Dozens of people are facing criminal charges in connection to a suspected transit counterfeiting ring, Toronto police said Wednesday.
Sixty-two people were arrested and 196 criminal charges were laid in the culmination of a months-long investigation into the production and trafficking of counterfeit TTC Metropasses.
An undercover investigation was launched by the TTC’s transit patrol unit in the fall of 2013 based on tips from CrimeStoppers, TTC operators, transit enforcement officers, fare collectors and a customer service line.
“The TTC takes fare evasion and the counterfeiting of its fare extremely seriously,” TTC Director of Communication Brad Ross said in a news conference on Wednesday. “We have an obligation and a responsibility to our law-abiding customers who buy their fare from legitimate sources to take action against those who attempt to evade paying a fare.”
One of the tactics investigators used was buying TTC passes online, through ads on websites like Kijiji, where the deals seemed too good to be true. An adult TTC Metropass costs $133.75. Investigators found some sold for $50 to $75.
The Toronto Police Service Transit Patrol Unit was brought in to make the arrests, most of which were made at subway stations or on buses, Const. Bob Moynagh said at the news conference. The largest seizure was in December, when 56 Metropasses were confiscated.
Police said 55 of the people arrested were accused of using counterfeit passes, while seven of the suspects were accused of trafficking them. Typically, most were charged with fraud under $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime and uttering a forged document, Staff Sgt. Mark Russell said at the news conference.
This sort of counterfeiting costs the TTC about $2 million in lost revenue every year, and that’s a “conservative” estimate, police told CTV Toronto’s Tamara Cherry.
The arrests aren’t the TTC’s first run-in with mass counterfeiting. In 2009, the TTC was “hammered” with fake passes. Arrests were made and labs were taken down, Staff Sgt. Mark Russell said.
“As a result of that, some significant changes to the design of the Metropass were made, incorporating holograms, to beef up the security features of the passes.”
The update kept the TTC “out of trouble” for a few years, Russell said.
However, in the years since the hologram was added, counterfeiters have been able to mimic the holograms. Now, the TTC is counting on another security feature: the cards’ magnetic stripes.
“The magnetic stripe has never been compromised,” Russell said, which is a sure way of identifying a legitimate pass. Transit officials are watching for people who choose to flash their passes at fare collectors, rather than swiping their cards through the turnstiles.
Over the next few years, Ross said the TTC will be moving to Presto cards, an electronic fare system that “will bring an end to counterfeiting on the TTC,” stemming the revenue loss from both counterfeit passes and counterfeit tokens.
“In the meantime, the TTC has one message for its customers today, and that is ‘buyer beware.’ If a deal sounds too good to be true – for example a $50 Metropass for sale online – then that deal probably is too good to be true.”
With files from CTV Toronto's Tamara Cherry
