The 'fraud letters' process

[Tetchytyke]

in many cases, they're well founded and almost always correct in their assertion that there is some kind of fraud at play. You can dress that up however you like, and absolutely question whether they can actually prove the offence(s), but the letters are not fishing expeditions which some here unfairly claim.

The letters absolutely are fishing expeditions, though. They simply run a search for all the people who buy tickets between [common short faring station pair] and send out the emails. The emails are generic and ambiguous, making vague insinuations of "fraud" without actually setting out what the recipient is alleged to have done.

Yes, there are certain common short faring station pairs where the vast majority of people purchasing those tickets are unlikely to be using them correctly. Vauxhall to London Waterloo has recently had attention drawn to it by SWR, and Stratford to London Liverpool Street is another example. You generally only go on a fishing expedition to places where you know there are some fish.

But that doesn't mean that everyone buying tickets between [common short faring station pair] is using the tickets illegitimately and, even more importantly, nor does it mean that the TOC has any evidence whatsoever that the specific recipient of an email has been using their tickets illegitimately.

My impression is that some here seem to be saying that because it is difficult to prove - that the letters shouldn't be going out in the first place.

Letters or emails alleging fraud should, in both my professional and personal opinion, only be going out where the sender has a reasonable suspicion that the actual recipient has engaged in fraud. And where allegations of fraud are being made then, as I've said before, in both my professional and personal opinion that letter or email should be sketching out the brief reasons why the TOC considers fraud to have taken place.

Making allegations of fraud is a serious matter and I think TOCs bandy the word around far too often.

Yes, I do object to TOCs bandying words like fraud around when they haven't got a scrap of evidence to support that allegation. A person's ticket purchasing and usage history may be unusual, suspicious even, but that doesn't make it fraudulent and it doesn't support sending an email to someone making serious allegations against them.

In simple terms (and in my personal and professional opinion):

• "You've been buying a lot of tickets between [common short fairing station pair] yet your account says you live in [some other town]. Care to tell us why?" is acceptable; but
• "You're a fraudster, here's a form for you to admit it" is not acceptable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 11:53 ==

Secondly, as @Tetchytyke has explained earlier, their "investigators" not only cannot be considered independent, but also deliberately avoid the best practice, which involves, in particular, telling the person upfront what activity is being investigated, in a clear and unambiguous manner.

This is my primary objection to these emails. They make scary allegations of fraud without actually providing any information to enable the recipient to understand the nature of the allegation being made against them. We have seen a few threads on here where the recipient has believed the issue was one thing- behaviour which was legitimate- but it turns out that the TOC believed something else was happening. In some cases the TOC were right, in some cases they weren't.

I wouldn't have an issue if the initial letters/emails actually set out the issue, e.g. you've been buying a lot of tickets from Stratford to Liverpool Street when you live in Colchester, or you've been buying a lot of tickets from Beaulieu Park to Chelmsford 30 seconds before you've scanned the ticket at Chelmsford. But they don't. They just make vague insinuations and invite the recipient to contact them.

If the TOC can't be bothered setting out the exact nature of the allegation then the only possible advice is to not reply to vague requests.

The caution wording is "it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court" (emphasis mine). These emails don't ask a question so there is no point in replying; it can't even harm your defence because they don't actually ask you anything.

My personal opinion is that the TOCs would probably catch more fish if they did set out the basic details of the allegation. But that would involve actual work, they couldn't just do a mail merge and hit send.

 

[tutacre]

The letters absolutely are fishing expeditions, though. They simply run a search for all the people who buy tickets between [common short faring station pair] and send out the emails. The emails are generic and ambiguous, making vague insinuations of "fraud" without actually setting out what the recipient is alleged to have done.

Yes, there are certain common short faring station pairs where the vast majority of people purchasing those tickets are unlikely to be using them correctly. Vauxhall to London Waterloo has recently had attention drawn to it by SWR, and Stratford to London Liverpool Street is another example. You generally only go on a fishing expedition to places where you know there are some fish.

But that doesn't mean that everyone buying tickets between [common short faring station pair] is using the tickets illegitimately and, even more importantly, nor does it mean that the TOC has any evidence whatsoever that the specific recipient of an email has been using their tickets illegitimately.


Letters or emails alleging fraud should, in both my professional and personal opinion, only be going out where the sender has a reasonable suspicion that the actual recipient has engaged in fraud. And where allegations of fraud are being made then, as I've said before, in both my professional and personal opinion that letter or email should be sketching out the brief reasons why the TOC considers fraud to have taken place.

Making allegations of fraud is a serious matter and I think TOCs bandy the word around far too often.

Yes, I do object to TOCs bandying words like fraud around when they haven't got a scrap of evidence to support that allegation. A person's ticket purchasing and usage history may be unusual, suspicious even, but that doesn't make it fraudulent and it doesn't support sending an email to someone making serious allegations against them.

In simple terms (and in my personal and professional opinion):

• "You've been buying a lot of tickets between [common short fairing station pair] yet your account says you live in [some other town]. Care to tell us why?" is acceptable; but
• "You're a fraudster, here's a form for you to admit it" is not acceptable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 11:53 ==


This is my primary objection to these emails. They make scary allegations of fraud without actually providing any information to enable the recipient to understand the nature of the allegation being made against them. We have seen a few threads on here where the recipient has believed the issue was one thing- behaviour which was legitimate- but it turns out that the TOC believed something else was happening. In some cases the TOC were right, in some cases they weren't.

I wouldn't have an issue if the initial letters/emails actually set out the issue, e.g. you've been buying a lot of tickets from Stratford to Liverpool Street when you live in Colchester, or you've been buying a lot of tickets from Beaulieu Park to Chelmsford 30 seconds before you've scanned the ticket at Chelmsford. But they don't. They just make vague insinuations and invite the recipient to contact them.

If the TOC can't be bothered setting out the exact nature of the allegation then the only possible advice is to not reply to vague requests.

The caution wording is "it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court" (emphasis mine). These emails don't ask a question so there is no point in replying; it can't even harm your defence because they don't actually ask you anything.

My personal opinion is that the TOCs would probably catch more fish if they did set out the basic details of the allegation. But that would involve actual work, they couldn't just do a mail merge and hit send.

Fraud is simply a different word for intentional fare evasion - the difference is the perception by the general public- but ultimately, fare evasion is almost always fraud. Most fare evaders can be called a fraudster, perfectly reasonably.

The railway (or the Crown) has absolute discretion as to what legislation is used - for almost all offences, not just rail, a prosecutor or police have a choice of legislation to pick from, and it's at their discretion - depending on what they think they can prove or sometimes just custom and practice.

I have yet to see any evidence from anyone on this forum, that the train operators do not have more evidence then they let on. There is zero obligation to disclose what evidence you do or do not have until it actually gets to court, and indeed, like any other law enforcement, is part of the game as a case progresses. Police often do not disclose evidence until much later on into the process, once they've given the suspect a chance to hang themselves, deny etc. You claim they are just trawling data and sending speculative letters - but you have no evidence for that assertion, and indeed, the evidence suggests otherwise - they've clearly made a coherent and legally sound case to third party retailers, payment providers etc to disclose that data in the first place, which the retailers obviously think is robust enough to meet the evidential threshold for suspicion or other reasonable legal basis - so it's not just the TOC making that assessment.

 

[Tetchytyke]

You claim they are just trawling data and sending speculative letters - but you have no evidence for that assertion, and indeed, the evidence suggests otherwise

You will notice that we get periodic spikes in queries on this forum all relating to the same TOC. We will get a run of requests about GTR or GA or SWR all in a short space of time. All will be based on ticket and purchase history and will not be based on someone having been stopped.

You will also notice from the forum that the queries from people who have been stopped are different to those queries from people who have not been stopped.

This rather suggests that they are conducting bulk email exercises and that those bulk email exercises are based on nothing more than a data trawl. It may be an educated data trawl- although it doesn’t take a genius to work out the common short faring station pairs- but it is still nothing more than a data trawl. As I said before, you only go on a fishing expedition to places where you know there are some fish.

If you have evidence to show that TOCs are actually conducting targeted email operations, I’d be very glad to see it.

they've clearly made a coherent and legally sound case to third party retailers, payment providers etc to disclose that data in the first place

Payment providers don’t generally disclose data.

(Some) railway retailers disclose data. I shan’t rehash the arguments about DPA/GDPR except to note that the retailer acts as agent for the TOC and so there is a contractual basis for supplying some data. There is nothing to suggest that the TOCs’ requests are anything more detailed than “give us the details of everyone who buys tickets between [common short faring station pair],” perhaps additional requesting details of ticket scan times.

There is zero obligation to disclose what evidence you do or do not have until it actually gets to court

That is quite simply not true, in both directions- the defence are not permitted to run an ambush defence either. Disclosure obligations start right on day one of an investigation.

You don’t have to disclose everything all at once and you don’t show all your cards in the initial interview, but that’s not the same thing at all.

Fraud is simply a different word for intentional fare evasion

Agreed, but that has nothing to do with the point I made.

Say you get the details of 100 people who bought tickets between Waterloo and Vauxhall. SWR believe 95% of all tickets between that station pair are used fraudulently. Fine, but that conversely means that SWR also believe 5% of those tickets are bought legitimately.

So they start firing out emails to all 100 people accusing them of fraud. But SWR do not actually have a reasonable belief that all 100 recipients are fraudsters- they have a belief that 95 of them are, they just don’t know which 95. This means conversely that they also have a belief that 5 of them are honest, they just don’t know which 5.

My view is this all means that they shouldn’t be making these sorts of allegations against people in their initial contact. There is no evidence to suggest that they do any sort of sifting- indeed, for the most part, legitimate uses of these types of tickets would be largely indistinguishable from illegitimate uses anyway.

In my investigation training I was taught that you should disclose enough at the initial stage to allow someone to know what they have been accused of. These boilerplate emails don’t do that. How can you reply meaningfully if you don’t know what you’re accused of? It’s poor professional practice.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

You will notice that we get periodic spikes in queries on this forum all relating to the same TOC. We will get a run of requests about GTR or GA or SWR all in a short space of time. All will be based on ticket and purchase history and will not be based on someone having been stopped.

You will also notice from the forum that the queries from people who have been stopped are different to those queries from people who have not been stopped.

As always, I'm happy to be corrected (ideally with links to the appropriate threads) but it's very much my impression that all the queries we get after a trawl amount to 'I've been caught, what should I do?' We don't seem to get any saying 'why, when all my travel is legitimate. have I been sent an email accusing me of fraud?'

Although I'm sure it's not an exact parallel. compare this to the steady dribble of queries we get from people whose name and/or address has been given by someone else when the someone else was caught fare dodging. These innocent people tend to be (understandably) bemused about the unfounded accusation made against them.

 

[WesternLancer]

As always, I'm happy to be corrected (ideally with links to the appropriate threads) but it's very much my impression that all the queries we get after a trawl amount to 'I've been caught, what should I do?' We don't seem to get any saying 'why, when all my travel is legitimate. have I been sent an email accusing me of fraud?'

Actually I recall a few years ago when I first saw cases of this on the forum - from Greater Anglia IIRC - that we did get a) a lot of cases in short space of time and b) a few, albeit not many, of them stating adamantly that they did not know of any ticket misuse they had done.

I've not got the time to dig through old threads to find them - apols for that, but pretty sure they did exist.

I wonder if this was a new approach at the time (and Trainline soon after posted press releases about how they were helping with this sort of thing) and GA were being more scattergun with their accusations and thus more people with legit tickets were caught up in.

I do agree that more recently those that come here after being written to as part of what looks like a data trawl do say enough on here to indicate they have almost certainly been evading fares and the data trawl has picked that up.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Actually I recall a few years ago when I first saw cases of this on the forum - from Greater Anglia IIRC - that we did get a) a lot of cases in short space of time and b) a few, albeit not many, of them stating adamantly that they did not know of any ticket misuse they had done.

My recollection (also unproven) is a little different. There were certainly some postings huffing and puffing and proclaiming innocence - but my recollection is that no one ever came back to us to tell us that GA had accepted that there was no case to answer.

 

[WesternLancer]

My recollection (also unproven) is a little different. There were certainly some postings huffing and puffing and proclaiming innocence - but my recollection is that no one ever came back to us to tell us that GA had accepted that there was no case to answer.

could be accurate - but maybe we advised them to stop responding to GA

 

[Tetchytyke]

We don't seem to get any saying 'why, when all my travel is legitimate. have I been sent an email accusing me of fraud?'

There have been a couple, and a couple where the person genuinely believed they’d done nothing wrong, addressed the first issue then ended up getting into a long conversation about a couple of tickets they’d bought after boarding. A salutary lesson in not responding; nearly everyone will have the occasional error in their ticket purchasing record which can be pushed on. I know I do.

Not that you’d expect all that many. If, as SWR claim, 95% of people who buy Vauxhall to Waterloo tickets are using them fraudulently, nearly everyone who is called out on it will eventually turn out to be using them fraudulently. I have no reason to doubt SWR’s claim and would imagine it is similar for Stratford to Liverpool Street or Beaulieu Park to Chelmsford.

But even if you’re shooting fish in a barrel it is still just a fishing trip.