A TRAIN company has warned persistent fare evaders they should expect to be prosecuted for historic cases as well as the journey for which they were caught.

Where there is a ‘proven pattern of behaviour’, Northern’s Debt Recovery & Prosecutions Unit (DRPU) will build a case for the courts that outlines the full scale of the perpetrator’s deception over many years.

The Digital Fraud Investigations Team within the DRPU can scrutinise the circumstances of suspected fare evasion incidents in much more detail.

Mark Powles, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “There are people 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 those people 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 have contributed to the DRPU’s investigations into 108,681 reports of attempted fare evasion in the 2022-23 financial year.

The team’s in-house prosecutors attended 301 court sittings during the same period, helping to secure 14,072 convictions and recoup £2,851,883 of lost revenue for the taxpayer.