Former Tottenham Hotspur defender Sebastien Bassong has been convicted of dodging a £7 Tube fare after he was caught travelling with a staff pass that did not belong to him.
The 40-year-old was caught tailgating a friend through the barriers at St Paul’s station on 2 May. A Transport for London revenue control officer later discovered he was using a staff nominee pass belonging to someone else.
Revenue control officer Adebukola Anifowose told the court in a statement that she spotted Bassong at 1.08pm pretending to tap an Oyster card held in a white wallet before tailgating through the wide-aisle gate behind another man.
When challenged, Bassong produced a TfL staff nominee pass. System checks later confirmed that the pass did not belong to him and had last been used in October 2025.
The friend travelling with him later told the TfL officer he had given Bassong the pass because he was experiencing financial and personal hardship due to a divorce and unemployment. It was later established that the pass belonged to the friend’s ex-girlfriend, a Docklands Light Railway employee.
At Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court on Friday 30 October, Bassong was convicted of travelling without a valid ticket. He did not enter a plea and was convicted in a Single Justice Procedure hearing — a process in which a magistrate decides a minor case on the papers, without a courtroom trial, when the defendant does not contest it in person.
He was fined £220 and ordered to pay the £7 fare, £250 in prosecution costs and an £88 victim surcharge — a total of £565, to be paid within 28 days.
Staff nominee passes are personal to the employee named on them and cannot be lent to anyone else, which is why checks against the pass record were enough to show Bassong was not entitled to travel on it.
The conviction comes as fare evasion enforcement is in sharp focus across the capital. TfL’s plain-clothes Operation Vector has already led to 24 arrests in its first month, with hundreds of people stopped at ticket barriers — while more than 2.4 million penalties were issued in a year at the Dartford Crossing, showing how seriously transport penalties are now pursued.
