Thoughts on which if any fare evaders would be best advised to be reticent posting due to potential liability?

[Egg Centric]

There was a thread here recently - since deleted I think - where the OP was potentially facing a five figure sum to settle out of court and I advised them to think very carefully before going into further details. This spooked them and I've been second guessing since if I did the right thing.

At what point in your view is the jeopardy more than hypothetical to post here as a fare evader? My current thinking is that once the liability starts creeping into that sort of figure the dynamic changes a bit:

• I say five figures because look at the fuss made over Johnathan Burrows - the fund manager that ended up paying £60k or so to keep his evasion out of court. Clearly that was an unusual case for South Eastern to have publicised it; we can infer from that that it's the sort of magnitude at which managers etc start getting involved and we move out of the "Wee Willie Winkies" to the "Artisan 95% Pork" side of the justice sausage factory. In other words much more care will be taken
• It's also the sort of threshold paying for a solicitor starts to make financial sense
• In the thread that inspired this one, there was an alternative viewpoint put forward that the OP was going to have to admit everything anyway so there is no problem in asking them to be up front and disclose everything to us. That's a point I'm not convinced by because it's also the sort of threshold where taking a bylaw conviction and a paltry fine/compensation - which for the vast majority of people will simply not be a big deal, as much as they panic about it at the time - for the single time they were caught could actually be the less bad decision than paying off what to most fare evaders (actually most people come to think of it!) will be a substantial amount of cash relative to their savings/assets. But this will be significantly harder if they've admitted to everything on a public forum and the TOCs somehow get it into evidence.

This is tentative though. Very interested in others' thoughts. One obvious criticism might be that even a six figure sum is not very much to a TOC in isolation given their size, but then again these are the organisations that will prosecute over 10p so...

 

[fandroid]

You mention that these examples are probably ones where involving a specialist solicitor becomes worthwhile. I imagine the solicitor would definitely advise their client to say nothing in public.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Realistically, we don't see railway companies using this forum against posters: there was one a few weeks ago where Chiltern seemed to be doing some overtime on a Sunday afternoon and apparently abusing what they had found from the list, but that seemed to stop after some rather fierce postings here, and I don't think has been repeated. What we do sometimes see is the positive points made by OPs, or the advice we've given, being picked up on and the railway backing down.

And in a formal sense, I think it would be difficult for anyone to prove that postings here are reliable evidence: who is to know whether it really is the offender who is posting and telling the truth, or is it an acquaintance who knows some of the facts but for whatever reason is distorting some? And that's before getting on to the costs of the railway proving their evidence.

I think we can continue to be fairly relaxed. Our current safeguards are to encourage people not to give name or address or similar, and to butt out when they tell us they have appointed a solicitor: I think that's good enough.

 

[Bertie the bus]

who is to know whether it really is the offender who is posting and telling the truth,

That would be a rarity. Most of the people seeking help couldn't lie straight in bed and believe the best way to deal with being caught committing an act of dishonesty is to be even more dishonest, even with people they are asking for free help from.

 

[enyoueffsea]

It’s unlikely (but not impossible) posting on an internet forum could be used against the OP.

The reality is most of the TOC’s prosecution teams are so busy trying to sift through cases they’ll have little chance to find a post on here and link it to any specific case (unless obvious information is shared in error like the reference number).

Even if they link the cases by the information shared, most of the time the information provided by evaders changes post by post, as pointed out above, they’re not often entirely honest from post one.

Beyond that, proving the poster is the verified evader is also not particularly easy.

Even if all of the above are achieved, the TOC would still need some evidence to corroborate what they believe to be the correct version of events.

In short, it’s probably possible, in reality, it’s unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. It’s also worth remembering TOCs want to settle, they want the money and not the prosecution in 99% of cases.

They’ll be more than happy with the advice offered here as it usually directs people to their chosen outcome of a settlement. In the five figure case, the TOC would be delighted for us to guide them into agreeing that level of settlement rather than ‘no comment’ throughout and prosecuting them for the one singular offence in which they were caught.

Have we seen a single case where this forum has negatively impacted the outcome?

 

[duffield]

It's unlikely that anything written in this forum would be used directly in court, for the reasons already pointed out. However, in higher value cases which merit special attention, what's said on here could affect the attitude of the rail company as to how much they settle for, e.g. if the rail company was asking only about railcard misuse but it's clear from the posts on here the person involved is also buying short tickets.

If I was a senior investigator dealing with very high value cases, I think I'd probably use any information I could get from here; I might also be tempted to set traps in correspondence** (misspelling, spacing, fonts, specific wording) so I could positively identify specific cases of interest. I'm not saying the rail investigators actually do this, but it's a possibility. There's also the issue of people uploading unredacted or badly redacted correspondence, which is often available for some hours before being replaced with properly redacted versions.

** Laying traps in documents may sound far-fetched, but they are actually a real tool that - for example - companies use to identify who is leaking confidential data.

 

[Tetchytyke]

If it’s a high value settlement then getting legal advice is absolutely the correct thing to advise someone to do. Advice from a legal professional is legally privileged, for one thing, which means they can speak freely when getting their advice.

People should be aware that anything they post here is in a public forum and you don’t know who else is reading.

My opinion is that the TOC couldn’t really do much with anything posted here. It would be intelligence, at best. Perhaps they could use that intelligence to influence their decision making, for instance when setting a settlement figure, but I don’t see many circumstances where that would really apply. By the time someone has engaged with the TOC and then come to us the TOC already have a pretty good idea what that person has been up to.

A TOC would struggle to prove that someone posting here was the same person they are accusing of fare evasion, so any admission here would be of little intelligence value and of even less evidential value. It is possible to prove who is posting but the process is expensive and laborious; nobody is going to be bothered to do it for a £500 evasion case.

 

[renegademaster]

Even if couldn't be used directly in court, couldn't it give investigators a clue on where to look?

Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation in order to limit disclosure as to the origins of an investigation.[1]

Parallel construction - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[enyoueffsea]

Even if couldn't be used directly in court, couldn't it give investigators a clue on where to look?

Parallel construction - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Other than the person’s ticket account history and personal details what else will they need or could they realistically obtain from this forum?

It’s fairly obvious to most investigators what is a short fare ticket and expired/no railcard speaks for itself.

 

[Titfield]

Other than the person’s ticket account history and personal details what else will they need or could they realistically obtain from this forum?

It’s fairly obvious to most investigators what is a short fare ticket and expired/no railcard speaks for itself.

Exactly. I think we are going off at a tangent here. Being stopped on the train plus ticket plus online account is enough for the tocs purposes

 

[Tetchytyke]

Even if couldn't be used directly in court, couldn't it give investigators a clue on where to look?

In theory, yes. As you note, often you can’t use intelligence and so you try and manage things so that you “discover” these things in an alternative way.

In reality, for these types of low level offences? The TOC already know what they know, that’s why the individual is here asking for help, and I can’t think of many hypothetical circumstances where someone could drop themselves in it through a posting on here.

 

[Egg Centric]

I can’t think of many hypothetical circumstances where someone could drop themselves in it through a posting on here.

A simple hypothetical scenario is several years of fare evasion being needed to settle and if not becoming recoverable through a civil court - and the OP saying they never had a railcard or words to that effect.

I know some argue the actual loss is the railcard but I'm not sure if this has ever been tested. Once we get to five figures it might be worth it.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

A simple hypothetical scenario is several years of fare evasion being needed to settle and if not becoming recoverable through a civil court - and the OP saying they never had a railcard or words to that effect.

I know some argue the actual loss is the railcard but I'm not sure if this has ever been tested. Once we get to five figures it might be worth it.

This particular question (what is the loss from using Railcard fares when no Railcard was held although the individual could have held a Railcard had they applied and paid for one) is a point of law, so there'd be no particular point in trying to keep the evidence from the other side: the evidence is about deciding the facts, and only then would the court want to decide how the law applies to those facts.