A disgruntled rail worker tricked Subway customers into deluging the control room at Waterloo station with sandwich orders during a “revenge” campaign.
Lewis Kelly, 28, swapped the phone numbers on Google while harbouring a grudge against train station colleagues, and also hacked their emails and posted abuse on social media site Reddit. He is now facing jail.
Inner London crown court heard Kelly, who worked for London Underground, sent one station worker a shredded South Western Railways coat in a package marked “Royal Fail”, along with two Cadbury’s Fudge bars in an apparent homophobic slur.
Kelly was handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence in February after he admitted using “key logger” software to secretly record his colleagues’ passwords to hack into their emails. He accessed confidential information within the emails, and signed one of his colleagues up to be transferred from Waterloo to Cockfosters without her knowledge.
The court was told Kelly “wanted to get back at people”, but he was suspended once TfL’s cyber team realised what was happening and reported their suspicions to British Transport Police.
They then discovered that Kelly, a week into his suspension, had gone to Upton Park station and used his staff access to apply a 75 per cent discount to his Oyster card, valued at £13,100-a-year. He was handed the suspended prison sentence in February, but within days he had offended again by switching the phone number of the Waterloo control room for a Clapham branch of Subway.
“People were phoning up Waterloo thinking it was Subway and ordering a roll with meatballs in it,” said defence counsel Veronica Ramsden. At court on November 7, Kelly, who no longer works for TfL, admitted an unauthorised act in relation to a computer, as well as the theft of three South Western railway passes.
He also admitted the harassment of three station workers by writing abuse on Reddit and distributing leaflets at Waterloo advertising the posts, as well as the harassment of a fourth worker with the “Royal Fail” package. Sentencing on Kelly, from East Ham, was adjourned until January 10 for psychiatric reports.
