Fare dodgers on the Tube brazenly push through the barriers or bump up behind fellow passengers, in a familiar - and highly irritating - sight for Londoners who have tapped in and paid their way.
Transport for London says fare evasion costs an estimated £130 million each year, and it is passengers abiding by the law who have to swallow any price rises needed to plug the shortfalls.
Some fare dodgers are less obvious that simply barging through the barriers, using a pensioner’s Freedom Pass or a young person’s discount to try to cut the cost of their journey.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick raised the issue at the end of May with a viral video stunt, using the moment to attack London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan while claiming nothing is being done to tackle the scourge of fare dodgers.
But the reality is that dozens of culprits a day are dragged through the capital’s courts, facing criminal convictions and penalties stretching as high as £800.
The Standard looked into who the fare dodgers are, and how they are being stopped.
Last week, 782 defendants were prosecuted by Transport for London (TfL) for breaking the ticketing rules across the capital’s transport network.
Eighteen magistrates sitting in the courts at Barkingside, Croydon, Highbury, Lavender Hill, Westminster, Wimbledon and Stratford spent time dealing with the consequences, dishing out convictions and fines and forcing fare dodgers to pay the costs as well.
Court figures show those convicted in the last week alone have now been told to pay more than £410,000 worth of penalties.
One of the magistrates, Rosina St James Bern, dealt with 21 such cases last Tuesday, handling a full range of offenders who were caught out across London.
Elizabeth Line
Mrs Bern sentenced six people for evading the fares while travelling on the Elizabeth Line, which crosses London from Reading and Heathrow Airport in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
All six had been caught out by TfL inspectors on the line on dates in January this year, when they either had no ticket or one that was not valid.
Aminollah Habib, from Wembley, was attempting to cheapen a £15.70 journey from Maidenhead into Paddington on January 21.
Court papers show he produced an e-ticket from Maidenhead to Taplow for the inspector, but he had already reached Hayes and Harlington. He had also bought with a discount available for 16 and 17-year-olds, despite being 29.
Habib ended up with a court bill of more than £560 over the incident – a £200 fine, £250 in costs, an £88 victim surcharge and an order to pay £15.70 to TfL for the ticket he was attempting to dodge.
Habib could have avoided a conviction but failed to pay a fixed penalty fine sent to him through the post, just like the other five Elizabeth Line fare dodgers.
Abass Hussain, 18, from west London, did not tap in for a £5 journey on January 24 and was ordered by the magistrate to pay a £440 fine, plus costs and court fees, bringing the total to £766.
Ankush Singh, 25, dodged a £3.50 fare on his morning Elizabeth Line journey from Seven Kings to his home in Ilford. The magistrate ordered him to pay a total of £866 for the offence.
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Double gating
Court records show TfL officers are well aware of the practice of “double gating”, where the fare dodger goes through the barriers in close proximity to a paying commuter.
Tandan Artyan, 22, was stopped at Holborn on April 15, after travelling without paying for a journey into central London from Pinner, north west London.
“He stated he was sorry”, enforcement officer Charlie Wilson set out in his statement.
“He was seen to approach from the direction of the trains and double gate through behind another fare paying passenger.”
Mr Wilson said he explained to Artyan that he had breached a TfL byelaw, and the errant passenger replied: “I’m sorry sir, can I have a warning?”
He pleaded guilty and told the magistrate in Croydon: “I confirm that on this day I was very tired and not feeling too well.
“I tried to tap but did not realise that I had missed it. I am a law-abiding citizen and I have never committed any offence in the UK.”
He was sentenced to a £115 fine, with costs and court fees totalling £196.
Josh Mullan, 23, was caught double gating on March 14 at Tottenham Court Road, and he told TfL officer Emmanuel Sempa he had done it because his phone had “died”. He added: “I could not pay.”
It proved to be a costly mistake, as he was convicted of exiting by an unofficial route on the TfL network, ordered to pay a £220 fine with £338 on top in costs and fees.
Martynas Alisauskas, 36, was pulled aside as he pushed his way through the barriers at Romford station on April 1.
"Yes, I pay when I exit”, he told TfL officer Monica Calancea. However he was prosecuted over the incident instead.
TfL officers face abuse
Last year, it emerged that the Met Police had stopped assisting TfL officers on fare evasion crackdowns, in the wake of a notorious incident which ended with one of its officers on trial.
The PC was convicted of assault after an altercation with a woman who had been accused – wrongly – of fare evasion after getting off a bus in Croydon in July 2023.
But in September last year, the assault conviction for the officer, from the Met’s Roads and Transport Policing Command, was overturned on appeal.
TfL officers on the buses often have to confront suspected fare dodgers on their own. On the Tube and Overground networks, British Transport Officers continue to assist TfL, but the transport workers sometimes still face verbal abuse for trying to uphold the law.
Marc Lasty, 34, from Plaistow, was caught fare dodging on March 7 as he travelled from Canary Wharf to North Greenwich.
At 9.14pm, he was spotted forcing his way through the gate in a bid to exit the station without a ticket, said ticket officer Mahbub Bablu, who then recorded the hostile interaction that followed.
“I can’t talk to you, I will talk to TfL”, Lasty told the officer. “What right do you have to be here at this time? I can’t disclose any details to you.”
Lasty did not enter a plea when prosecuted, and was fined £220 plus £238 in costs and fees on top.
Wrong place, wrong ticket
University graduate Manan Kamboj, 26, from Kingston upon Thames, had not properly paid the £1.75 fare he owed for an April 18 trip on a 281 bus towards Hounslow Bus Garage.
“I was found travelling on a Transport for London bus using a student Oyster card that did not belong to me”, he told the court, in his written guilty plea.
“A close friend of mine had mistakenly left his Oyster card at home before leaving for work.
“He requested that I bring it to him at his workplace so he could avoid reaching the daily cap by tapping in later in the day.
“I agreed to help and, while on my way to deliver the card, I tapped his student Oyster card when boarding the bus.
“This was a serious lapse in judgement on my part.”
Kamboj promised the court it was a “one-time mistake and I have learned a valuable lesson”, and the magistrate appeared to reflect this in sentencing. He was fined £65, and the costs and fees of the prosecution came to £126.
Similoluwa Dolapo, 18, from Northfleet told the court she had a plan to pay her fare when attempted to travel from Kings Cross St Pancras to Wood Lane station on April 6 using a ticket valid for people under the age of 16.
“I was planning on topping up the ticket to an adult one when I got to a national train station (eg Stratford, St Pancras, or where clearly possible)”, she said, pleading guilty.
“I was no longer going with niece, that’s why I had that ticket in the first place. I did ask to top up when the officer stopped me but he refused.”
Her fine was just £40, but with £116 in costs and fees and a conviction on her record.
Deception
Iuliana Nicson, 29, from Potters Bar, tried to use a TfL Elderly Freedom Pass for her journey from Brixton to Vauxhall on March 26.
She offered no excuses for the incident, but pleaded guilty to receive a reduce fine of £177.
Asim Muhammad Usman, 40, from Hounslow, used a Disabled Freedom Pass when he tapped in at Hammersmith station in January.
Station gates display a light whenever Disabled Freedom Passes are used, and Usman was challenged by an officer about whether his ticket was legitimate.
Usman at first handed over a normal Oyster card, which the inspector quickly checked had last been used six months earlier.
He then produced the disabled pass, handed out free to people with disabilities, which had been issued in 2024 to another man.
Usman told the inspector he had been on his way to Hounslow, and asked who the pass belongs to he replied: “I found it today.”
In the ensuing conversation, Usman admitted using the disabled pass “to save money” on the £6.70 journey, suggested he was planning to hand it in to station staff but “forgot”, and he added: “It was a mistake. I apologise.”
He was fined £147 with £209 in costs and fees during the court session overseen by magistrate Mrs Bern on June 3.
Another caught trying to cheat the system was 65-year-old Alma Nerecena, when she used a Disabled Freedom Pass for her journey from Willesden Green to Finchley Road on February 12.
She told the TfL officer she is a carer for the true owner of the pass, and admitted she was using it without the owner’s permission in a bid “to save money”.
She also conceded that she had been illegally using the pass since the previous year, though “not every day”.
After a guilty plea, Nerecena was sentenced to a total in fines and costs of £436.
Ignorance is no defence
A student new to the UK, Abdullah Bin Khaled Mohammed Baflah, said he was stopped for fare evasion just a month after moving to the country.
“I didn’t know much about the rules and regulations”, he told the court. “I respect the laws of TfL, but at that time, I was new here with very limited knowledge of anything.
“I had seen my friend’s transport card and took it for travel as I was totally unaware of this as an offence.”
The court heard he used his friend’s student Oyster card to make the journey from Upton Park to Plaistow.
Jade Eaton, 24, from Stroud, offered up a bankcard when she was challenged by a ticket inspector on a journey from Greenwich to Canary Wharf.
But the inspector found the bank card had been “declined for use”.
She told the court: “When I went to tap into the service on contactless, I wasn’t aware my card didn’t work and when I tried tapping out the card was declining due to no tap in.
“I am really grateful for the amazing TfL service and apologise for this. I have checked my limits with the bank and will double check tap-in in future.”
More to be done
Courts across London deal with hundreds of similar cases each week, stories of fare dodgers pushing through the gates and being challenged by TfL officers.
Mr Jenrick filmed his video at Stratford station, suggesting nothing is done to tackle the problem. But the court documents reveal that efforts are taken to combat fare dodging across the London transport network.
TfL said in April that it is aiming to cut the rate of fare evasion by more than half, to 1.5 per cent by 2030.
More than 500 uniformed TfL officers are deployed across the network to tackle fare evasion, the body said, with plans in place to expand the team further.
