Fraud Investigations, GA "short journey" tickets...

[MSE]

Hello lovely people. Looking for advice on how to respond..

I received an e-mail from GA Fraud Investigations stating
"We have been investigating industry data and have been led to believe you are potentially not paying full fares on Greater Anglia services."
and asked me to respond (see attached screenshot)

I replied asking them to provide evidence of any activity in relation to this matter that they believe to be fraudulent and explain what I've done wrong.

I received the 2nd attached response stating tickets to Chelmsford (from Shenfield) have been bought on board or just before exiting the station.

Sadly, I have been buying tickets from Shenfield to Chelmsford but boarded the train at Stratford..... I know what I've done is wrong and I have to own up to it but not sure how to respond. I'd prefer to pay the funds + admin fees (the sum will be in the 4-digit numbers for sure, have already accepted this) and not go through the courts.

What is the best way to respond? Thank you.

 

[jfollows]

You’ll likely be asked to pay the full single fare - £17.30 - for each invalid journey plus ~£150 for the investigation costs.

If you look around here you should find appropriate letters which you can modify to suit your circumstances and post as a draft which we can help you revise if you want.

At the end of the day they want to understand that you won’t do it again and would rather settle with you on that basis rather than take you to court.

 

[30907]

You’ll likely be asked to pay the full single fare - £17.30 - for each invalid journey plus ~£150 for the investigation costs.

If you look around here you should find appropriate letters which you can modify to suit your circumstances and post as a draft which we can help you revise if you want.

At the end of the day they want to understand that you won’t do it again and would rather settle with you on that basis rather than take you to court.

The outline suggested by @Hadders should give you a guide, and you will want a list of the supposed short fares to compare with what you know to be the case.

However, you have an alternative, which is to do nothing: you have not been caught in the act, so GA cannot prosecute on the basis on their suspicions. If you do that, though, you run the risk of GA deciding to set their plain clothes team on your tail, and if you are caught cheating they might not be so keen to settle.

It depends on your appetite for risk - and your conscience .

Welcome and Happy Christmas!

 

[Mike395]

The correct response to these email fishing exercises was NO response… They are essentially inviting you to incriminate yourself in writing - unless it’s a letter in the post where you must respond carefully, then ignore.

It’s a bit too late for that now for you but I’d try to settle out of court and buy the correct tickets from now on. Do NOT incriminate yourself and, in your reply, only refer to the incidents where they have (correctly) accused you.

There is the option of ignoring the current correspondence as long as you can think of a good excuse (lie) as to why you had this ticket-buying pattern that may hold up in court.

I agree in some cases here but not this specific one. It was clear that they had specific intelligence from the way the first email was phrased, so I'm not sure a better outcome could have been achieved by holding off vs a purely clarification question being asked without any admission of guilt.

I would not suggest lying under any circumstances.

 

[Hadders]

Welcome to the forum!

The principle here is that purchasing tickets isn't illegal but using them illegally is. Greater Anglia have conducted a data trawl that indicates a journey pattern that doesn't look right and have contacted you about it. The issue is can Greater Anglia link these journeys to you? There are two possible outcomes here:

1. You co-operate with Greater Anglia and 'fess up' to what you've done. They will almost certainly offer you an out of court settlement. You won't be prosecuted and won't have a criminal record.

2. You say nothing. You aren't required to incriminate yourself. It is unlikely (but not impossible) that Greater Anglia will have insufficient evidence to link the suspicious data pattern to you, to a standard of proof required to secure a conviction in the Magistrates Court. It is possible that Greater Anglia have CCTV or some other evidence that links you to the suspicious journeys.

If you co-operate then once the settlement is paid that is the end of the matter. If you decide to say nothing then it probably won't go anywhere but it might do, either now or in the future.

It's really down to your appetite for risk.

 

[AlterEgo]

Greater Anglia have no evidence of misuse of the tickets beyond a “well I reckon” data trawl, else they would have confronted you about it. However by replying to the first opening email saying “er ok what sort of misuse?” rather than not replying, you have diminished the plausibility of any further silence. I think @Hadders post above neatly summarises the options for you here.

 

[MotCO]

Greater Anglia have no evidence of misuse of the tickets beyond a “well I reckon” data trawl, else they would have confronted you about it. However by replying to the first opening email saying “er ok what sort of misuse?” rather than not replying, you have diminished the plausibility of any further silence. I think @Hadders post above neatly summarises the options for you here.

I"m intrigued that GA can apparently tell that the tickets were purchased on board a train, and that those same tickets were used to exit the barriers. I assume that they were bought accessing on board wi-fi, and that the id of the tickets could be identified as the ones being used to exit the barriers. Otherwise, surely it is possible for someone to decide to buy their tickets for future joyrneys on board a train having already got a valid paper ticket for the current journey they were undertaking.

If GA have got all this evidence, then there is no point denying it. If they are just phishing/making assumptions etc then depending on the OP's appetite for risk, if is up to him/her to decide what action to take or not take.

 

[Egg Centric]

I"m intrigued that GA can apparently tell that the tickets were purchased on board a train, and that those same tickets were used to exit the barriers. I assume that they were bought accessing on board wi-fi, and that the id of the tickets could be identified as the ones being used to exit the barriers. Otherwise, surely it is possible for someone to decide to buy their tickets for future joyrneys on board a train having already got a valid paper ticket for the current journey they were undertaking.

If GA have got all this evidence, then there is no point denying it. If they are just phishing/making assumptions etc then depending on the OP's appetite for risk, if is up to him/her to decide what action to take or not take.

They don't allege they were bought on the train necessarily, just that they were bought mere minutes before being scanned on exit. And yes each e ticket scan is identifiable to the ticket.

And now there is a handy public admission by the OP of what journey they were making and who was making it...