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Karas says she was fully aware of the big fine for cheaters. So had she been out to stiff Transpo, she says she would made a beeline for one of the exit doors when three fare inspectors came on board. “I would have tried to escape.”

She says she doesn’t know what is worse, the fine or being made to feel “like a common criminal.” She was on one of those long articulated buses carrying scores of riders during the morning commute.

A part-time contract worker at Transport Canada, she says she got on the 91 bus at Westboro station sometime after 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 14. At the Tunney’s Pasture stop, fare inspectors boarded from the front, middle and rear doors and immediately began asking riders for proof of payment.

Karas says she was at the front of the bus and one of the first to be approached. After the inspector inserted her card in a hand-held device, he told her she hadn’t tapped it. She says she did. He replied: “The onus is on you” to look at the reader’s screen to see that the fare has been deducted. The inspector informed Karas she would be getting off at the next stop, Bayview.

Says Karas: “I’m not one to be humiliated, but … he pointed to the top of my head and said to the other guys: ‘I got one here.’

“Everybody on the bus must have heard.”

She quickly got off the stop with the three inspectors in tow, and says she then waited 20 to 25 minutes as the one who approached her on the bus took out “a little, black notebook” and began writing. “At one point, he looked me in the eye, and said: ‘You know where we’re going with this?'”