A serial fare dodger has been warned he could be sent to prison if he fails to pay the fine he was issued when he was handed a suspended jail sentence earlier this year.
Charles Brohiri, 29, has more than 100 convictions for not paying for train tickets, and did not pay fares valued at more than £3,000 for Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) train journeys between February 2024 and November last year.
Brohiri, originally from Hatfield in Hertfordshire, but who has been homeless for years, was given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for a year, in February, but was back at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday for an assessment of his means to pay the £3,629.60 he was ordered to then, among other fines.
District Judge Nina Tempia told Brohiri, who was unrepresented: “If you haven’t paid anything then you can go to prison as I warned you last time. Do you understand that?”
Brohiri confirmed he did, and admitted he had not yet paid any of the fines or compensation he owed “as of yet”.
Asked why, Brohiri told the judge his referral from probation to help him receive benefits had been “a bit slow”, but he insisted he would begin paying £5 a week.
Judge Tempia told Brohiri the consolidated amount he owes, in compensation, fines and “maybe victim surcharges”, is £34,486.
She ordered Brohiri to begin paying £5 a week from 31 July, and adjourned his means inquiry until 27 August.
“£20 should have been paid when you come back on 27 August,” Judge Tempia said.
At his sentencing hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in February, district judge Nina Tempia told Brohiri: “My view is, as is set out in the pre-sentence report (PSR), that you feel that you are invincible by committing these offences and that you see it as some sort of self-entitlement that you can get away with it.”
She also called his offending “brazen and persistent”.
But she added that the PSR showed he has some insight into his crimes and that probation could help him.
“Be under no illusion, if you commit any other offences and you do not comply with the requirement on this order, you will be back in court,” the judge warned him.
