25/10/2025
🇨🇳 Li Liu (left pic) and 🇨🇳 Wanqing Yu (right pic), two Chinese students living in Leeds, have been locked up after exploiting a massive loophole in Britain’s rail compensation system. Liu and Yu raked in a whopping £156,743 — Liu stole £141,031, Yu £15,712 — by scamming the Delay Repay scheme for three years.
The pair discovered that the national Delay Repay system did not automatically cross-check claims for ticket refunds and delay compensations. They abused this by first claiming refunds on tickets they pretended they didn’t want, then cashing in on Delay Repay refunds when those trains ran late.
The duo meticulously researched train services across the country. They used 16 fake passenger identities to spread out claims and multiple bank accounts to hide funds, and monitored the scam via a 20-SIM card adapter.
The scam ran from 2021 until their arrest by British Transport Police. Both admitted conspiracy to defraud and possession of criminal property. Liu was jailed for 30 months; Yu got 17 weeks but will likely walk free due to time served.
Liu’s background in computer science helped him engineer the fraud, while Yu’s English skills aided in crafting believable claims.
Liu began a one-year course at Leeds University last year, having previously applied for an advanced computer science course at Birmingham University. Yu was enrolled on a one-year English-teaching course at Leeds.
