One of Britain’s most prolific rail fare dodgers could face jail after admitting dozens of travel offences.<\/p>\n
Charles Brohiri, 29, travelled without buying a ticket on Govia Thameslink train journeys a total of 112 times, Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard.<\/p>\n
He could be ordered to pay more than \u00a318,000 in unpaid fares and legal costs, the court was told.<\/p>\n
District Judge Nina Tempia warned Brohiri “could face a custodial sentence because of the number of offences he has committed”. <\/p>\n
Brohiri, from Hatfield in Hertfordshire, was dressed in black as he pleaded guilty to 76 offences on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Each offence was read out to him, with Brohiri quietly and repeatedly replying “Guilty” for around 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
It came after he was convicted in his absence of 36 charges at a previous hearing.<\/p>\n
During Thursday’s hearing, Judge Tempia dismissed a bid by Brohiri’s lawyers to have the 36 convictions overturned.<\/p>\n
They had argued the prosecutions were unlawful because they had not been brought by a qualified legal professional, but by a lay prosecutor.<\/p>\n
But Judge Tempia rejected the argument, saying there had been “no abuse of this court’s process”.<\/p>\n
In a written ruling setting out her decision, she said she agreed that “a lay prosecutor can commence proceedings”.<\/p>\n
She added there has been an ” industry-wide use of non-authorised employees to lay informations which has been a long-standing process”.<\/p>\n
A Govia Thameslink Railway spokesperson welcomed the decision to uphold the previous 36 convictions.<\/p>\n
The 112 charges span from February 2024 to November 2025. They relate to journeys between London and Brighton, and on the Thameslink lines into Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.<\/p>\n
In addition, Brohiri is also accused of continuing to dodge fares in late November and December last year, and in January, prosecutor Lyndon Harris told the court.<\/p>\n
The most recent allegation was three days ago – on 12 January, he said.<\/p>\n
At a previous hearing in August last year, Brohiri was bailed and told “not to be present on or attempt to gain access to any train owned or operated by Govia Thameslink”.<\/p>\n
He was bailed on the same conditions as imposed at previous hearings, to return for sentencing on 11 February.<\/p>\n
In addition, he is accused of failing to pay fines worth \u00a348,682 from separate prosecutions between August 2019 and April 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Britain’s most prolific rail fare dodgers could face jail after admitting dozens of travel offences. Charles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-372791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}