He was originally caught last April
Suspicions were raised last autumn when a ticket inspector at Cannon Street station in London noticed he had paid the £7.20 fare incurred by passengers who fail to tap in. Further investigation revealed that he was on Southeastern's database of season ticket holders but he had stopped buying a season ticket in 2008. When he applied for a new season ticket shortly after being challenged, suspicions grew.
"It suggested to our investigators that he hadn't been buying anything," said Rupert Atterbury Thomas, a spokesman for Southeastern. "When our revenue team calculated the cost he made an offer which is the £43,000 and he settled on it. There has been no admission of any sort of guilt."
The payout was calculated on the basis of single fares. This meant the settlement cost him £20,000 more than if he had bought season tickets. The train company defended the decision not to prosecute.
"[Out-of-court settlement] is something that people have a right to do in this country," said Atterbury Thomas. "The punishment is the big amount of money. Fare dodging is something we take very seriously to protect the proceeds of everybody else's tickets. We are rigorous in making sure we catch the people who dodge the fare."
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>The train company defended the decision not to prosecute.
I think they would have found it difficult to do so.
Clearly they could show it was likely he had committed the crime, but could they have proven that he did?
Mind you, ultimately he should be fired for being a total dick. Which, to my mind, ought to be a capital offence.
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Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 15 Dec 14 at 16:58
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Suspect matey would have been sacked if he had been prosecuted and/ or convicted, with no compensation to the rail co. They did what was right for them, not what was right for justice.
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>>A London banker who regularly avoided buying a train ticket on his commute to the City has been banned from working in the financial services industry.
Banned for life from Finance - that is the BIG sentence - £43K fine/payback was chicken feed... he was on £1,000,000 a year!
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>>£43K fine/payback was chicken feed... he was on £1,000,000 a year!
And that is what makes him so much of an a***; look what he lost for dodging £20k odd in fares.
Its also something I don't understand....
Imagine somebody comes up to me and tells me about this illegal plan they've got which, if it works, will get me £50,000,000. Of course if it fails I will have ruined my prospects and get 10 years in jail.
I'm not sure what I'd decide, but one can see the £5m p.a. argument.
Or, someone comes up with this scheme where I can lose all my future prospects, pay huge fines, never work in anything worthwhile again, ruin the lives of my wife and children, but I might gain £20,000 representing less than 3% of my annual gross salary.
Like I said, being that dumb ought to be an offence in and of itself.
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>> Or, someone comes up with this scheme where I can lose all my future prospects,
>> pay huge fines, never work in anything worthwhile again, ruin the lives of my wife
>> and children, but I might gain £20,000 representing less than 3% of my annual gross
>> salary.
>>
>> Like I said, being that dumb ought to be an offence in and of itself.
I was in a very similar position in the early 80s. I was frequently placed in the position where i could have easily, very easily walked out of banks with £50k in my bag. Reckon thats around £150k in todays money. I would have been caught, but I could have stashed the cash in the mean time, (no proceeds of crime act then) or even with some planning skipped the country. It was so frequent and so easy I actually did the planning, the cost benefit analysis.
It was the long term costs* that knocked the plan on the head, so I didn't.
family Life and lifestyle costs*
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>> It was the long term costs* that knocked the plan on the head, so I didn't.
Funny how commonsense and the Ten Commandments seem so often to coincide... it's almost as if God and Moses knew what they were talking about. Who'd have believed it?
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>> I was in a very similar position in the early 80s.
In same sort of timeframe I was responsible for the cashier operation of a public facing office. Various bank accounts contained six and seven figure sums and, with controls by way of dual signatures etc in some cases, I had authority to write cheques and transfer sums.
We reckoned at time you'd need at least a million to set up a worthwhile lifestyle out of reach of extradition. As it would have to be a one off transfer that was too much to contemplate. Anything over £100k would have raised eyebrows and alarums at the bank.
The law grad amongst those who discussed it, albeit in jest, reckoned even that chat might be enough for a conspiracy to commit charge.
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So - we have established WHAT you are - all we now are discussing is your price!
(Imagine somebody comes up to me and tells me about this illegal plan they've got which, if it works, will get me £50,000,000. Of course if it fails I will have ruined my prospects and get 10 years in jail.
I'm not sure what I'd decide, but one can see the £5m p.a. argument.)
Grr... why does a reply not appear under the posting to which one is replying!
Last edited by: Roger. on Tue 16 Dec 14 at 12:37
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>> Grr... why does a reply not appear under the posting to which one is replying!
Because Z had already replied:
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?t=18697&v=t
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>> Grr... why does a reply not appear under the posting to which one is replying!
It did. Do you expect it to appear immediately below, and ahead of earlier replies (and the replies to those) to the same post?
You need to think about it a bit more :)
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I think Roger did expect that his reply would be immediately after the post to which he replied and that other replies are not as important as his reply and should be further down the page, even though they were posted earlier than his.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 16 Dec 14 at 14:08
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As ever, the chronology and sequence of the posts is clear in threaded view.
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>> I think Roger did expect that his reply would be immediately after the post to
>> which he replied and that other replies are not as important as his reply and
>> should be further down the page, even though they were posted earlier than his.
>>
Bloomin immigrants blocking up the forum no doubt :-)
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>> has been banned from working in the financial services industry.
Now that will have hurt, unless of course he was expecting it and has a small fortune squirrelled away somewhere.
I bet the tribunal that banned him includes a few right tasty villains and swindlers. Nasty of me I know, but I'm not a great fan of the financial services industry, useful though it is.
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>>
>> Banned for life from Finance - that is the BIG sentence - £43K fine/payback was
>> chicken feed... he was on £1,000,000 a year!
>>
Mind you at 20 years working in the city, I doubt he'll be signing on anytime soon.
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>> Banned for life from Finance - that is the BIG sentence - £43K fine/payback was
>> chicken feed... he was on £1,000,000 a year!
>>
Working for a mega company that can afford to pay those sort of rewards.
In case folks are not aware of the company :-
BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment management corporation based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager with over $4.59 trillion in assets under management.[2]
BlackRock is independently managed, with no single majority stockholder; stock is owned by institutional and individual investors, including BlackRock employees
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>> They did what was right for them, not what was right for justice.
Justice schmustice... look, the guy paid in effect a fine of 20 grand, which he'd let himself in for by being mean and greedy and thinking he was clever. Why waste taxpayers' money on shysters and court costs? Justice was done, the guy admitted what he'd done and paid up. Not that he had much choice... but that's the sort of thing that happens to us miscreants, and serve us right.
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The fine was only the amount of money he had saved by evading fares.. so he actually made a profit on the interest gained.
Most thieves of that kind of money go to jail.
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>> The fine was only the amount of money he had saved by evading fares..
No it wasn't. I was the penalty fare cost, which is the cost of buying single fares
The cost of season tickets for that period was less than half of what he paid in penalty fairs, plus he also paid the 7.90 per day
>> he actually made a profit on the interest gained.
he actually made a historic loss of over 50%, and that does not include loss of future earnings.
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>> The fine was only the amount of money he had saved by evading fares.
Not so madf. If he'd bought season tickets instead of being clever he would have paid £20,000 less than he was made to pay at daily ticket rates.
You seem to think TfL let him off scot-free!
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>>They did what was right for them, not what was right for justice.
Presumably railway revenue and property is their responsibility, not greater UK justice? I'm not entirely sure what the "investigators" legal position is. But if so, that would make their behaviour pretty spot on.
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>> >>They did what was right for them, not what was right for justice.
>>
>> Presumably railway revenue and property is their responsibility, not greater UK justice? I'm not entirely
>> sure what the "investigators" legal position is. But if so, that would make their behaviour
>> pretty spot on.
It was under "railway byelaws"
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Why did he do it? Because he'd worked out a way to? Because he was a geek (look at the photos of him; he's not in a client-facing role, is he) and came up with a clever idea, and implemented it. Exactly what makes him a great fund manager.
What floored him wasn't the technical issue, it was the human mind of a ticket inspector. He hadn't thought of that, and he hadn't been able to factor it in, and it was the one thing he couldn't control.
He didn't think there was any risk financially. Odd, though, he didn't buy himself a zone 1 annual pass. Would have been considerably cheaper than his daily £7.20 'penalty'.
Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I know somebody else, a similar character who had a vaguely similar 'situation'.
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The surprising thing to me is that the same Oyster card getting the same penalty every day didn't ring an alarm far sooner. Most people who get a penalty will complain and seek a refund.
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Fare-dodging banker... - Zero
