The creator of the Akha application, which reported the presence of RATP and SNCF controllers, has been sentenced in a civil case

The "Akha" case, named after the application that allowed its users to report the presence of RATP or SNCF ticket inspectors on public transport in the Île-de-France region, has taken a legal turn. Not only is the tool no longer available for download, but its creator, a 26-year-old computer engineer, was sentenced to a civil lawsuit on May 7 by the criminal court, Le Figaro learned on Tuesday, May 13. He will have to pay €20,000 in damages to Île-de-France Mobilités, €5,720 to RATP, and €6,300 to SNCF. This decision is subject to provisional execution, which obliges the creator of the application to pay the sums due even in the event of an appeal.

"I welcome this sanction because we are implementing a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and I do not accept the endangerment of public service agents because of this application," Valérie Pécresse told Le Figaro . In mid-January, in a message on the social network X, the president of the Île-de-France region said she was "scandalized" by Akha which, "shamelessly, [...] facilitates transport fraud by locating controllers and security forces." She had immediately served notice on the owner of the application, as well as the Google Play and Apple Store app stores. At the same time, Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), the transport authority for the Île-de-France region, had filed a complaint.

Also read: The Akha app, which reports the presence of ticket inspectors on public transport, has been removed from the Apple Store.

The alert was taken seriously, as a few days later, the creator of Akha was arrested, as revealed by the weekly Le Point . Valérie Pécresse then praised the "responsiveness" of the police. The young computer scientist, based in Yvelines, was taken into custody by investigators from the Cybercrime Brigade (BL2C) of the cyber and financial sub-directorate of the Paris Judicial Police (PJ), before being presented to a magistrate of the Paris Judicial Court. Since then, the Akha website has linked to a page which states that it was "seized as part of a judicial investigation" , and that "the data seized will be used to identify the site's customers" .

"Akha" is an onomatopoeia commonly used in the drug dealing world to signal the arrival of law enforcement. Launched in early 2024 and claiming 130,000 users, the application was a sort of "Waze" for public transport and operated with an interactive map on which each geolocated user could make three types of reports: delays, insecurity (to report the presence of pickpockets or harassers, for example) and an "akha" report corresponding to the presence of controllers. However, reporting the presence of controllers is prohibited by law. Article L2242-10 of the Transport Code states that "the dissemination, by any means whatsoever and whatever the medium, of any message likely to signal the presence of controllers [...] is punishable by two months' imprisonment and a fine of 3,750 euros."