A man who illegally claimed refunds for unused train tickets and defrauded London North Eastern Railway (LNER) out of thousands of pounds was sentenced to 22 months jail at York Crown Court last Friday, 5th April.

35-year old football fan Paul James King from Brown Hill Terrace in Leeds bought digital tickets that he sold on to fellow football fans.

Both before and after the tickets were used he applied for refunds on them, quoting a number of different reasons for not using them.

Between November 2021 and May 2022 King purchased over £4,000 worth of tickets, out of which £3,246 worth were refunded but still used for travel.

Because of the number of refunds being made to King as well as his elaborate reasons for requesting them, staff at London North Eastern Railway’s Customer Contact Centre became suspicious of King’s level of refunds. Many of King’s reasons related to repeated family illnesses.

The Customer Contact Centre referred their suspicions to London North Eastern Railway’s internal Fraud Investigations team.

After investigation by the team and the British Transport Police, King was charged with a Section 7 Fraud offence – making or supplying articles for use in frauds.

Under caution, Mr King made a full admission and pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity to the offence.

However, in an attempt to influence the judge’s sentencing options, King later altered a letter from the NHS to make it appear as if he was fit to undertake unpaid work. When the alteration was discovered, King was also charged with perverting the course of justice, which he denied under caution.

When King appeared at the Magistrates Court he pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice, but later changed his plea to guilty and was sent to York Crown Court for sentencing. Justices at York Crown Court heard that Mr King had previous convictions for fraud, and took those into account as an aggravating factor in their sentencing.

London North Eastern Railway recently donated £10,000 to the charity, Ambitious about Autism, from the proceeds of penalty fares and fines imposed on people travelling without a ticket.

Other operators are also getting tough with fare evaders, including East Midlands Railway which last year recovered £60,000.

This case should be a warning to anyone thinking about defrauding the railway. This cheat was spotted by colleagues in our Customer Contact Centre, but on top of that we’re also now using AI to look for unusual patterns in our refunds. The defendant in this case was selling cheap tickets to fellow football fans – the clear advice is to only buy tickets from reputable outlets or direct from LNER

Paul Larder, London North Eastern Railway Head of Risk and Assurance