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I was stopped by an off uniform inspector who interviewed and cautioned me regarding my travel history, and they had evidence that I have been avoiding fares for 2 years, about 2-3 times a week going to work, by purchasing a ticket at a closer station into London. I was completely honest with them at southeastern and said that I was trying to save money for a house, that I’m just trying to get to work & that I’ve never been stopped before. They said to expect a letter shortly. Any advise on what will happen next would be much appreciated please. Thank you.
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I was stopped by an off uniform inspector who interviewed and cautioned me regarding my travel history, and they had evidence that I have been avoiding fares for 2 years, about 2-3 times a week going to work, by purchasing a ticket at a closer station into London. I was completely honest with them at southeastern and said that I was trying to save money for a house, that I’m just trying to get to work & that I’ve never been stopped before. They said to expect a letter shortly. Any advise on what will happen next would be much appreciated please. Thank you.
What will happen next is that the railway will write to you: the letter will be headed something like ‘notice of intention to prosecute’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the railway have already decided to prosecute you - just that they haven’t ruled it out yet. At that point, the railway can decide whether to prosecute, or whether to let you ‘settle out of court’ i.e. you pay them the fares you have dodged plus an admin fee, and they agree not to prosecute.
It will be important that you reply to that letter - if you don’t then the railway will certainly move to prosecution. And read the letter closely: they might only want to know about the day when they caught you, or if they have been following you and/or researching your online ticket purchases they may also want to know about the last couple of years as well. Our advice is always to be honest in your answers, but there’s a principle of English law that you don’t have to incriminate yourself so you only need to answer the questions that you’re actually asked.
When you receive that letter, come back to us and we may be able to give you more help. But as @Watershed says above that may involve you sharing rather more detail than the current version of your opening post gives.
much the same as above. you will be written to and need to be honest with your answers. offer to pay what you owe. if it is taken to court the courts will ask then why when you offered to pay was it not accepted. normally they accept this with costs and wont mean you having to go to court, incur more costs or get a conviction.
@KittyBoat76. If you've been short-faring for such a long time, and the railway company's investigation team believe this to be the case, as is stated in your opening post, the amount that you'll likely be asked to pay could well add up to something which is rather expensive. Possible that they'll ask you to pay the full undiscounted Anytime Day Single for each & every journey that they reckon you've made.
You've not said what the journey is/was, but over a two year period, the total unpaid fares could easily add up to a four figure sum, if not more. If that is the case, and given the amount potentially at stake, you may wish to consider the advisability of seeking out specialist legal representation.
Good luck, think you're going to need quite a lot!
You've not said what the journey is/was, but over a two year period, the total unpaid fares could easily add up to a four figure sum, if not more. If that is the case, and given the amount potentially at stake, you may wish to consider the advisability of seeking out specialist legal representation.
Quick back of an envelope calculation - 2 years, 2 to 3 times a week, allowing for holidays and assuming that return journeys were made - you're looking at roughly 500 trips on which the fare was evaded.
Picking a random number out of thin air, if an Anytime Single was £15 then that would be in the region of £7500 fares evaded. Any part payment you've made by buying short fares will be ignored.
Any settlement would likely be that figure (calculated using the actual figures) plus a substantial admin fee given the amount of work involved.
To be honest, given the scale of offending here I think a settlement is going to be fairly unlikely or very expensive - particularly if they were aware of what you were doing before they stopped you. Wait and see what the letter says but paid legal advice might be worthwhile here given the sums.
They won't. Particularly with the scale of offending here it's fairly clear a prosecution would be justified if that's what the company decides is required.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Just to add, the level of offending here is heading towards the scale seen in this case, where a prosecution for fraud was achieved - so the stakes here are a lot higher than the normal cases we see.
A barrister who commuted by train for two years without paying a fare is given a suspended prison sentence of 16 weeks.
www.bbc.co.uk
Peter Barnett, 44, travelled from Haddenham and Thame Parkway to London Marylebone, but dodged the full fare by claiming his journey began at Wembley in north-west London.
I was completely honest with them at southeastern and said that I was trying to save money for a house, that I’m just trying to get to work & that I’ve never been stopped before.
I completely agree with the last two posts, and would suggest that the three statements above are in no way any mitigation for your actions.
If your employment is in any way dependent on not having any convictions (financial services, law, medicine, healthcare come to mind) then I’d echo the view that you should probably be seeking proper legal advice given the scale of the fraud and potential impact on your job.
much the same as above. you will be written to and need to be honest with your answers. offer to pay what you owe. if it is taken to court the courts will ask then why when you offered to pay was it not accepted. normally they accept this with costs and wont mean you having to go to court, incur more costs or get a conviction.
Not particularly accurate. What you say might be true about the civil aspects of the case, i.e. the TOC would be made financially whole, but completely ignores long-term criminal behaviour and any element of punishment for that.
This is fare evasion on an industrial scale over a long period of time. If a case like this doesn't end up in court them you do have to wonder how serious a case has to be to end up in court.
I suggest waiting for the letter from Southeastern to arrive and see what it says. They may well want to interview you in person and under caution.
As suggested above this is probably a case where you will benefit from professional legal advice.
Echo the thoughts of others who've suggested a lawyer. I'd also point out that 'saving for a house' is highly unlikely to be seen as a mitigating factor. I'd urge you not to mention this.
Echo the thoughts of others who've suggested a lawyer. I'd also point out that 'saving for a house' is highly unlikely to be seen as a mitigating factor. I'd urge you not to mention this.
The OP has already told SouthEastern this, very unwisely.
"No comment" will always be the correct thing to do when caught red handed in the middle of such a large fraud, but it is what it is. A solicitor will probably have the best shot at keeping this one out of court. Manak Solicitors have been named before as a company which specialise in these sorts of cases.
*as an update* I have to respond by Friday(tomorrow). Please can someone advise on the best way to contact/respond to them requesting an extension to respond. I only received this Tuesday and the letter was dated 27th. Any advice would be MUCH appreciated Does anyone know or have worked with...
www.railforums.co.uk
The above thread started with a request for names of specialist solicitors and there were several other practices mentioned there.
I was stopped by an off uniform inspector who interviewed and cautioned me regarding my travel history, and they had evidence that I have been avoiding fares for 2 years, about 2-3 times a week going to work, by purchasing a ticket at a closer station into London.
This reads as though they had the evidence BEFORE they stopped you which would indicate they had intelligence and it was a targeted stop. Was this the case? Did they have the evidence BEFORE they stopped you?
Maybe worth noting that the OP has not looked at the forum since they tried to delete the post, shortly after making it. So they may have decided not to seek our advice and make other arrangements to deal with the potentially serious situation they are in.
This is fare evasion on an industrial scale over a long period of time. If a case like this doesn't end up in court them you do have to wonder how serious a case has to be to end up in court.
I suggest waiting for the letter from Southeastern to arrive and see what it says. They may well want to interview you in person and under caution.
As suggested above this is probably a case where you will benefit from professional legal advice.
Thank you everyone for your replies. I have got myself some legal representation. To be honest I didn’t realise it was such a big crime and for that I am stupid. I have never been in trouble with the law and always done what I have been told, I thought this was just saving a few pennies here and there. Obviously not the case. I’m very scared at what will happen, waiting on the letter. Thanks for your advise and any further is much appreciated.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
This reads as though they had the evidence BEFORE they stopped you which would indicate they had intelligence and it was a targeted stop. Was this the case? Did they have the evidence BEFORE they stopped you?
@KittyBoat76. Trust that the matter will now be sorted out straightforwardly now that you have sought out legal representation. May we ask that you come back on here, in due course, and let us know how you've got on, and also how much the lawyers cost. (This will help us advise anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation in the future).
I realise now how stupid I was. I’m not a bad person, have never been in trouble with the law and genuinely didn’t realise the seriousness of this. I am in contact with a solicitor now who is taking on my case. I’ll update in due course
We try not to be judgmental when giving advice, but you have to look at yourself and ask whether these statements are credible. You were knowingly committing fraud for a couple of years. By what stretch of the imagination would this not be serious?
But still, thanks for promising to update us in due course, and good luck with getting the best outcome you can under the circumstances.
Hi everyone just as an update: I used Manak Solicitors who agreed an out of court settlement for me - would 100% recommend - very professional. Safe to say lesson learnt, I will never do something like this again& am happy to move on now with my day to day life. Thanks everyone for your advise.
That’s good to hear! Would you be willing to share how much the cost was in total, in terms of fares avoided (and how they calculated that), admin fees imposed by the rail company, and your solicitors fees as well. It helps us to judge our advice in future cases.
We try not to be judgmental when giving advice, but you have to look at yourself and ask whether these statements are credible. You were knowingly committing fraud for a couple of years. By what stretch of the imagination would this not be serious?
But still, thanks for promising to update us in due course, and good luck with getting the best outcome you can under the circumstances.
To be honest I really didn’t see the seriousness in what I was doing, naive I know, but I see it now. Lesson well & truly learnt. And thank you for your message, I know how bad it looks when I read it back now, I am glad it’s sorted now & of course am regretful of my actions. Glad I had the chance to somewhat make things right.
