Short journey fraud. Caught before for not having a ticket

[lifeisbalance]

I was caught by west mids revenue officers in birmingham new street with a ticket not valid for my journey on a route I don't usually take and have since received a letter stating they believe short journey fraud has taken place and wish for me to "provide any evidence to support the claim that none of the above legislation has been contravened to prevent further action being contemplated."

I recall having done this on my usual line (different origin and destination to the one I was stopped by revenue officers at) at least a few times a long time ago. The problem is, I only did this on these instances because I did not have a ticket through my own error and needed to buy one to get past the ticket barriers.

I have been caught twice before on my usual line for not having a ticket. On both occasions I was fined £50.

These two incidents occured over a year ago and I may have been living at a different address at the time. I can't remember.

Looking at my ticket history it's a complete random mess of stations. Not because of short journey fraud, but because I travel to and from different stations after work depending on what I'm doing.

Its possible in the time between these last fines that I was travelling without a ticket. However, it would be impossible for me to calculate. I have a flexible work from home policy and sometimes get a lift to work (occasionally from work also) so sometimes there are tickets to work but none returning and vice versa, and sporadic days where I havent gone to work at all.

I will look into this in detail but it is a mess.

Will I have to calculate this, or is the investigation only into short journey fraud? If they try to claim every gap in this ticket history is fare evasion I will owe an ungodly (and incorrect) amount of money.

I want to avoid court and a criminal record but I can't afford to pay if they go for all the gaps in my ticket history (which they say they have already reviewed, I didn't know they could do that). Do they use cameras to verify fare evasion? And do they already have access to my ticket history?

I regret all of this and we will be buying valid tickets for every journey going forward.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2025 ==

I forgot to ask a question here. I'm looking for advice on how to respond

 

[Titfield]

Please can you upload the letter you have received with any personal details and reference numbers obscured?

West Midlands Trains (who I assume to be the train operating company involved) is now investigating you with a view to either (a) taking no action - very unlikely (b) taking you to court for at the very least the recent occasion where you have been caught without a valid ticket (c) offering you an opportunity to settle out of court for the occasion you were caught plus taking into account the other occasions when they believe you were avoiding paying the correct fare.

They will have in all probability a complete list of all the tickets you have purchased together with the data of which tickets were scanned and where and when. They also know or at least think they know where you live and will be using this as part of the evidence of short faring. If you have used an online account or payment card to pay for tickets then they can access all your history. This is permitted under GDPR because it is for the detection and prevention of crime.

Their letter is deliberately vague in part at least because they want you to incriminate yourself.

You are going to have to put in some legwork and create a record of all the tickets you have purchased, all the journeys you have taken. Where you got a lft you are going to have to produce some evidence of this. Usually the onus is on WMT to produce evidence of wrong doing (and not for you to provide evidence of right doing) BUT because they could take you to court for the one occasion they have you "bang to rights" you are going to have to cooperate with them if you want to avoid going to court being found guilty and receiving a criminal record.

You mention a flexible work pattern but train companies take this with a pinch of salt unless there is strong evidence from an employer and / or person providing a lift that your seemingly random journeys were indeed legitimate. It is well known that some passengers do not scan the return portions of round trip tickets so that they can be "reused" within their validity. Likewise if the stations you have tickets to / from are unbarriered and are not the nearest station to home and / or place of work this is highly suggestive that you use those stations so that tickets can be reused.

Making statements such as "I cant remember where I was living at the time" are not going to help your case. If WMT feel you are being obstructive or not telling the truth they will simply issue proceedings so the Magistrates can decide whether you are guilty or not guilty but again NB they do have you bang to rights for the one occasion you were stopped.

EDIT

I think we will need sight of the letter and some responses to the questions posed above before guidance how to respond can be given.

If you look at some of the posts made by @Hadders you will see the advice normally given but that advice would have to be tempered by the true extent of the wrong doing.

 

[lifeisbalance]

Please can you upload the letter you have received with any personal details and reference numbers obscured?

West Midlands Trains (who I assume to be the train operating company involved) is now investigating you with a view to either (a) taking no action - very unlikely (b) taking you to court for at the very least the recent occasion where you have been caught without a valid ticket (c) offering you an opportunity to settle out of court for the occasion you were caught plus taking into account the other occasions when they believe you were avoiding paying the correct fare.

They will have in all probability a complete list of all the tickets you have purchased together with the data of which tickets were scanned and where and when. They also know or at least think they know where you live and will be using this as part of the evidence of short faring. If you have used an online account or payment card to pay for tickets then they can access all your history. This is permitted under GDPR because it is for the detection and prevention of crime.

Their letter is deliberately vague in part at least because they want you to incriminate yourself.

You are going to have to put in some legwork and create a record of all the tickets you have purchased, all the journeys you have taken. Where you got a lft you are going to have to produce some evidence of this. Usually the onus is on WMT to produce evidence of wrong doing (and not for you to provide evidence of right doing) BUT because they could take you to court for the one occasion they have you "bang to rights" you are going to have to cooperate with them if you want to avoid going to court being found guilty and receiving a criminal record.

You mention a flexible work pattern but train companies take this with a pinch of salt unless there is strong evidence from an employer and / or person providing a lift that your seemingly random journeys were indeed legitimate. It is well known that some passengers do not scan the return portions of round trip tickets so that they can be "reused" within their validity. Likewise if the stations you have tickets to / from are unbarriered and are not the nearest station to home and / or place of work this is highly suggestive that you use those stations so that tickets can be reused.

Making statements such as "I cant remember where I was living at the time" are not going to help your case. If WMT feel you are being obstructive or not telling the truth they will simply issue proceedings so the Magistrates can decide whether you are guilty or not guilty but again NB they do have you bang to rights for the one occasion you were stopped.

Should I bring up my ticket history and possible other short journeys in the response or leave it out and wait to see if they bring it up. As you say, they want me to incriminate myself, but I don't want to be uncooperative either.

I'm honestly very anxious about all this. I don't want a criminal record or to go to court. I feel sick to my stomach.

 

[soil]

Should I bring up my ticket history and possible other short journeys in the response or leave it out and wait to see if they bring it up. As you say, they want me to incriminate myself, but I don't want to be uncooperative either.

I'm honestly very anxious about all this. I don't want a criminal record or to go to court. I feel sick to my stomach.

The simplest way to respond, assuming the original case is cut and dried, would be to address that only.

Given that they haven't put in any specific further allegations to you, you don't really have anything further that it would be wise to comment on.

It's also far from clear from their email whether they have identified further short ticketing or just this one, so I certainly wouldn't bring anything else up.

Offer an apology and to pay their costs and lost fare for the case they caught you on and don't address anything outside that.

 

[Titfield]

The simplest way to respond, assuming the original case is cut and dried, would be to address that only.

Given that they haven't put in any specific further allegations to you, you don't really have anything further that it would be wise to comment on.

It's also far from clear from their email whether they have identified further short ticketing or just this one, so I certainly wouldn't bring anything else up.

Offer an apology and to pay their costs and lost fare for the case they caught you on and don't address anything outside that.

The Op should be aware that WMT may reply offering a settlement for the one occasion or asking for information about other occasions or could simply decide to proceed to court for the one occasion.

It is impossible to predict or ascertain what WMT is more likely to do.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

The Op should be aware that WMT may reply offering a settlement for the one occasion or asking for information about other occasions or could simply decide to proceed to court for the one occasion.

It is impossible to predict or ascertain what WMT is more likely to do.

It's very rare that WMT would look to prosecute if the OP engages with them, even if it's a simple apology for the journey they have been caught doing.

The internal policy pretty much says this. Prosecution is predominantly for those who don't engage. 5 figure settlements happen regularly, so number of occasions or value don't always come into it even.

Whether there will be further steps after this, I'd say it's highly likely. We often see WMT reach out and ask for information and then respond saying they've found x number of short journeys fraud or similar - we see this in cases where it may or not be the case, the OP admits doing so here so I can't imagine they won't join the dots themselves.