Suspect charged with selling fake transit passes online
Police have laid charges against a man accused of making more than $30,000 in a sophisticated scam selling fake transit passes.
Const. Paul Teworte with the Calgary Police Service’s online stolen property unit said police were first made aware of the scam when Calgary Transit peace officers spotted a number of fake UPASS stickers being used to pay for transit rides.
Calgary Transit superintendent Brian Whitelaw said the UPASS is only available to students at postsecondary students at Calgary institutions and are included in students’ school fees.
Police said officers found stickers for sale online and began investigating who was selling the fraudulent passes. Teworte said the seller took steps to conceal his identity, including using false names, different phone numbers and posting ads sporadically online.
Police say the passes were being sold as far back as May 2015, and brought in at least $34,000 in profits.
In January, three packages containing upwards of 3,300 fake passes shipped from China were seized by the Canada Border Services Agency. Whitelaw said the seized passes could have cost Calgary Transit $1.3 million in lost revenue.
Tina Karsakis, district director of central Alberta with the CBSA, said the fake passes were found after a random search and the agency notified police.
At least 22 cases of riders using fake passes have been confirmed and Whitelaw said those people were charged with fare evasion. He said the fake passes were being sold at a discount.
Whitelaw said investigators examined the serial numbers of the fake passes and found they were either duplicate numbers or didn’t match those from Calgary postsecondary schools.
“I describe this really as a needle-in-a-haystack investigation,” he said, adding people found using the passes were not students and not eligible to have the passes.
But police believe there could have been hundreds of sales based on evidence collected during the investigation.
“People are looking for that deal, so I think in many respects it’s human nature to try to find a product cheaper. I would emphasize when people do that … transit doesn’t see any of that revenue,” Whitelaw said, adding the lost funds “reflects its way back into the values of the transit pass.”
David Philip Smerd, 31, of Calgary, was arrested July 25. He has been charged with one count each of making forged documents, fraud over $5,000 and uttering forged documents. He will next appear in court Sept. 10.