City grants bus pass to man using Beckham's photo

It is highly unlikely that David Beckham would travel in a crowded public bus in İzmir, a bustling city on Turkey's Aegean coast, but the iconic British footballer can at least litigate an unwitting university student there for riding a bus using his name.

Frustrated with repeated efforts to upload a photo in his online application for a bus pass, the student who prefers to remain anonymous except his initials L.E.M. — took a shot at uploading a photo of Beckham he stumbled upon online. To his surprise, the website of İzmir municipality's transport authority accepted it and delivered a personalized bus pass in the student's name with the photo of Beckham. Though the bespectacled young man studying economics looks nothing like the 41-year-old heartthrob, he managed to go unnoticed while using the pass.

The student claims he only wanted to receive a discount bus pass exclusive for students and did not mean any harm. He said he applied for the pass about two months ago and tried every photo of himself he had, to no avail. "I thought there must be some error in the application website and decided to try another picture. I am not a fan of Beckham but it was him I thought of first when I searched the Web for a random photo to upload and see if the website would accept it. When it worked, I had no idea it was the application with Beckham's photo. I only noticed it when I visited the transport authority to receive bus pass," he told Anadolu Agency.

L.E.M. applied again to change the bus pass with a new one online but he was not allowed as he had one already registered online. He said he would change it as soon as possible.

"Sometimes, drivers tell me I don't look like the man in the photo," L.E.M. said, adding that he heard some other commuters use photos of other celebrities, from Selena Gomez to Lionel Messi, for their bus pass.

Indeed, İzmir Municipality acknowledged yesterday that some passengers using mass transit employed photos of others for bus passes while noting L.E.M.'s pass was cancelled earlier this week. "We receive tens of thousands of applications every day for bus passes and came across applications with photos of Brad Pitt, Adriana Lima, Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, (Turkish singers) Tarkan and Ahmet Kaya, footballers Mesut Özil and Ronaldo. We have canceled 40 passes with false photos," the municipality's transport authority announced in a written statement. "It might seem like a humorous way to get a bus pass at first, but it is wrong," the statement added.