email from Greater Anglia re travel irregularity

[jumble]

The "Fare Dodgers: At war with the law" TV series from 2019 showed several instances of the following happening:
1. TfL's systems flag an Oyster card's journey history as being suspect.
2. Investigators travel to a station where the Oyster card was tapped, and cross-reference the tap times with locally stored CCTV footage of the barriers to obtain a picture of the person that used the card.
3. Investigators stake out the barriers at a time the person is expected to pass through, asks them to show their card, and when they present the suspect card they are taken to an office for interview.

Hence, it is not unthinkable that a Train Operating Company would cross-reference E-ticket scan times with station barrier CCTV to obtain a picture of a person with suspect journey history.

However, I don't think we've seen any evidence yet of any other Train Operating Company (apart from TfL) doing such investigations, and of course there's the difference that TfL followed up by actually "catching" the person rather than just emailing the account holder.

Interestingly, TfL's investigators sometimes choose to catch the person when they're not fare dodging. About 32 minutes into Season 1 Episode 3, they track a Z1-2 Travelcard holder regularly travelling home from Southwark (Z1) to Woolwich Arsenal (Z4) without tapping out (which results in dodging the extra fare for Z3+4 not covered by the Travelcard, allegedly tallying up to £3350.90 across 5 years), but instead of catching him not tapping out at Woolwich Arsenal, they go to North Greenwich (Z2) in the morning and catch him tapping in for his outbound journey which (assuming he got there by bus) is completely legitimate, and he confesses after being shown the evidence. The fact that they did not try to catch him in the act suggests that they believe their digital and CCTV evidence alone would be sufficient to prosecute (possibly lacking only the passenger's details and/or hard evidence on who is using the Oyster card in question, or else why go out and find the passenger at all?), or are they betting on always being able to obtain a confession?

I think the TFL case is different because TFL own those CCTV cameras and as Siddy pointed out in the latest Tube program the control is centralised across the network.
They also own the databases
I doubt the TOCs have anywhere near the sophistication and thus ease of processing such an investigation

 

[jacksonbang]

What we have learnt here is that travelling only one stop seems to ignite a mass of intelligence by the TOC to deal with the action via an illiterate email. I travel from Rye to Appledore all the time - does this mean I will get "the electronic knock" soon ? I mean, does it ever occur to some on here that the person might actually be travelling one stop?

 

[Haywain]

What we have learnt here is that travelling only one stop seems to ignite a mass of intelligence by the TOC to deal with the action via an illiterate email. I travel from Rye to Appledore all the time - does this mean I will get "the electronic knock" soon ? I mean, does it ever occur to some on here that the person might actually be travelling one stop?

What we also learn here is that doughnutting is a very significant problem for the TOCs, particularly where there are barrier free connections available to TfL services (such as at Stratford). We also know that there are many one-stop journeys that provide little functional purpose, such as ones that have parralel and far more frequent bus services. As the OP has given us no information about the journey they are buying tickets for we cannot really judge whether the suspicions that GA have are reasonably justified but travelling from a barriered station to an unbarriered station does nothing to dispel those suspicions.

 

[John R]

What we also know about this case is that the OP confirmed that they only travelled one stop, BUT, when the proposition was put to them that maybe they were buying a railcard ticket for use before 10am, but putting in a time after 10am to benefit from the removal of the minimum fare restriction, they immediately disengaged from the conversation and made no further comment. The lack of any further comment, despite continuing to view the thread, made me draw my own conclusions as to why they have had the letter.

Now if gateline scans show that such tickets are consistently being used before 10am then I think it is very reasonable to say that the tickets are being incorrectly purchased, as they are being purchased for use at a time when they are not valid. However, as has been hotly debated here, this on its own won't give the TOC evidence that it is the purchaser of the ticket who is actually using them, and thus the one committing the offence, unless they have other evidence up their sleeve which they have not disclosed in the initial letter.

 

[gray1404]

I too have noted that the OP has stopped commenting once they are ere asked if they have been using discounted tickets before 10am during the week, despite viewing the thread.

If this is the case I would strongly suggest, if they do wish to respond to the email, they seek advice here first on how to respond. This will help ensure they do not say anything that will make this work and with a view of trying to secure a resolution out of court.

Of course if they are choosing not to respond for now and see what happens, I understand why they may wish to remain quiet.