Fare Evasion and Railcard Fraud

[wesontrain]

Hi, I want to seek help on how I can navigate this situation as I want to avoid a criminal prosecution. Since being caught, I have been racked with anxiety and I regret my actions.

Just to provide some context, a couple of weeks ago, I was caught without a valid ticket by a revenue inspection officer at Ebbsfleet International (railway company is Southeastern). I was told that I would be receiving a letter from the railway company within 6 weeks while they investigate my case, and I am still waiting for that letter.

I was caught because I was short ticketing, which I have done in the past. In addition, for the past couple of years, I have been using a family member’s railcard to get discounted rail tickets (which I bought through Uber). When I was caught, I lied and claimed to be that family member and showed the railcard (but I provided the wrong date of birth and the Uber account is under my name so I am sure that they will work out that I lied when I was caught). I have probably bought 5 tickets a week for the past 2 years, saving probably >£5k in total.

I heard that this forum has experts on the topic of fare evasion/railcard fraud so I had a few questions:

• What do you think is the likely outcome? Do you think they will likely take me to court given I have been fraudulently using a family's railcard for 2+ years and have been short-ticketing?
• How long does a criminal record for this last?
• Could I end up going to prison and will I be named publicly?
• Is it worth speaking to a lawyer now or should I wait until I get the letter? I had a brief chat with Manak Solicitors who strongly advised that I have a consultation now but another law firm said I should wait until receiving the letter
• Do you have a recommended law firm? (Have also seen Reed Solicitors, BSB, etc. mentioned here)
• I assume that my family member won’t be affected if I say that I stole their identity (rather than them willingly letting me use their Travelcard)

 

[WesternLancer]

Hi, I want to seek help on how I can navigate this situation

Welcome

People here will be able to advise you on all these questions. But you won’t be going to prison for this. But if it did go to court that’s a matter of public record - a criminal record is literally a record of people found guilty of crimes. Whether anyone would be interested in publicising that is another matter.

Obviously you have been evading fares on a substantial scale.

But that doesn’t prevent you from obtaining an out of court settlement if you cooperate with them. What the railway wants is for you to stop doing fare evasion full stop. And that you pay them what you have cheated them out of.

 

[Belperpete]

I assume that my family member won’t be affected if I say that I stole their identity (rather than them willingly letting me use their Travelcard)

So you are proposing to admit in writing that you have committed identity theft in order to fraudulently obtain a railcard? I would strongly advise you to get legal advice about the possible consequences before you make any such admission.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

But that doesn’t prevent you from obtaining an out of court settlement if you cooperate with them. What the railway wants is for you to stop doing fare evasion full stop. And that you pay them what you have cheated them out of.

When Western lancer says that they will want you to pay what you have cheated them out of, don't expect them to accept you just making up the difference between what you paid and what you should have paid. They will likely insist on you paying the full fare for each journey. And they would likely add a substantial admin fee on too, to cover the time their investigators spent working on your case. If you do get an out of court settlement, you should be prepared to pay out a sum substantially greater than the £5k you saved.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

What do you think is the likely outcome? Do you think they will likely take me to court given I have been fraudulently using a family's railcard for 2+ years and have been short-ticketing?

I suspect that you failing to cooperate when caught, lying and providing false identification, might also be taken into consideration.

 

[WesternLancer]

Ref legal advice. You are in an early stage of this process now which will take some weeks and months to go through. You can afford to weigh up quotes from specialist solicitors at this stage plus advice from here about actions you can take if you choose to try and resolve it yourself and the pros and cons of different approaches.

Legal help might cost c£1k perhaps in fees.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

Separately part of avoiding prosecution in court is convincing the railway you have changed your ways and will stop evading forever.

If there are practical steps you can take to show them this eg buy a season ticket for your regular journey it might be a good idea to do that now. You could perhaps see this as an investment in avoiding or trying to avoid being sent to court, fined and receiving a criminal record.

 

[wesontrain]

Ref legal advice. You are in an early stage of this process now which will take some weeks and months to go through. You can afford to weigh up quotes from specialist solicitors at this stage plus advice from here about actions you can take if you choose to try and resolve it yourself and the pros and cons of different approaches.

Legal help might cost c£1k perhaps in fees.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

Separately part of avoiding prosecution in court is convincing the railway you have changed your ways and will stop evading forever.

If there are practical steps you can take to show them this eg buy a season ticket for your regular journey it might be a good idea to do that now. You could perhaps see this as an investment in avoiding or trying to avoid being sent to court, fined and receiving a criminal record.

Thank you guys so much for your response. From skimming the forum, it seems my case is on the extreme end. Would you think based on your experience that I will be taken to court?

I have already reached out to several law firms and quotes are indeed around £1k for consultation + instruction. Do you think I should engage a lawyer now or wait for the letter to arrive first? Manak Solicitors said I should engage them now and they have a 100% success rate in getting out-of-court settlements.

I will purchase regular tickets through my Trainline account now.

Also, thanks for the response @Belperpete - I am aware that I will need to pay back the cost of anytime single fares so I'm sure the penalty will be £10-15k+.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

@Hadders was wondering if you would be able to opine given I see you have a lot of experience with these requests.

 

[WesternLancer]

Thank you guys so much for your response. From skimming the forum, it seems my case is on the extreme end. Would you think based on your experience that I will be taken to court?

I have already reached out to several law firms and quotes are indeed around £1k for consultation + instruction. Do you think I should engage a lawyer now or wait for the letter to arrive first? Manak Solicitors said I should engage them now and they have a 100% success rate in getting out-of-court settlements.

I will purchase regular tickets through my Trainline account now.

Also, thanks for the response @Belperpete - I am aware that I will need to pay back the cost of anytime single fares so I'm sure the penalty will be £10-15k+.

Personally I would say wait for the letter. I think we have seen evasion cases on the scale of yours or bigger resolved before - possibly by people's own efforts without legal representation but I'm not 100% sure either way on that.

Manak do have a good reputation on here from people who have used them (you can search threads) and they claim that they have a relationship with train prosecution offices that means they can start to engage on their clients behalf even before the formal process of the trains company writing to you commences. I'm not sure what practical advantage that provides unless speed of resolution is important to you, but there may be other reasons I have not thought of.

If it did go to court where you would almost certainly be found guilty (so your objective must be to keep it out of court to start with IMHO) - Part of your decision on if to use a solicitor is how much the damage of the criminal record for this activity might have to your future earnings potential versus how how much their fee costs. So if for example it called into question your ability to secure a well paid job in financial services in x years time, thus limiting your earnings potential long term, paying £1k to a solicitor now might seem good value - it's a trade off you can make.

But I think most people on here would assume that many evaders evade fares because they can't afford them - so paying for legal help is not going to be easy for people in those financial circumstances, but you may be able to access those funds (as mentioned you are going to need to access substantial funds quickly, and they don't accept payment in instalments usually) to achieve an out of court settlement anyway. It is potentially possible that a court conviction could cost less in money terms (and you can pay court fines in instalments subject to your income)


Solicitors mentioned on this forum in the past (I have no connection now have ever used them) - and there may be others out there - are:

Manak Solicitors

Fare Evasion Solicitors | Kent & London | Manak Solicitors

Manak Solicitors: Skilled legal defence for fare evasion cases. Rely on our experienced team to protect your rights, challenge penalties, and guide you through the process.

manaksolicitors.co.uk


Makwanas

Fare Evasion Solicitors London | High Success Rate | TFL Solicitors

Facing prosecution for fare evasion? Our expert fare evasion solicitors in London fight to protect your record. With deep expertise in TFL solicitors' defence, we help you avoid fines, criminal convictions, and lasting consequences. Act now—secure expert legal representation today!

www.makwanas.co.uk

and

Gray Hooper Holt Solicitors

and Reeds Solicitors


You can search the forum for mentions of these firms

 

[Titfield]

I think there are two factors to consider here:
1. Your fare evasion is very near the top end of the scale though we have seen such behaviours settled out of court.
2. The solicitors fee compared with the likely cost of the fares avoided is a small amount and assuming you can afford it a relatively small price to pay to avoid (hopefully) a prosecution.

I would wait for the letter and then make my decision. You may be lucky in that the TOC decides to offer you a very hefty out of court settlement.

 

[wesontrain]

Thank you both so much for your help - I genuinely really appreciate it. I will wait for the letter to come through from Southeastern and then consider legal representation.

I will search through the forum to see examples of past letters but do the letters typically threaten prosecution/court, regardless of the severity of the crime? Or will it only mention intent to prosecute where they actually intend to go through with taking the case to court? I'm asking because I don't want to have a heart attack when I read the letter and it mentions prosecution (if that makes sense).

I am honestly so regretful of my actions and the cost to my current mental health and future prospects isn't worth the amount I saved - if anyone is reading this and committing the same offence, I would urge you to just pay the correct fare for the ticket. In my case, I was unemployed for most of that period and took advantage of the system.

 

[soil]

What kind of railcard was it? And are you entitled to any kind of railcard yourself? (e.g., aged 30 or less)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

I think there are two factors to consider here:
1. Your fare evasion is very near the top end of the scale though we have seen such behaviours settled out of court.
2. The solicitors fee compared with the likely cost of the fares avoided is a small amount and assuming you can afford it a relatively small price to pay to avoid (hopefully) a prosecution.

It's all rather speculative ATM.
OP was caught with no/invalid ticket. The TOC are aware of this.
He also seems to have misused a railcard over a long period of time.
We don't know whether they are aware of this.
Therefore until we see what he's accused of, legal advice is premature.

 

[WesternLancer]

Thank you both so much for your help - I genuinely really appreciate it. I will wait for the letter to come through from Southeastern and then consider legal representation.

I will search through the forum to see examples of past letters but do the letters typically threaten prosecution/court, regardless of the severity of the crime? Or will it only mention intent to prosecute where they actually intend to go through with taking the case to court? I'm asking because I don't want to have a heart attack when I read the letter and it mentions prosecution (if that makes sense).

I am honestly so regretful of my actions and the cost to my current mental health and future prospects isn't worth the amount I saved - if anyone is reading this and committing the same offence, I would urge you to just pay the correct fare for the ticket. In my case, I was unemployed for most of that period and took advantage of the system.

It's usually a pretty standard letter they tend to send of which there will be many examples from South Eastern on this page you can compare - pretty much tells everyone that they are considering prosecution but this is an opportunity for the recipient to put forward any mitigation (see other threads and the advice that is then given on the forum) - sometime but not always the person concerned eventually updates with what happened to them

 

[Haywain]

do the letters typically threaten prosecution/court, regardless of the severity of the crime?

Yes, because they are designed to get the attention of the recipient and show that it is a serious matter.

 

[wesontrain]

What kind of railcard was it? And are you entitled to any kind of railcard yourself? (e.g., aged 30 or less)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==



It's all rather speculative ATM.
OP was caught with no/invalid ticket. The TOC are aware of this.
He also seems to have misused a railcard over a long period of time.
We don't know whether they are aware of this.
Therefore until we see what he's accused of, legal advice is premature.

Thanks for the response. I would not be entitled to any rail cards.

I am sure they will work out I have been committing Railcard fraud as I gave the wrong DOB and the tickets bought on the online platform is under my name.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

It's usually a pretty standard letter they tend to send of which there will be many examples from South Eastern on this page you can compare - pretty much tells everyone that they are considering prosecution but this is an opportunity for the recipient to put forward any mitigation (see other threads and the advice that is then given on the forum) - sometime but not always the person concerned eventually updates with what happened to them

After you reply to the letter, I assume they respond with their final decision and if they choose to take it to court, there's no persuading them otherwise?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2025 ==

Also, should I let them know now that I have given them a false identity?

 

[SuspectUsual]

Also, should I let them know now that I have given them a false identity?

Others may have a view on this, but to me, if you are certain you will get their letter when it is sent, you could probably come clean when you reply. If there’s the slightest doubt you won’t get the letter, you probably need to be more proactive

 

[enyoueffsea]

Did you give them your address? How will you access the letter if you have given a false identity?

 

[Egg Centric]

@wesontrain if this is genuinely a potentially 5 figure case (I'm just saying this because of your £5k savings estimate and the knowledge savings multiply when it comes to TOC calculated "losses") I strongly recommend you think very, very carefully about answering any further questions in this thread. The TOCs do monitor this forum and while it's unlikely for several reason they're going to bother about relatively piddling sums once we start getting that high they may be more motivated to pay attention.

OTOH is it really that high? If you were unemployed at the time why were you using the train that often?

 

[wesontrain]

Ah is it possible to delete posts?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2025 ==

Welcome

People here will be able to advise you on all these questions. But you won’t be going to prison for this. But if it did go to court that’s a matter of public record - a criminal record is literally a record of people found guilty of crimes. Whether anyone would be interested in publicising that is another matter.

Obviously you have been evading fares on a substantial scale.

But that doesn’t prevent you from obtaining an out of court settlement if you cooperate with them. What the railway wants is for you to stop doing fare evasion full stop. And that you pay them what you have cheated them out of.

Really sorry to ask this of you but given the comment from the above poster about the TOC reading these forums, would you mind reporting your post to ask the admin to delete it (or at least, just the quote of my message? I will also report it and ask the admin to delete the quote of my message.

I am only asking because I don't want anything here to incriminate me (I would rather respond to the TOC through legal representation).

 

[furlong]

I am aware that I will need to pay back the cost of anytime single fares so I'm sure the penalty will be £10-15k+.

You should only need to pay back the difference between what you should have paid and what you actually paid. Normally this uses like-for-like tickets - so if you were buying anytime singles, then yes, anytime singles for the missing parts of the journeys as well as the railcard discounts, but it might still be possible to argue that if you hadn't cheated you'd have bought say weekly season tickets and so that should form the basis of the compensation calculation. (If the train company did attempt to make a profit out of your predicament by asking for more than it would have originally received had you not cheated, that might be a reason to employ a solicitor to write them a firm letter. Too many people seem to cave in to their initial Post Office style demands and I think there could be another scandal here waiting to be exposed and put right.) The train company has no power to demand from you any penalty in any form whatsoever. Only a court can do that, after conviction. But the train company is entitled to not be left out-of-pocket overall by what you did.

 

[WesternLancer]

Ah is it possible to delete posts?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2025 ==


Really sorry to ask this of you but given the comment from the above poster about the TOC reading these forums, would you mind reporting your post to ask the admin to delete it (or at least, just the quote of my message? I will also report it and ask the admin to delete the quote of my message.

I am only asking because I don't want anything here to incriminate me (I would rather respond to the TOC through legal representation).

I’ve done this re post #2. Please let me know post numbers of any others you want me to edit your posts from.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2025 ==

Ah is it possible to delete posts?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2025 ==


Really sorry to ask this of you but given the comment from the above poster about the TOC reading these forums, would you mind reporting your post to ask the admin to delete it (or at least, just the quote of my message? I will also report it and ask the admin to delete the quote of my message.

I am only asking because I don't want anything here to incriminate me (I would rather respond to the TOC through legal representation).

You can use the report button on any post if you want to ask moderator to remove content.

 

[AlterEgo]

Fairly obviously, as this is the number one public forum for fare evaders to receive free advice about their situation - the train companies read it! You’ll need to respond and own up to them what’s happened anyway, so it’s not really that relevant if you admit to something here or not. I’m not sure anyone has ever received a worse consequence from posting here, except one guy who was amusingly deluded and lied to the forum and the train company.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I’m not sure anyone has ever received a worse consequence from posting here, except one guy who was amusingly deluded and lied to the forum and the train company.

And his outcome was no worse as a result of fibbing to us, was it? It was lying to the train company and not taking our advice not to that cost him!

 

[Titfield]

I’m not sure anyone has ever received a worse consequence from posting here, except one guy who was amusingly deluded and lied to the forum and the train company.

Agreed. I would like to think that TOCs appreciate the advice we give because collectively we emphasise that (1) engagement (2) honesty but not self incrimination (3) contrition (4) apologising (5) to cease "offending" are the ingredients of achieving a resolution. At the end of the day a resolution is what the TOCs want. Going to court is very much a last resort for them despite what their communications may otherwise suggest.