The Great Tube ticket scam

Trushar Patel, 30, made more than £22,000 out of the fraud. He recruited his wife, brother and mother to fill out thousands of customer charter forms claiming they had been delayed up to eight times a day on the Jubilee line.

The forms were sent off by the family and refund vouchers were delivered to their home in Stanmore. The vouchers were then used to buy travelcards.

However, passengers can claim money back for unused parts of travelcards. Patel did this with the cards he had bought using the vouchers - making thousands of pounds.

It was not until 7,105 vouchers had been claimed fraudulently, on application forms riddled with lies, that the authorities grew suspicious.

After his arrest Patel was sacked from his job in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Today at Southwark crown court he was jailed for 18 months. Judge Peter Fingret hit out at the "high level of incompetence on the part of Transport for London and London Underground".

Francis Sheridan, prosecuting, said: "The administration of this scheme was a complete shambles of Monty Pythonesque proportions ... Its implementation was naive in its conception, naive in its execution - it was naivety beyond belief."

The court heard how the Tube's refund policy under its customer charter scheme enabled refunds to be made to passengers if their journey was more than 15 minutes late. The forms were processed even though the information was incomplete, false and unchecked, the court heard.

Mr Sheridan said: "It was a good idea for customers in that those genuinely delayed would be properly compensated." The judge added: "The so-called system from which this family benefited made it easier for the fraud to be perpetrated."

He said Trushar Patel masterminded the scam, but was fully supported by his brother.

Patel admitted that once he realised how easily the refund system could be exploited he could not resist using it to fund his growing gambling habit.

By the time an LU official spotted how many claims were being sent from one address - "in the appropriately named Honeypot Lane" - the family had secured vouchers valued at more than £22,000. Of this all but £4,000 had been successfully "laundered" and turned into hard cash.

Police found more than 2,000 blank customer charter vouchers in a wardrobe at the family home. A number of other forms - one of which had actually been completed for a journey later that day - were found in the living room.

He jailed Patel's brother, Jital, 29 for 12 months. Trushar's pregnant wife Dipti, 25, and his mother, Hansaben, 53 both received nine-month prison sentences suspended for two years.

They all pleaded guilty to conspiring to procure the execution of a valuable security. The two men also admitted plotting to launder the proceeds of criminal conduct.