A MAN who admitted making 106 false Metro cards worth a total of £7,362 will be sentenced at Bradford Crown Court next month.

Colin Dunne, 50, of Hunters Park Avenue, Clayton, pleaded guilty at Bradford and Keighley Magistrates Court today to making and possessing the travel cards with the intention to travel for free.

He was found out after intelligence was passed on to British Transport Police that he had been making the cards and using them to travel to work. It had also been reported that he might be selling them but Nusrat Mahmood, prosecuting, said that was not the case.

Dunne had been seen getting on a Northern Rail train from Bradford to Skipton on September 18 when he was overheard discussing the fraud with a woman travelling with him.

After that came more intelligence that he had been using the fraudulent cards and he was arrested and charged in October last year.

The court heard how Dunne told police he found the travel cards in a bag down a side alleyway and had never handed them in.

In a full and frank admission, he said he had taken them home instead, wiped out the dates, photocopied the cards on his own printer and stamped in new dates.

He told police the cards were not kept in his house but were kept in his shed and garage and in his toolbox.

Referring to the fraudulent travel cards Faryal Akhtar, defending, said: "He's absolutely devastated about what happened. He's upset. He's embarrassed. He was severely depressed at the time, he had lost his job and was struggling financially. He isn't taking this lightly.

"He does not want to go to prison but he knows he needs to be punished. He wants to be punished because it should not have happened. He's sorry, he can't think why it happened."

The starting conviction point is 18 months custody up to three years, Miss Akhtar told magistrates, but said with his guilty pleas taken into consideration, it would be less.

She asked for an adjournment for a full report before the bench made its decision as to where he should be sentenced.

But chairman of the bench Mark Taylor told Dunne, who was balding and wearing a bright red jacket: "We are only delaying the inevitable here. I don't think even in the best case scenario, and with you pleading guilty, that our powers are sufficient enough. Therefore we are sending this matter to Crown Court."

The magistrates extended his unconditional bail until he goes before Bradford Crown Court on April 2.