SWR railway - request for contact (suspicious journeys flagged)

[donkeydj]

Appreciate the following post is long but I didn’t want to miss anything. Appreciate any advice as this is really stressing me out!

Disclaimer, I’ve read a few similar threads, but I’m hoping for some advice on my particular circumstances.

I’ve been contacted by SWR Revenue Protection regarding an investigation into historic ticket purchases made through my online account. I initially responded and provided my personal details when requested.

They have now sent me a spreadsheet showing a number of journeys/tickets they consider potentially suspicious. Most of the journeys are relatively recent, with the oldest journeys approaching the six-month mark, while a handful date back several years. The more recent journeys involve a modest amount of fare savings.

I have never been stopped, questioned or spoken to by a revenue protection officer in person in relation to any of these journeys. The investigation has been conducted through correspondence after SWR contacted me.

They have asked me to respond and have specifically warned that anything I provide could potentially be used as evidence in court. This has scared me and made me wonder that they may be considering prosecution.

I need to provide explanations for every journey identified, even for those from several years ago.

There are a few things I’m particularly unsure about:

1. Whether to respond at all

I haven’t admitted deliberately short-faring or intentionally avoiding fares, and I’m unclear what evidence they would need to establish the relevant allegations if I don’t make admissions.

If I don’t provide substantive answers to the allegations, could SWR proceed with prosecution based on the evidence they already have, or would they generally need further evidence or admissions?

One of my concerns is that I don’t want to voluntarily agree to pay a disproportionate settlement simply to make the matter go away if SWR ultimately isn’t going to pursue a criminal case.

If prosecution is genuinely being considered, I would be willing to cooperate and potentially reach a reasonable settlement if that could resolve the matter without a criminal conviction. However, I’m unsure whether it makes sense to provide an account (and ultimately pay the settlement fee) when I don’t yet know whether SWR intends to prosecute.

How do these situations normally work? Does SWR typically indicate whether it is considering prosecution before offering a settlement? or will I have missed the boat if I fail to respond?

If SWR says that certain historic tickets were invalid because eg there is no longer proof of a Railcard or an exit stamp, can they simply calculate the full undiscounted fare for those journeys, even where the travel was several years ago and the person genuinely cannot remember the circumstances.

2. How to respond

If I were to respond, my main concern is avoiding unnecessary admissions while also not appearing deliberately uncooperative. For some of the older journeys I genuinely don’t remember the circumstances, and I don’t want to guess or make statements that turn out to be inaccurate. If it came to settle, I don’t want to pay the full fares for tickets from years ago, just because I couldn’t remember what happened.

What would be a sensible way of approaching a response in those circumstances?

3. Limitation periods

I understand there are time limits for bringing certain railway fare-evasion prosecutions, does the fact that the most recent journeys are approaching the six month point affect how SWR might deal with the investigation?


4. Wider travel history

I have a substantial wider history of legitimate rail travel, including the significant majority of tickets purchased at the correct fare and journeys where valid Railcards were used.

Might this be relevant when assessing whether particular irregularities were deliberate, even where there appears to have been a pattern over a relatively short period?

I also have professional/career considerations which mean that a criminal conviction could have serious consequences for me, so I need to be particularly careful about how I approach this.

I appreciate nobody can predict what SWR will ultimately do, but any advice on how to approach this situation would be great.

 

[RobertsN]

I think it will probably be best for you to post (suitably redacted - i.e. block out your name/address/email and any reference codes) any emails/letters so that the experts on the forum may assist. (please see sticky post in the top of this forum).

I am not an expert in these matters. If you have not been stopped, I understand that SWR don´t really have any proof that YOU are using the supposedly invalid tickets. Purchasing "invalid" tickets is not an offence. Using them is.

As mentioned above, please post the emails/letters so that others more knowledgeable than me may help.

[Edit]: The general consensus on this forum appears to be that if you have not been stopped, DON'T respond to any emails/letters as it is likely an attempt to get you to self-incriminate (i.e. say something that will give them evidence of wrongdoing). I would say, do not respond further until the experts here can provide advice.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

I also have professional/career considerations which mean that a criminal conviction could have serious consequences for me, so I need to be particularly careful about how I approach this.

You, of course, know your professional life and ambitions better than we possibly can. But in our experience, far more people worry about the impact of a conviction than actually have to.

If your current/planned career has a regulator or some sort of professional body, have a good look at their website to see what view they take of convictions for fare dodging. If you are in a trade union, ask them as well. Once you have an accurate view of the impact of a conviction, that will tell you how important it is to avoid one.

 

[Haywain]

but any advice on how to approach this situation would be great.

Stop replying to them. They have no actual evidence unless you provide it.

 

[Swedenorer]

Have you ever been stopped and investigated about any journeys? (Ignoring this stuff.)

If you have never been stopped and found to be without a valid ticket they cannot prosecute you for any such offence - they have six months from the date of the alleged offence to do this.

As for this fishing expedition do not reply any further. They would not have cat in hell's chance of proving anything simply on the evidence of ticket purchase - even if some of the journeys might seem impossible/unlikely.

In this case I would not post any of the correspondence here even redacted - it is very public.

Always buy the correct ticket for your journey - I may advise you to ignore this correspondence but that doesn't imply the railway company is stupid.

 

[Tetchytyke]

To reach the stage that you have received a spreadsheet suggests to me that you have been responding up to present. It would be helpful if we could see what you said- suitably redacted- to see if you’ve not already incriminated yourself.

It’s worth observing that, in many cases, the same professional obligations arise if you make a settlement with your creditors. There have been high profile cases where someone settled with the TOC but still faced consequences for their dishonesty. And make no mistake, short faring is dishonesty.

 

[Chiltern 165]

What journeys/routes are they investigating, and have you done wrongdoing on any flagged journeys?

 

[WesternLancer]

Appreciate the following post is long but I didn’t want to miss anything. Appreciate any advice as this is really stressing me out!

Disclaimer, I’ve read a few similar threads, but I’m hoping for some advice on my particular circumstances.

I’ve been contacted by SWR Revenue Protection regarding an investigation into historic ticket purchases made through my online account. I initially responded and provided my personal details when requested.

They have now sent me a spreadsheet showing a number of journeys/tickets they consider potentially suspicious. Most of the journeys are relatively recent, with the oldest journeys approaching the six-month mark, while a handful date back several years. The more recent journeys involve a modest amount of fare savings.

I have never been stopped, questioned or spoken to by a revenue protection officer in person in relation to any of these journeys. The investigation has been conducted through correspondence after SWR contacted me.

They have asked me to respond and have specifically warned that anything I provide could potentially be used as evidence in court. This has scared me and made me wonder that they may be considering prosecution.

I need to provide explanations for every journey identified, even for those from several years ago.

There are a few things I’m particularly unsure about:

1. Whether to respond at all

I haven’t admitted deliberately short-faring or intentionally avoiding fares, and I’m unclear what evidence they would need to establish the relevant allegations if I don’t make admissions.

If I don’t provide substantive answers to the allegations, could SWR proceed with prosecution based on the evidence they already have, or would they generally need further evidence or admissions?

One of my concerns is that I don’t want to voluntarily agree to pay a disproportionate settlement simply to make the matter go away if SWR ultimately isn’t going to pursue a criminal case.

If prosecution is genuinely being considered, I would be willing to cooperate and potentially reach a reasonable settlement if that could resolve the matter without a criminal conviction. However, I’m unsure whether it makes sense to provide an account (and ultimately pay the settlement fee) when I don’t yet know whether SWR intends to prosecute.

How do these situations normally work? Does SWR typically indicate whether it is considering prosecution before offering a settlement? or will I have missed the boat if I fail to respond?

If SWR says that certain historic tickets were invalid because eg there is no longer proof of a Railcard or an exit stamp, can they simply calculate the full undiscounted fare for those journeys, even where the travel was several years ago and the person genuinely cannot remember the circumstances.

2. How to respond

If I were to respond, my main concern is avoiding unnecessary admissions while also not appearing deliberately uncooperative. For some of the older journeys I genuinely don’t remember the circumstances, and I don’t want to guess or make statements that turn out to be inaccurate. If it came to settle, I don’t want to pay the full fares for tickets from years ago, just because I couldn’t remember what happened.

What would be a sensible way of approaching a response in those circumstances?

3. Limitation periods

I understand there are time limits for bringing certain railway fare-evasion prosecutions, does the fact that the most recent journeys are approaching the six month point affect how SWR might deal with the investigation?


4. Wider travel history

I have a substantial wider history of legitimate rail travel, including the significant majority of tickets purchased at the correct fare and journeys where valid Railcards were used.

Might this be relevant when assessing whether particular irregularities were deliberate, even where there appears to have been a pattern over a relatively short period?

I also have professional/career considerations which mean that a criminal conviction could have serious consequences for me, so I need to be particularly careful about how I approach this.

I appreciate nobody can predict what SWR will ultimately do, but any advice on how to approach this situation would be great.

Just to add to other helpful posts if what follows is of any help in considering your course of action.

- If you have never been caught 'red handed' with an in valid ticket the usual advice given on here is to avoid these e-mails and not to reply to them (though I note you have already replied so it will depend on what you have said as to whether they have now got more evidence form you that would strengthen their hand if they took court action).

- I can't think of a case on here (not to say there are not any but I don't think there are) where we have seen train companies take court action without someone having been stopped and questioned and found not to have a valid ticket - ie caught red handed.

- The train company usually has 2 key objectives - a) to stop people evading in ways they have been doing and believe they have 'got away with it' - ie got someone to change their ways, and, b) secure income from fares evaded that should have been paid - usually through an out of court settlement.

- The deadlines for court action are often mentioned here - they are

- 6 months from the date of the offence detected for criminal prosecution for fare evasion where a 'beyond reasonable doubt' case would need to be made to secure a guilty verdict

- 6 years for a civil court action to pursue a debt of unpaid fares.

With the civil court action route we have seen examples so far of GWR doing this, but seems to be cases where they did actually catch someone red handed but failed to take criminal court action against them within 6 months (presumably due to workload pressures) - we have seen GWR come back to threaten civil action at least a couple of years after the time they caught someone. Civil Court action requires a lower threshold of proof - AIUI it is 'on the balance of probabilities' was the fare evaded and the debt thus owed.
From my recollection we've not actually seen those cases come to a court and the fare evader actually report back on their threads to say what happened - so suspect they have ended up paying what is demanded before it got to civil court. However, we have seen comments from 'insiders' that say court actions have certainly been pursued.
I don't think we have seen SWR yet do this.

However, anecdotally as the railways make their way back into Govt ownership via GD Railways I think we are starting to see more consistent approaches on action on fare evasion across train operators.

Ref your own situation

I suspect a fair bit depends on the nature of the exchanges you have had to date, and I would expect SWR to continue to threaten you with court action if you now stop engaging with them. But I have no idea if they would then take that further or just move on to someone else.

On this:

I also have professional/career considerations which mean that a criminal conviction could have serious consequences for me, so I need to be particularly careful about how I approach this.

Ultimately this is presumably a key issue for you and where you balance your decision.

Given that if they had actually caught you they could (if they so wished) take you to court, prosecute you and win (this is what Transport for London typically do), it's pretty foolish to have been evading fares. But you have probably realised that now and want to focus on next steps

So maybe this is a way to look at it:

It won't be difficult for you to:
- total up / estimate the value of the fares evaded (£ hundreds or a few thousand ?)
- look at your annual salary now and future earnings potential in your career over future years or even decades that might be set back by any court action (£ tens of thousands)

and balance that up.

As to what to do now, it's probably a question of what info you may have given them to date - tho I can see from your original message you are mindful of incriminating yourself so hopefully you have not done that already.

You should certainly:
- stop evading any fares ate all and make sure you have correct tickets 100% of the time from now on. If they caught you red handed they already have the info that have contacted you about on their records after all.
- do not delete your on line ticket buying account - you may need to access info in it if things escalated
- maybe think about moving to buying your tickets from a different retailer so you are less easy to monitor

 

[donkeydj]

Thank you for everyone’s responses so far.

I appreciate that having full details would make giving advice easier, however, I didn’t want to provide any identifying details in case this post is connected with my case.

To clear a few things up:

- I have not purchased an incorrect ticket for several months (but still within 6 months), with most of the incidents in question spanning a small period. Within this period, the incorrect return ticket was bought from the same origin station every time without a valid entry scan on their system. This has led them to suspect that I started my journey at a further away origin station.

- I have otherwise bought thousands of perfectly valid tickets for years. I have never been caught or questioned by SWR.

- I believe I have not given any incriminating information, and have only provided my contact details and willingness to oblige with their investigation (out of fear at the time). I don’t believe i’ve said anything which might give them more evidence in court than if I had never replied in the first place.

- Their latest email threatens that I do not have to respond to the email, but it may harm my case if I don’t mention something I wish to rely on in court, and that anything I do say may be used as evidence in court. If I choose not to respond, SWR will decide how to progress the case in the absence of my response, and will contact me again with a decision.

I guess I want to be reassured that they will not take criminal action against me for not responding to their latest email. If they wanted to take civil action, I would then be prepared to pay a settlement but don’t want to preemptively provide information about anything before I know whether it is necessary.

I would feel hard done by for them to take hundreds of pounds, when the total difference of fares in question amounts to less than £100.

Just to add to other helpful posts if what follows is of any help in considering your course of action.

- If you have never been caught 'red handed' with an in valid ticket the usual advice given on here is to avoid these e-mails and not to reply to them (though I note you have already replied so it will depend on what you have said as to whether they have now got more evidence form you that would strengthen their hand if they took court action).

- I can't think of a case on here (not to say there are not any but I don't think there are) where we have seen train companies take court action without someone having been stopped and questioned and found not to have a valid ticket - ie caught red handed.

- The train company usually has 2 key objectives - a) to stop people evading in ways they have been doing and believe they have 'got away with it' - ie got someone to change their ways, and, b) secure income from fares evaded that should have been paid - usually through an out of court settlement.

- The deadlines for court action are often mentioned here - they are

- 6 months from the date of the offence detected for criminal prosecution for fare evasion where a 'beyond reasonable doubt' case would need to be made to secure a guilty verdict

- 6 years for a civil court action to pursue a debt of unpaid fares.

With the civil court action route we have seen examples so far of GWR doing this, but seems to be cases where they did actually catch someone red handed but failed to take criminal court action against them within 6 months (presumably due to workload pressures) - we have seen GWR come back to threaten civil action at least a couple of years after the time they caught someone. Civil Court action requires a lower threshold of proof - AIUI it is 'on the balance of probabilities' was the fare evaded and the debt thus owed.
From my recollection we've not actually seen those cases come to a court and the fare evader actually report back on their threads to say what happened - so suspect they have ended up paying what is demanded before it got to civil court. However, we have seen comments from 'insiders' that say court actions have certainly been pursued.
I don't think we have seen SWR yet do this.

However, anecdotally as the railways make their way back into Govt ownership via GD Railways I think we are starting to see more consistent approaches on action on fare evasion across train operators.

Ref your own situation

I suspect a fair bit depends on the nature of the exchanges you have had to date, and I would expect SWR to continue to threaten you with court action if you now stop engaging with them. But I have no idea if they would then take that further or just move on to someone else.

On this:


Ultimately this is presumably a key issue for you and where you balance your decision.

Given that if they had actually caught you they could (if they so wished) take you to court, prosecute you and win (this is what Transport for London typically do), it's pretty foolish to have been evading fares. But you have probably realised that now and want to focus on next steps

So maybe this is a way to look at it:

It won't be difficult for you to:
- total up / estimate the value of the fares evaded (£ hundreds or a few thousand ?)
- look at your annual salary now and future earnings potential in your career over future years or even decades that might be set back by any court action (£ tens of thousands)

and balance that up.

As to what to do now, it's probably a question of what info you may have given them to date - tho I can see from your original message you are mindful of incriminating yourself so hopefully you have not done that already.

You should certainly:
- stop evading any fares ate all and make sure you have correct tickets 100% of the time from now on. If they caught you red handed they already have the info that have contacted you about on their records after all.
- do not delete your on line ticket buying account - you may need to access info in it if things escalated
- maybe think about moving to buying your tickets from a different retailer so you are less easy to monitor

Have you ever been stopped and investigated about any journeys? (Ignoring this stuff.)

If you have never been stopped and found to be without a valid ticket they cannot prosecute you for any such offence - they have six months from the date of the alleged offence to do this.

As for this fishing expedition do not reply any further. They would not have cat in hell's chance of proving anything simply on the evidence of ticket purchase - even if some of the journeys might seem impossible/unlikely.

In this case I would not post any of the correspondence here even redacted - it is very public.

Always buy the correct ticket for your journey - I may advise you to ignore this correspondence but that doesn't imply the railway company is stupid.

Stop replying to them. They have no actual evidence unless you provide it.

To reach the stage that you have received a spreadsheet suggests to me that you have been responding up to present. It would be helpful if we could see what you said- suitably redacted- to see if you’ve not already incriminated yourself.

It’s worth observing that, in many cases, the same professional obligations arise if you make a settlement with your creditors. There have been high profile cases where someone settled with the TOC but still faced consequences for their dishonesty. And make no mistake, short faring is dishonesty.

 

[WesternLancer]

FWIW I don’t suppose it counts for much from their perspective that you only evaded paying the correct fares on a few occasions of all the travels you undertake.

Not unlike saying that you only take things from a shop without paying occasionally and have otherwise actually paid for hundreds of other things over the years.

Not that this means they are necessarily in a good position to bring criminal action in court against you.

 

[donkeydj]

I don’t suppose it counts for much from their perspective that you only evaded paying the correct fares on a few occasions of all the travels you undertake.

Agreed, this clarification was more to shed light on the scale of the tickets in question

 

[WesternLancer]

Agreed, this clarification was more to shed light on the scale of the tickets in question

Thanks. Fair point.

 

[Swedenorer]

I guess I want to be reassured that they will not take criminal action against me for not responding to their latest email. If they wanted to take civil action, I would then be prepared to pay a settlement but don’t want to preemptively provide information about anything before I know whether it is necessary.

I would feel hard done by for them to take hundreds of pounds, when the total difference of fares in question amounts to less than £100.

Nobody here can give that reassurance, all they can do is to pass on what others in your situation have found - if indeed those people ever reported back in it. As it is you are entirely in their hands. If you follow the usual advice here and don't engage their automated systems will probably churn on until they get fed up - or try their luck. Only you can decide what to do.

BTW can I assume that you have never at any point no matter when been stopped by any company.

 

[mickey]

I guess I want to be reassured that they will not take criminal action against me for not responding to their latest email.

It’s not a crime not to respond to an email. As others have said, they have a reasonable suspicion of your behaviour, but without specific evidence they would struggle to pursue it. They want you to provide that evidence for them.

This should also be obvious, but if you have a repeating pattern of behaviour then it wouldn’t take much now for them to set up an opportunity to catch you in person, either on a train or at a gateline, so it’s very much in your interests now to ensure you have correct tickets at all times.