Southeastern mg11 advice and help

[WesternLancer]

Thank you for advice, i am torn between replying and not, a few more of my concerns if they help in more relevant advice:

- I am on a visa and any prosecution or initiated prosecution can impact my immigration and naturalisation etc.

- I am worried that they might explore previous 3-4 weeks or 2 years+ journeys and potentially find something, could they try it under fraud act? Apologies for being paranoid, worried that not replying can result into them going deeper or receiving surprise court order.

- I emailed them before on the next steps and they told to wait.

Do you think they might find more evasion if they looked further back?

 

[traveller7]

Its highly unlikely

 

[Mattplans]

Southeastern suspended (or seemed to) fare evasion investigations while they underwent restructuring. Evidently they've now completed that but that doesn't really allow them to rewind the clock on the offences they failed to act on in a timely manner.

I don't doubt that they'll have some partial success for some through intimidation but the chances are bleak for others.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/se_prosecutions_department/response/3519371/attach/html/3/Organisation%20Review%20February%202026%20Redacted.pdf.html

 

[traveller7]

Thanks for sharing this, this does make me think now that they have a specialised legal team (page 17), they might reject any out of court settlement and by default prosecute like TFL. Wondering what that might look in my case?


Also by “fraud investigation team” might they mean they are now prosecuting more around Fraud act etc?

Southeastern suspended (or seemed to) fare evasion investigations while they underwent restructuring. Evidently they've now completed that but that doesn't really allow them to rewind the clock on the offences they failed to act on in a timely manner.

I don't doubt that they'll have some partial success for some through intimidation but the chances are bleak for others.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/se_prosecutions_department/response/3519371/attach/html/3/Organisation%20Review%20February%202026%20Redacted.pdf.html

 

[WesternLancer]

Thanks for sharing this, this does make me think now that they have a specialised legal team (page 17), they might reject any out of court settlement and by default prosecute like TFL. Wondering what that might look in my case?


Also by “fraud investigation team” might they mean they are now prosecuting more around Fraud act etc?

We’ve never seen a fraud prosecution on this forum that I can recall. Only high profile cases reported in the newspapers involving many thousands of pounds in evasion.
Not an evaded £5 oyster card fare.

The railway routinely refers to fare evasion as fraud. But that doesn’t mean they often take people to court for the offence of fraud.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 01:17 ==

Its not improbable but would be irregular, also I changed oyster card 3-4 weeks before the incident as the previous one broke.

When train companies look at previous ticket buying records the main one we see involved in such instances is Trainline.

I suspect they can't look at Oyster card records if they want to - just that we don't see that very often here from what I can recall.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 01:25 ==

Thank you for advice, i am torn between replying and not, a few more of my concerns if they help in more relevant advice:

- I am on a visa and any prosecution or initiated prosecution can impact my immigration and naturalisation etc.

Whilst I have no specialist knowledge on this aspect - you can only weigh up whether you think engaging with SE Trains (ie sending a reply) might resolve the fares issue so that the matter is closed.

- I am worried that they might explore previous 3-4 weeks or 2 years+ journeys and potentially find something, could they try it under fraud act? Apologies for being paranoid, worried that not replying can result into them going deeper or receiving surprise court order.

I don't think any of us here can truly know if replying or not replying makes them more or less likely to investigate your past ticket records.

I suppose you could consider engaging a rail fares specialist solicitor to negotiate and conclude things for you (and I'm sure they would be good at getting the matter concluded) but such a solicitors fees might be around £700 which is of course a lot of money to find

- I emailed them before on the next steps and they told to wait.