This is the moment a rail fare dodger is snared at London Waterloo station after skipping paying nearly £20,000 in tickets.
The offender was found to have been paying for only a small part of his journey from Surrey.
He was also caught using a 16-17 Saver Railcard he is not entitled to for a half-price discount.
The man was identified by South Western Railway revenue protection officers through CCTV.
The latest episode of Channel 5 documentary Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law shows undercover officers deployed at stations used by the fare dodger, tracking his movements before apprehending him when he arrived at the platform at Waterloo.
He had bought a ticket from Vauxhall - a known hotspot for so-called “short farer” commuters. “Short farers” travel into London from further afield before buying an e-ticket from a stop closer to their destination for a much cheaper fare so they can go through the barriers without paying for the full journey.
The man featured in the Channel 5 documentary was spotted travelling on the train by members of the team, before others waited on the platform at Waterloo to intercept him.
The team approached him, with one of them asking: “Can I see your ticket, the one you just had there? So where have you travelled from today?”
He replied: ‘Er, from **** today, well **** this morning, sorry.’ The stations mentioned by the man are bleeped out of the programme.
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.”
Asked why he bought the wrong ticket, 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 ****.”
The investigator said: “So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a caution and I'm going to ask you some questions, yeah?
“So you do not have to say anything, but anything you do not say might harm your defence if you do not mention it when questioned, when you later rely on it in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand the caution?”
The interception followed an eight-week investigation, which was hailed by one of the team as “such a great result”.
Of the 153.2 million journeys that take place on South Western Railway’s network annually, around seven million are made without a valid ticket.
The unpaid fares cost SWR close to £40 million a year.
According to the Rail Delivery Group, this figure rises to over £240 million a year for the whole of the rail industry.
SWR recovered over £1 million from fraud cases over the last year. This includes an individual who owed over £49,000 for five years of dodging fares.
Peter Williams, SWR’s customer and commercial director, said: “Most customers on our network pay the correct fare and we understand genuine mistakes happen. But, there’s growing evidence of some systematically abusing the system -a criminal offence that deprives the railway of hundreds of millions of pounds each year. We have a responsibility to protect revenue from tickets so that money can be reinvested into delivering the best possible service.
“We’re proud of the work our revenue protection team does and the role they play in reducing fare dodging. By opening up our operations, we’re showing how effective our data-led approach and hard-working team are at identifying and deterring fare evaders, keeping travel fair for fare paying customers.
“Our specially trained teams work around the clock to check tickets on stations and trains. They face many challenges, but their efforts have helped cut ticketless travel by more than 40% since 2017 and recover millions of pounds of taxpayer money.”
* ‘Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law’ is on Channel 5 on Monday, May 26 at 9pm
