A gang has been jailed for using cloned Oyster cards to claim more than £370,000 in refunds.

The criminals made hundreds of cloned cards, and recruited others to visit tube stations across London to use them, taking a cut from the refunds.

Police launched a probe in 2015 when Transport for London reported that older Oyster cards were being used repeatedly at ticket machines to obtain multiple refunds.

Known as ‘first generation’ cards, they had been replaced with new ones which were more secure.

But the gang had managed to clone the old cards, which were shipped from Hong Kong, and programmed them to show they had credit on when they did not.

They recruited people to visit London Underground stations to get cash refunds from the machines for £10 to £13 per card each time.

Officers identified and arrested 16 people involved in the scam.

Analysis of mobile phone records led them to identify the kingpins behind the operation - Remy Rankin, Nathan Jeffrey-Payne, Prince Henry, Jahmai Turner, Oliver Kassrongo and Brandon Massia.

They were arrested in August and October last year, and forensics linked them to the cloned oyster cards which had been shipped from Hong Kong.

Although Payne claimed to have no income, he had bought a BMW car for £20,000 in cash at the height of the operation in July 2016. They were jailed at Blackfriars Crown Court on Friday.

Rankin, 27, of Hatfield, Hertfordshire was sentenced to seven years’ jail after he was convicted of two counts of fraud.

Other members admitted their roles at the start of the trial.

Jeffrey-Payne, 28, of Ilford, east London, was jailed for six years and nine months for two counts of fraud and one count of money laundering.

Henry, 28, of Wood Green, north London, got four years’ jail for two counts of fraud.

Turner, 30, of Hornsey, north London, was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison for two counts of fraud.

Kassrongo, 19, of Hackney, east London and Massia, 19, of Barnet, north London both admitted one count of fraud and got 18 months’ prison each.

Shashi Verma, Chief Technology Officer at TfL, said: “Fraud like this is rare and we have robust monitoring and controls to identify and stop such activity.

"We work very closely with the British Transport Police to tackle it and welcome that these individuals have been brought to justice.”