Thameslink fare evasion self-report (England

[Bletchleyite]

My company is currently rolling out new till software which will include a message on the card reader saying “please wait for confirmation when paying contactless”, so hopefully once we get the update the number of walk offs will reduce.

Replied in General: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-paying-by-accident-at-self-checkouts.307034/

 

[Haywain]

iii) Engage a solicitor to handle this on their behalf - who may have a way in which to protect their confidentiality. This will come at a cost of the legal fees involved.

No good solicitor will take on a case without an initial consultation, and that bit won't have a cost.

 

[WesternLancer]

No good solicitor will take on a case without an initial consultation, and that bit won't have a cost.

point well made

 

[furlong]

You missed my suggestion that deals with this middle case: communicate anonymously to seek agreement that you can pay a sum either to them anonymously or to a charity or the government directly and that should there be further proceedings this gesture will then be taken into account and the sum deducted from any settlement. Even put the money in escrow for 6 years (when it's too late to be claimed) if need be! If the company won't agree to any of that then wasting money on a solicitor isn't going to make any difference.

 

[185143]

Do GTR have a preferred charity that they support? I know WMT offer the option to donate delay repay to Birmingham Children's Hospital, or at least did the last time I claimed from them.

That could be a viable option? I would expect GTR to do some digging if they received a 4 figure payment they weren't expecting. Indeed, I'd be rather concerned if they didn't! They must match the payments up to prosecution cases or else how would they *know* Mr. X has paid his out of court settlement and then write back to them withdrawing the case?

Imagine this scenario: you pay what you deem is due. Presumably you've calculated the difference in fares. Then in a couple of months time GTR write to you with a figure multiple times higher than you calculated, as they've used Anytime fares with no discount for fares paid, plus a hefty admin fee ontop. And of course at that point, the risk of them taking it to court is certainly not zero. How would you react to that? Genuine question.

 

[WesternLancer]

You missed my suggestion that deals with this middle case: communicate anonymously to seek agreement that you can pay a sum either to them anonymously or to a charity or the government directly and that should there be further proceedings this gesture will then be taken into account and the sum deducted from any settlement. Even put the money in escrow for 6 years (when it's too late to be claimed) if need be! If the company won't agree to any of that then wasting money on a solicitor isn't going to make any difference.

thanks - it's another option - my personal hunch (and it's a hunch I suppose) is that no organisation would put in writing that this was an acceptable method to resolve the situation.
Well not one now responsible to HM treasury.
But done anonymously I don't suppose the OP has anything to loose by asking them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Sep 2026 ==

Do GTR have a preferred charity that they support? I know WMT offer the option to donate delay repay to Birmingham Children's Hospital, or at least did the last time I claimed from them.

Even if GTR did have a favoured charity I don't think donating to a charity is advice that solves the OPs problem which is to avoid future court action. It won't protect you against court action and you've given your money away and can't get it back!
With the exception of seeking to obtain the written agreement in such a way as outlined in post #34

That could be a viable option? I would expect GTR to do some digging if they received a 4 figure payment they weren't expecting. Indeed, I'd be rather concerned if they didn't! They must match the payments up to prosecution cases or else how would they *know* Mr. X has paid his out of court settlement and then write back to them withdrawing the case?

Well they haven't actually commenced a prosecution case and the time the OP was caught might be over 6 months ago anyway - but writing to explain why you were making a payment would inevitably involve admitting you had evaded the fares and thus an admission you had committed an offence.
And if the payment was made anonymously it could not be matched up with anyone, as you say, so would have no effect on preventing any future action, in the unlikely event of that happening.

Imagine this scenario: you pay what you deem is due. Presumably you've calculated the difference in fares. Then in a couple of months time GTR write to you with a figure multiple times higher than you calculated, as they've used Anytime fares with no discount for fares paid, plus a hefty admin fee ontop. And of course at that point, the risk of them taking it to court is certainly not zero. How would you react to that? Genuine question.

Which I suspect is probably why many contributions advise the OP to do nothing about this at all.

 

[jumble]

Hi all!

Basically over a year ago I tried to do the doughnutting method, but got caught the same day. I pretended my phone died and quickly bought a ticket later on and sent it over through email as advised by the inspector. Couple months later they sent me a ticket for up to £1000 and a possible court meeting, but they left a section to write a letter explaining my side. I decided to make up a story about how I forgot to buy the ticket or something like that. I got an out-of-court settlement for £70 and paid it.
After this I never did that again, but I basically I always bought myself return tickets and they were always either on-peak or super-off peak Basically if my uni lecture was at 9 am I had no choice but to buy a peak ticket, but if it was at 1pm or something I always bought off-peak regardless of the time I was coming back. This was 1) because the station I was coming back from never checked tickets (you always had to as for them to open the barriers for you), and 2) because I was never 100% sure what time I’d be back anyway.
Regardless, after a while I realised that I need to specify the time I wanna return with because it puts the price up £5.

I want to self-report both of these things, 1) the fact that I lied in the first scenario and 2) that I bought super off-peak tickets when I should’ve bought just off-peak. Btw I have no idea how often I did this because my schedule was all over the place.

Without going into the reasons about why I want to self-report, what can I expect from this. How much can I expect the fine to be. More importantly what are my chances of being able to settle out of court. The last thing I want to get is a criminal record, but I would like to pay back what I owe.

My Friend had a similar dilemma 20 years ago
They had a child who had a car accident and was given a blue badge for a couple of months.
The father was very very naughty and parked on a yellow line while actually working and got a parking ticket
They claimed it back as expenses
They then appealed and the ticket was cancelled
They decided as you have been advised not to poke the bear but wanted to assuage their guilty conscience
They resolved this issue by using the money on buying Disney videos for the children's ward where the child was recovering
They considered this a win win as the council donated those videos for the kids in hospital to have a nice Christmas
I strongly advise you to do the same type of thing

 

[Fawkes Cat]

You missed my suggestion that deals with this middle case: communicate anonymously to seek agreement that you can pay a sum either to them anonymously or to a charity or the government directly and that should there be further proceedings this gesture will then be taken into account and the sum deducted from any settlement. Even put the money in escrow for 6 years (when it's too late to be claimed) if need be! If the company won't agree to any of that then wasting money on a solicitor isn't going to make any difference.

The problem I see with this is that I can't see any business being prepared to agree an anonymous free pass. In the first place, I imagine whoever received it would feel doubtful about it, and if then asked to rationalise the doubt they would probably say something like 'without knowing who is involved, how do we know that the £1,000 offered isn't to stop us pursuing losses of £10,000?'

It seems to me that if the OP wants to try to come to some sort of agreement with the railway, then they'd need to go through a solicitor in that the railway might be prepared to agree if they knew that the solicitor meant that there was some way to contact their otherwise anonymous funder. But even then I would emphasise that this might work rather than it certainly would. And as people have commented, if a solicitor was prepared to do this, they would charge handsomely for it.

So realistically we are unable to suggest a way out of this that will guarantee immunity from prosecution.

In that light, the OP has to consider which of the remaining options will be best for them after taking everything into consideration:
- keep quiet, and hang on to the money. This will feel like not taking responsibility - but should the railway ultimately catch up with the OP, they will have the money to hand to resolve the matter in court
- make a donation to a suitable charity (it might be worth having a look at https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/about-us/corporate-and-social-responsibility/charities to see who Thameslink corporately support) which will allow the OP to take responsibility, but won't prevent court action if GTR ultimately go down that road.

Neither of these routes are perfect: the decision to make is what points to compromise on.

 

[WesternLancer]

The problem I see with this is that I can't see any business being prepared to agree an anonymous free pass. In the first place, I imagine whoever received it would feel doubtful about it, and if then asked to rationalise the doubt they would probably say something like 'without knowing who is involved, how do we know that the £1,000 offered isn't to stop us pursuing losses of £10,000?'

It seems to me that if the OP wants to try to come to some sort of agreement with the railway, then they'd need to go through a solicitor in that the railway might be prepared to agree if they knew that the solicitor meant that there was some way to contact their otherwise anonymous funder. But even then I would emphasise that this might work rather than it certainly would. And as people have commented, if a solicitor was prepared to do this, they would charge handsomely for it.

So realistically we are unable to suggest a way out of this that will guarantee immunity from prosecution.

In that light, the OP has to consider which of the remaining options will be best for them after taking everything into consideration:
- keep quiet, and hang on to the money. This will feel like not taking responsibility - but should the railway ultimately catch up with the OP, they will have the money to hand to resolve the matter in court
- make a donation to a suitable charity (it might be worth having a look at https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/about-us/corporate-and-social-responsibility/charities to see who Thameslink corporately support) which will allow the OP to take responsibility, but won't prevent court action if GTR ultimately go down that road.

Neither of these routes are perfect: the decision to make is what points to compromise on.

This was my thinking generally and seems to me to be very well put.

 

[Blaine]

Please, please, please, do not follow any action that will make it worse for yourself. You are already beating yourself up for previous mistakes.

 

[johnny_t]

Whilst I still think it's pointless, I suppose that if you could get hold of GTRs banking details, you could pay cash in at a bank branch. It'll cause the accountants a bit of a headache, though...

 

[SuspectUsual]

If it was me, and if I felt that strongly about it, I'd still wait 6 years to make sure there could be no legal consequences for me, then find a way of getting the money to GTR (ie some sort of a payment or buying and not using tickets)

In the meantime, I'd stick the money in a 4% account and let it grow a bit faster than inflation