A Hertfordshire man has been warned that he is facing a prison sentence after pleading guilty to 112 charges of travelling without a ticket on Govia Thameslink Railway.

Charles Brohiri, 29, of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where it took 20 minutes to put each charge to him in turn.

District Judge Nina Tempia said he could be facing ‘a custodial sentence’ because of the number of offences he had committed. He could also be ordered to pay more than £18,000 in unpaid fares and legal costs.

He had been found guilty of 36 charges at a previous hearing, which he did not attend, and Judge Tempia refused an application to have those convictions overturned on the grounds that they had been brought by a lay prosecutor on behalf of the railway rather than a qualified lawyer. The judge ruled that there had ‘no abuse of process’ and that the convictions would stand.

Brohin is also accused of continuing to travel fraudulently during the last few weeks of last year and of failing to pay £48,682 in fines resulting from separate prosecutions between August 2019 and April last year.