to you. 'The habits in which people feel like they can get away with it over and over again is almost their demise because they're going to do it again and again and again and think they can get away with it.' As they leave the station, he chirps: 'There's always next time.' For TfL's army of enforcement officers, that 'next time' arrives an average of once a day across the city, with 360 evaders prosecuted last year. And the Channel 5 series has shown in satisfying detail what happens when they finally get their comeuppance. At Surrey Quays - an Overground station on the Windrush line - TfL investigators stopped a man who had been using a bank card with no balance to tap in and out. TfL systems will log that a bank card is valid when it is used to tap in, but cannot verify whether it has any balance until the end of the business day when total fares are calculated and payment is taken. So while the card had no balance, the gates would recognise the card as valid and open - but couldn't take any money. In the first episode of the series, plainclothes inspectors identifiable only by their body-worn cameras as being on official business stop the man as he taps out at Surrey Quays with the dodgy card. He tries to tell inspectors: 'It's not mine - I found it.' The inspectors, using data from their systems, determined that he had been using the card almost daily for a year. After an interview, he signs a document admitting he had evaded fares on more than 500 journeys, totalling £3,573, or around £7 at a time. Fare evaders will use every trick in the book to avoid paying their way - even exploiting their relatives' benefits for their own personal gain. An earlier episode of the series shows a trio of TfL investigators called Tracey, Sarah and Dan cornering a man who had abused his female relative's Freedom Pass more than 200 times. The pass grants free travel across the network to to Londoners over the age of 66, and to those with certain disabilities or who are told by the DVLA they cannot drive. But the fare dodger was neither of those - and was brought down with the ITAP system, which linked the card to the journeys he was taking on a regular basis to build up a clear picture of his movements. Tracey, Sarah and Dan were then primed to catch him in the act at Preston Road station on the Metropolitan Line - even as he tried to shove past one of the inspectors and denied he had the pass as he tucked it into his pocket. The man, who said he had travelled from Moorgate, told the investigators: 'Which pass? I don't have any pass? Only my card.' An investigator then told him: 'Come on, stop messing around, we've had this already.' The man says: 'I'm not messing.' Another added: 'We know you have it because when you came up, I stopped you and I approached you, and you had a yellow wallet on it.' The third investigator then says: 'OK, game's up, show the pass, we know who it belongs to. We've done an investigation on you, we know you've got the pass on you.' TfL officers then tell him his failure to cooperate would lead to the case being passed to the British Transport Police as fraud. The case was ultimately passed to prosecutors to claw back more than £1,000 of unpaid fares. On the Transport for London network, the ITAP (Irregular Travel Analysis Platform) system sits at the heart of all fare evasion probes. Exactly how it works is a secret, kept under wraps by TfL on the basis that revealing its workings could encourage fare evasion. But what we do know is that it analyses the patterns of fare dodging to build up comprehensive pictures of where and when suspects are travelling. It tracks Oyster and contactless payment cards - processed as anonymous tokens to safeguard financial information - as well as 'gateline data', a phrase that suggests it can detect when people are tailgating through larger gates that stay open longer. Alongside other events such as gates being forced open, ITAP can help investigators build a comprehensive picture of when fraudsters travel - so they can be ready to pounce at the right time. The system is working: as well as bringing down total fare evasion, TfL has clawed back £400,000 of unpaid fares in the last year alone after taking 360 persistent offenders to court. And there are more advancements to come. Last year, MailOnline reported on how TfL ran a 'smart station' trial at Willesden Green that saw its CCTV feeds examined by artificial intelligence (AI) software to spot fare evaders. The system was trained to spot fare dodgers who pushed or tailgated through ticket barriers - and would flag them to a human operator who could then build up a picture of their movements to pass to enforcement officers. It could also spot other signs of trouble faster than a human being, trained to spot knives, people on the tracks, or even passengers who were sitting at the platform for an inordinate amount of time. These safety checks were being trialled at Custom House station in January this year. TfL has not said whether AI is yet being used to spot fare evasion on a wider basis following the Willesden Green trial. Channel 5's Fare Dodgers, now in its second series, has also been following inspectors tackling fare evasion on the South Western Railway (SWR) network, which operates from the London Waterloo terminus. Like TfL, it appears to be using data to spot when passengers aren't paying - but its work is complicated by the fact that passengers will use a combination of paper tickets, e-tickets, season passes and Oyster and contactless tap-ons to travel. Nevertheless, the series shows how investigators always get their man (or woman) - sometimes netting huge wins. One tricky customer at London Waterloo was snared engaging in 'short faring' - after travelling from far outside the capital but only buying tickets at Vauxhall, the last stop before the end of the line. He had also been buying 'doughnut tickets' - short tickets covering the first and last stations of his journey, leaving a 'hole' in the middle for which he hadn't paid. Nevertheless, he was able to pass through the barriers. As if his evasion wasn't brazen enough, he had been using a 16-17 Saver Railcard to take 50 per cent off the price. SWR launched an eight-week probe to establish his movements and apprehended him exactly where they expected him to be, slapping him with £19,500 of unpaid fares - even as he tried to explain away his crime. Asked where he travelled from the man said in remarks censored by the broadcaster: 'Er, from (redacted) today, well (redacted) this morning, sorry.' The investigator then said: 'Why do you have a Vauxhall to Waterloo ticket?' The man responded: 'Er, just because I didn't manage to get one in time, so just one to get through the barrier.' Around 4.5 per cent of SWR journeys are made without a valid ticket, and unpaid fares cost the operator around £40million a year. Investigators recovered £3.4million in 2024. TfL station staff are told under no circumstances to put themselves at risk when they see fare evasion, instead advised to build up a log of incidents to pass to professional enforcers. But some, including shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, have tried taking the law into their own hands, as he filmed a video showing him confronting fare dodgers. One of the alleged fare dodgers told him to 'f*** off'. Mr Jenrick was criticised for the 'vigilante' stunt, which transport union the TSSA labelled 'inappropriate' and 'potentially dangerous for passengers, staff and the individual involved'. 'Fare evasion is a serious issue, but it must be tackled with professional, trained enforcement, not MPs trying to score points or social media clout on their daily commute,' it said. TfL has also confirmed Mr Jenrick did not have permission to film the video, which was shot at Stratford Station. Public opinion suggests that those who dodge rail fares aren't currying favour with their fellow travellers. A recent YouGov poll found that 76 per cent of Brits say fare dodgers are 'exploiting the system, and it's not fair to paying passengers'. Thinking of slinking under a ticket barrier? With enforcement teams, reams of data and even the public against you, it would be best to think again.
