Great Western Coffee Shop

I was on my usual Reading to Bham last week and witnessed a young boy getting caught with a counterfeit 16-25 rail card. The train guard was getting really angry with him in front of everyone and did the usual name address contact phone number.

Normally i wouldn't feel sorry for him because its dodgers that make my train fare expensive! However, spending the rest of the journey with him calming him down it turned out he wasn't your usual chavy scallywag. I kinda felt a bit sorry for him that one simple mess up and he might get screwed for life

What will happen to him? I reckon a hefty fine and a criminal record but I dared not tell him that.

So he had gone to the effort to have a forged railcard but wasn't your usual chavy scallywag?  No, he was worse than that, chavvy scallywags just pretend to have forgotten theirs, or forgotten to buy a ticket. At least this way the criminal intent is clearer.

And all for, what, ^24?

Yeh I agree. I don't condone what he did and I guess my view on the issue is a little bias as I was chatting to him after.

Young and stupid with a photocopier and photoshop.

Hope he gets hammered! if it was an FGW train then he will no doubt be dealt with by the prosecutions unit at Reading so he can expect ^130 costs + the FULL avoided fare before they even think up a fine!

Don't think it was FGW. Looks like CrossCountry to me.

Didn't read the post properly, doh! ;)

Yeh it was crosscountry train. Hope that isn't classed as a swearword on a fgw forum.

So each rail company has its own department and different penalties.
 
Shows that even though Ive been a passenger on trains for over 25 years i still don't really have a clue what goes on behind the scenes. 

Welcome to the forum Traveller.
XC isn't quite classed as a swearword on this forum but at times it comes pretty close as you will see from some of the discussions that have been held here. The rolling stock that XC inherited from Virgin hasn't helped but you can't blame it all on the Voyagers.
Well you have come to the right place as we have a good number of members who either work on the railway or have close links to it so don't ever hesistate to ask any questions as there is a very good chance that someone will be able to answer it for you.

Forgery, coupled with evasion brings the possibility of far more serious charges.  Forgery is triable both ways, and although a forged rail card is comparatively small beer to the Criminal Justice System, this could lead to Crown Court, particularly if this chap has offended before. 

In my experience he was unlucky to get checked between RDG and BHM! That aside, I'm possibly being naive but in this case I would have faith in the criminal justice system to set an proportionate level of penalty. If the case does come to court then hopefully it will be judged appropriately based on whether he was just a bright kid of previous good character who made a daft mistake, whether he was a serial/repeat offender, or somewhere in between.

I don't condone what he has done at all, but if he's of previous good character and has just made a daft teenage screw-up (and who didn't make the odd one as a kid?) then I suspect the sentence would be reasonably lenient and wouldn't worry too much about him having his whole life screwed up by it. Whatever happens I doubt he'll play silly b*gg*rs with railway tickets again, and I guess a career as a booking clerk or conductor would be off the cards...

Probably also worth bearing in mind that if anything does go to court it will have to be proven that he is actually guilty of the offence, and he remains innocent until that is done!

A few hundred quid fine would seem absolutely reasonable.   

Not sure he is worse than a chavvy scallywag.  damage done to TOC in terms of lost revenue is the  same and I suspect he wasn't as unpleasantly aruementative  to the conductor as a chavvy scallywag.

I have to confess to making a daft teenage screw-up with a railcard when I was a draft teenager - many many years ago.  I was sold a YP railcard at Edinburgh Waverley and the person who sold it to me forgot to enter the expiry date.  I entered my own expiry date which appeared to give quite a few months extra validity (this was in days when the card was filled out my hand and the expiry date stamped in.  At the time Banks were giving out YP cards with more than 12 montsh validity so I thought my fraud would go unnnoticed).  After using the card a few times, it was queried at a station (I suspect because of the hand-written nature of the date) after I had had it for only a few months and although I got the card back, I never used it again because I realised that I had had a close shave and that the consequnces of getting caught again could have been far worse. 

I've never done anything dodgy with tickets again and I consider myself a reaonably honest person.  Why did I do it?  I don't think it was about saving money (I wasn't rich but I wasn't penniless either and it ended up costing me a few quid because I brought a non-dodgy railcard sooner than the genuine expiry date on my dodgy one).  I suspect it was because I thought it was clever and the idea of getting one up on BR appealed to teenage mind (the same kind of mentality that drives me to spend hours on the internet trying to find the cheapest fare combination nowadays). 

This incident is why I refer on these boards to most passengers as "fairly honest", because I think that many, perhaps even most, will do the right thing almost all of the time but will cheat to a certain extent under certain occasional circumstances and when the opertunity is handed to us.   

Just because he may be "of previous good character" doesn't mean he hasn't done it before, just that he hasn't been caught! ;)

The "screw up" made by you Tim, is more "accidental" than scanning in a photo-card and cloning this onto that, and printing it off and.....goodness knows what else!

As you say, you were just trying to get one over BR by extending the date. From what I have read on this thread, the passenger in question set out and spent a long time preparing a large fraud! It is therefore more serious....

BUT

I, too, don't think he'll try it again. And I hope the penalty does not mark him for life/ruin it.

Very well put - I agree! ;)

After watching Watchdog today it puts this fraud in comparison when people are swindling ^1000's from music gig sales and the age old  phone scams, then you have things closer to home...

http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/2317900.network_rail_fraud_sisters_ordered_to_repay_money_or_face_jail/ (http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/2317900.network_rail_fraud_sisters_ordered_to_repay_money_or_face_jail/)

Although small, it is still fraud but i hope the size  of the punishment matches size of the crime.
 
I also hope that the boy has learnt his lesson. From the look of him after the guard left i think he would need a new set of underwear and wouldnt do it again.



Thats the question really. If he hadn't got caught, would he have continued to use it?

Sorry, but


Really? So nothing whatsoever of Network Rail's income goes towards paying their executives or shareholders?

Perhaps, but it didn't take a huge punishment to cause me to mend my ways.  A bit of embarassment at the booking office was enough to scare me off trying anything like that again.

Network Rail is a company limited by guarantee and so does not have shareholders.

A fair point, if slightly pedantic. I think the point being made was that NR's board have a nasty habit of picking up stonking bonuses for meeting relatively easily achievable targets. I'm with Christian Wolmar on this one: about time these huge bonuses for Coucher et al were scrapped and the money distributed lower down the pay scale.

See page 24 onwards, at http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/annual%20report%20and%20accounts/network%20rail%20limited%20annual%20report%20and%20accounts%202008.pdf for some very interesting figures from the Annual Report and Accounts of a 'not for profit' organisation.

Chris :-X

Any updates on this case Traveller?