Train tickets: 'Quit while you're ahead' Northern Rail says in warning to 'modern-day fare dodgers'

Some 67 per cent of Northern’s tickets are now bought via digital platforms, which has the operator said has led to new fare-dodging methods surfacing. As a result, they are warning fraudsters to “quit while you’re ahead” as investigators have started to identify them using a trail of digital breadcrumbs people don’t realise they’re leaving.

Mark Powles, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “The old-school fare evader still exists, but there’s a new generation who try to outsmart the system through a complex process of fraudulent refund requests, delay repay claims and a process known as ‘short faring’.

“What these individuals might not realise is that, as with any electronic transaction, our systems are able to identify suspicious activity and bring it to the attention of our specialist investigators.”

Northern’s Digital Fraud Investigations Team (DFIT) reportedly investigated 108,681 reports of attempted fare evasion, issued 53,344 Penalty Fare Notices, helped secure 14,072 convictions and recovered £2.9m of lost revenue for the taxpayer, just in the 2022/23 financial year.

The DFIT was established by Northern in 2021, in response to the post-pandemic surge in digital ticket usage. The team is responsible for looking into the circumstances of attempted fare evasion in much more detail.

Mr Powles said: “Once our investigators are on the case, they can review all ticket transactions by that individual over several years and build a case if they believe there is a pattern of criminal behaviour.

“One fraudulent claim today might uncover a backlog of similar activity that our team willpursue. Our message to those people is ‘quit while you’re ahead’.”

Earlier this year, Northern Rail revealed £100 penalty fares will be administered for passengers who are unable to present a ticket due to their phone running out of charge. They said mobile phones being out of battery is becoming an increasingly popular excuse for fare-dodgers and they are trialling power bank options in their stations for those who have genuinely run out of charge.