AN international lawyer dodged paying more than £23,000 in train fares over two-and-a-half years by saying he lived in Wembley, a court heard Dr Peter Barnett, of Whittle Road, Thame, regularly escaped paying for the journey between Thame and London by using a doctored photo-card, the prosecution said.

The 43-year-old pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to six counts of fraud by false representation.

Prosecutor Zahid Hussain said: “Over a prolonged period of time, this defendant has utilised the railways, mainly Chiltern Railways, on the assertion that he was residing in Wembley as opposed to Oxfordshire.

“Clearly the distance between Wembley and Marylebone, where he was working, is far less than to his true home of Oxfordshire, and as such he has gained financially.

“He gains because his ticket, in essence, costs him far less than it should have done.


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“The financial loss to Chiltern Railways because of his fraudulent conduct is in excess of £23,000.”

The method he used to dodge the fares was not revealed in court.

Mr Hussain said Barnett, who previously worked for Gerson Lehrman Group in London, was caught when a ticket inspector at Marylebone station asked him about his incorrect ticket in November.

Barnett was sent to the excess fares window but another member of staff became suspicious and decided to contact his supervisor.

At that point the Oxford University graduate ran away, only to hand himself in and confess a day later.

Mr Hussain also said Australian-born Barnett altered a photo-card to avoid detection. “It was planned. It was premeditated,” he said.

Barnett, who has a previous caution for an identical offence, offered to pay back the full amount lost by Chiltern Railways between April 2012 and November 2014.

But his barrister Saul Herman claims he only owes £7,500 rather than the prosecution estimate of £23,000.

He said Barnett had shown “genuine remorse” and accepted that running away from the station was “wholly the wrong thing to do”.

Chairman of the bench Henry Magrill told Barnett: “Because of the substantial disparity between the prosecution’s view on the extent of your fraud and your own way of looking at things, if I can put it like that, we say that the correct sentence will depend on the full account of what the extent of fraud really was in money terms.”

He asked prosecutors to provide more detailed evidence of how the losses to Chiltern Railways were calculated.

The prosecution asked for Barnett to be sent to the Crown Court for sentencing because of the amount of money involved.

Mr Magrill said: “The bench reserves the right on the next occasion to send the matter to the Crown Court.”

Barnett was bailed unconditionally and will return to Westminster Magistrates’ Court on April 10 to learn where he will be sentenced.