Advice Only for Greater Anglia - Delay Repay Fraud

[Haywain]

I was going on details I thought had been presented to us within this thread regarding jobs. There certainly are job roles where this would affect someone although understandably they’re few and far between.

I think being taken to court on a fraud charge is more likely to affect a job that is already held, rather than one applied for after being found not guilty.

 

[WesternLancer]

Actually, it's very unrealistic. Even a CEO of a bank only requires a standard DBS check, which will show spent and unspent convictions, but not "soft information" like an enhanced disclosure does.

Meanwhile CEO of bank goes on to OK a banking company strategy to widely miss sell things like payment protection insurance, leading to multi million pound regulatory fines, customer refunds and massive dips in shareholder dividends but not much happens.....

 

[AlterEgo]

We’re still waiting to hear from anyone who is Angry of Bishop’s Stortford, who vehemently and angrily denies the foul charges levied against them by Greater Anglia. Most posters here have been “um, I’ve received this letter, has anyone else?” before fishing for ideas about how far back GA can look, what sort of evidence they might have at their disposal, etc etc.

There’s only been one poster who we can categorically say was caught wrongly, becuase they’d been claiming delays on untaken trips when they ought to have refunded the ticket outright from point of sale. That case should have been dropped as “six of one, half a dozen of the other”, and it is to GA’s discredit they did not.

I think I am fairly satisfied that nearly all of the people GA have contacted we have heard from in this thread were guilty of some sort of dishonesty and I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

 

[Elecman]

If you have been arrested on Suspicion of an Offence but then found Not Guilty in Court then in my mind the Police should not even mention that on a DBS check as its against natural justice to the innocent party.

 

[robbeech]

I think being taken to court on a fraud charge is more likely to affect a job that is already held, rather than one applied for after being found not guilty.

That makes a lot of sense.

If you have been arrested on Suspicion of an Offence but then found Not Guilty in Court then in my mind the Police should not even mention that on a DBS check as its against natural justice to the innocent party.

I suspect it rather depends if they have failed to find enough evidence to charge or whether there is enough evidence to prove the defendant did nothing wrong. Plenty of crimes go unpunished due to insufficient evidence. The idea behind mentioning various things is likely taking that into account. I’m not suggesting I agree or disagree.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

There's an interesting piece at https://www.swinburnemaddison.co.uk...ith-a-criminal-offence-but-not-yet-convicted/ - about dismissing a charged employee rather than not taking on someone facing a charge, and when the charge is still live rather than dropped or found not guilty. The conclusion seems to be that an unconvicted employee could be dismissed because of the charge - but only after thorough investigation and if the charge suggests behaviour that would truly impact on their job.

Another piece on another case https://dwfgroup.com/en/news-and-in...-greater-manchester-police-anor-supreme-court) seems to show that charges can be reported via the DBS even if the person involved was found not guilty. But some of the argument seems based on the need to protect others (the charge which ended in a 'not guilty' verdict was rape - a rather different form of abuse than wrongly claiming Delay Repay). And it seems to me that this could only be an issue if a prospective employer would be allowed to take the reported issue into account.

Assuming that my Googling has found the relevant cases, that the summaries I have read are accurate and (most dubious of all) that I have interpreted them correctly, it would seem to suggest that a charge of DR fraud that wasn't upheld in court *could* be reported via DBS to a prospective employer, and the employer *could* refuse a job on that basis. But they would have to have a compelling reason - in some way the doubt cast on the applicant's financial honestly would have to impact on their ability to do the job.

 

[b0b]

I would think finding someone who is 100% certain they did nothing wrong with a delay repay claim from many months ago, and would be willing to test that in court - when you can pay off GA to withdraw legal threats would be close to zero.

 

[3rd rail land]

I would think finding someone who is 100% certain they did nothing wrong with a delay repay claim from many months ago, and would be willing to test that in court - when you can pay off GA to withdraw legal threats would be close to zero.

I would happy go to court if GA were accusing me of false delay repay claims and demanding money to make the issue go away if I knew all my delay repay claims were legitimate.
If I was absolutely certain I'd done nothing wrong why would I pay GA to withdraw any legal threats? Before anyone asks yes, it would have a significant impact on my employment when my clearances come up for renewal.

 

[stew]

I would happy go to court if GA were accusing me of false delay repay claims and demanding money to make the issue go away if I knew all my delay repay claims were legitimate.
If I was absolutely certain I'd done nothing wrong why would I pay GA to withdraw any legal threats? Before anyone asks yes, it would have a significant impact on my employment when my clearances come up for renewal.

What is classed as a “false” delay repay claim though? If you submitted a claim where the train was 34 mins late and actually it was 33 mins late, would this be classed as false?

We’ve seen claims where RTT data has differed, doors being unlocked a minute after the official arrival time (resulting in 59 mins level of comp being applied when it should have been 60 mins).

 

[CentralTrainer]

Looks like GA made a good bit of free wedge from their scaremongering of the public as part of their well constructed extortion racket.

Bravo to them - hope the faceless suit in Head Office who came up with the idea is up for a tidy little promotion.

 

[AlterEgo]

I would think finding someone who is 100% certain they did nothing wrong with a delay repay claim from many months ago, and would be willing to test that in court - when you can pay off GA to withdraw legal threats would be close to zero.

I feel quite confident that I would be able to defend any accusation of fraud against my 15 year history of delay repay claims. And I would be jolly angry to receive any sort of letter accusing me.

What is classed as a “false” delay repay claim though? If you submitted a claim where the train was 34 mins late and actually it was 33 mins late, would this be classed as false?

We’ve seen claims where RTT data has differed, doors being unlocked a minute after the official arrival time (resulting in 59 mins level of comp being applied when it should have been 60 mins).

The people in this thread were almost exclusively contacted because they were suspected to have submitted claims for journeys they had not made.

I would think finding someone who is 100% certain they did nothing wrong with a delay repay claim from many months ago, and would be willing to test that in court - when you can pay off GA to withdraw legal threats would be close to zero.

A reminder that fraud does not require that your claim is “wrong”, but that you deliberately made a false representation. One or two incorrect claims isn’t likely to be stand up to scrutiny in court, but rather GA have identified patterns of misuse. It’s all in the thread. The idea that GA are some sort of evil extortionist doesn’t really hold any water although I accept some people find this view personally attractive.

 

[norfolk123]

My partner received one of the infamous GA threatening letters in March this year, relating to journeys made during 3-4 months prior to the first lockdown in 2020. They were given very little time to respond and their case was passed to BTP. Since then we have have not heard anything. My partner is a very anxious person and suffers from stress, so the last six months have been absolute hell with the prospect of a legal case hanging over us. My partner's employer has asked their staff to return to the office to work from October. My partner is terrified of commuting now, not just because of the pandemic, but largely because they fear being targetted by GA again, so has taken voluntary redundancy.
Does anyone know how long BTP take once a case has been handed to them?
My partner's health continues to deteriorate and is now further stressed as they have no job.

I was alerted to the news article about GA "recovering" almost £500,000 from passengers who were identified as making potentially fraudulent delay repay claims. It is almost a year since GA wrote to my partner advising them that they had made an above average number of claims and they were passing the case to the British Transport Police, and two years since the alleged excessive number of claims were made. No more correspondence has been received from either GA or BTP. As I mentioned in my post in September my partner has suffered greatly as a result of this hanging of them - job lost, anxiety attacks, self confidence ruined. While I appreciate that there are people who did break the rules, I am sure that there are many like my partner who did not. I imagine some paid up out of fear, others fought their case and won and others fought their case and lost. My partner is none of these and was not given the chance to argue their case and is in limbo. While this may seem a trivial thing to many people, there are people like my partner who are prone to anxiety and stress and it ruins their lives. GA need to understand that while they are publicly crowing about the success of this scheme, they have done a great deal of damage to some people. Especially, those like my partner, who have just been left with the threat of prosecution hanging over them.
Is there anyone else in a similar situation?

 

[Blinkbonny]

I was alerted to the news article about GA "recovering" almost £500,000 from passengers who were identified as making potentially fraudulent delay repay claims. It is almost a year since GA wrote to my partner advising them that they had made an above average number of claims and they were passing the case to the British Transport Police, and two years since the alleged excessive number of claims were made. No more correspondence has been received from either GA or BTP. As I mentioned in my post in September my partner has suffered greatly as a result of this hanging of them - job lost, anxiety attacks, self confidence ruined. While I appreciate that there are people who did break the rules, I am sure that there are many like my partner who did not. I imagine some paid up out of fear, others fought their case and won and others fought their case and lost. My partner is none of these and was not given the chance to argue their case and is in limbo. While this may seem a trivial thing to many people, there are people like my partner who are prone to anxiety and stress and it ruins their lives. GA need to understand that while they are publicly crowing about the success of this scheme, they have done a great deal of damage to some people. Especially, those like my partner, who have just been left with the threat of prosecution hanging over them.
Is there anyone else in a similar situation?

Extremely good point, well made.

 

[Deafdoggie]

I was alerted to the news article about GA "recovering" almost £500,000 from passengers who were identified as making potentially fraudulent delay repay claims. It is almost a year since GA wrote to my partner advising them that they had made an above average number of claims and they were passing the case to the British Transport Police, and two years since the alleged excessive number of claims were made. No more correspondence has been received from either GA or BTP. As I mentioned in my post in September my partner has suffered greatly as a result of this hanging of them - job lost, anxiety attacks, self confidence ruined. While I appreciate that there are people who did break the rules, I am sure that there are many like my partner who did not. I imagine some paid up out of fear, others fought their case and won and others fought their case and lost. My partner is none of these and was not given the chance to argue their case and is in limbo. While this may seem a trivial thing to many people, there are people like my partner who are prone to anxiety and stress and it ruins their lives. GA need to understand that while they are publicly crowing about the success of this scheme, they have done a great deal of damage to some people. Especially, those like my partner, who have just been left with the threat of prosecution hanging over them.
Is there anyone else in a similar situation?

I don't think you'd need to be prone to anxiety for this to create a great deal of worry. However, being prone to it will, of course, only make it worse.
I'm sure everyone on here means well, but those who think the railway can do no wrong and is always right, need to take a step back and see the wider picture.

 

[Wolfie]

I don't think you'd need to be prone to anxiety for this to create a great deal of worry. However, being prone to it will, of course, only make it worse.
I'm sure everyone on here means well, but those who think the railway can do no wrong and is always right, need to take a step back and see the wider picture.

It's an interesting one. Could GA's actions be deemed to breach the Equality Act by not considering (and making reasonable adjustments) how some people with mental health issues would be impacted? I would suggest making contact with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

 

[AlterEgo]

If the case has been passed to the British Transport Police for their consideration then any complaint is with them. Police investigations can move at a glacial pace, unfortunately, which is bad for everyone involved and not just the accused.

It's an interesting one. Could GA's actions be deemed to breach the Equality Act by not considering (and making reasonable adjustments) how some people with mental health issues would be impacted? I would suggest making contact with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Sorry, you're suggesting it's a potential breach of the Equality Act to write to pass the cases of potential fraudsters to the police? They wrote to the OP's partner, who decided not to respond, and the case was therefore passed to the police, as we have seen several times in this thread.

 

[island]

It's an interesting one. Could GA's actions be deemed to breach the Equality Act by not considering (and making reasonable adjustments) how some people with mental health issues would be impacted? I would suggest making contact with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Not all "mental health issues" are disabilities within the meaning of the Equality Act.

Once made aware that a person they are communicating with has a disability I would expect Abellio Greater Anglia to take the usual reasonable steps, and there is no evidence that they have done otherwise. They are not under an obligation to proactively take any steps of this sort for everyone, in the same way as they are not under an obligation to proactively send everyone a copy of their letter in Braille, another in large print, and a fourth recorded onto an audio CD.

 

[[.n]]

I feel quite confident that I would be able to defend any accusation of fraud against my 15 year history of delay repay claims. And I would be jolly angry to receive any sort of letter accusing me.


The people in this thread were almost exclusively contacted because they were suspected to have submitted claims for journeys they had not made.


A reminder that fraud does not require that your claim is “wrong”, but that you deliberately made a false representation. One or two incorrect claims isn’t likely to be stand up to scrutiny in court, but rather GA have identified patterns of misuse. It’s all in the thread. The idea that GA are some sort of evil extortionist doesn’t really hold any water although I accept some people find this view personally attractive.

I've never made a outright fraudulent claim for DR either in the many years - but sometimes the outcomes have not been what I expected - sometimes I've been paid more than expected, sometimes I may have claimed from the "wrong" TOC (I wouldn't nowadays as I understand the system better - but its not obvious), and more importantly my pattern of travel on what became GA was a little random even though I "commuted", so would my documented records/memory etc. show me why on a particular day why I bailed a journey at Chelmsford (because of a delay) and claimed / compared to me getting off at Chelmsford to meet a friend? I'm confident in my actions, but its sometimes hard to prove something - and yes I get the burden of proof is on GA but it doesn't help.

Or as a more extreme example, I used to regularly commute to St Boltophs (Colchester Town) / Hythe / Colchester North - how does GA prove what my final destination was on any occasion, given that a delay to a train to Colchester would easily miss a connection to Colchester Town, and I would then sometimes change my plans on the fly. I wouldn't recall months/years later what my original intention was

 

[AlterEgo]

I've never made a outright fraudulent claim for DR either in the many years - but sometimes the outcomes have not been what I expected - sometimes I've been paid more than expected, sometimes I may have claimed from the "wrong" TOC (I wouldn't nowadays as I understand the system better - but its not obvious), and more importantly my pattern of travel on what became GA was a little random even though I "commuted", so would my documented records/memory etc. show me why on a particular day why I bailed a journey at Chelmsford (because of a delay) and claimed / compared to me getting off at Chelmsford to meet a friend? I'm confident in my actions, but its sometimes hard to prove something - and yes I get the burden of proof is on GA but it doesn't help.

Or as a more extreme example, I used to regularly commute to St Boltophs (Colchester Town) / Hythe / Colchester North - how does GA prove what my final destination was on any occasion, given that a delay to a train to Colchester would easily miss a connection to Colchester Town, and I would then sometimes change my plans on the fly. I wouldn't recall months/years later what my original intention was

But GA are not interested in one or two claims in the abstract, but rather sustained misuse and fraud.

GA appear to have been using data not available to us, such as smart card taps and correlating claims from “suspicious” users to see if they all “took” the same trains which happened to be very delayed.

It seems clear to me that patterns of misuse have been noticed by GA in the vast majority of (I wouldn’t say all as their methodology can’t be foolproof) cases we’ve seen here. Consider it a Swiss cheese method. Passenger claims:

1) Very often
2) On season tickets
3) Has an irregular journey history which shows they somehow end up on delayed trains far greater than you would expect if you did it at random,
4) Perhaps has a smart card which does not corroborate the journey history,
5) Often ends up on the same trains - outside of the regular commuting period - as other people claiming who have satisfied the first few tests.

There are ways to unpick the data on CRM systems, and when you find the 1pm train on a Tuesday - which was the only one delayed by an hour - has 300 season ticket claimants that day, yet it normally only carries 50 passengers, you probably should dig a bit deeper.

I’d gently submit that the reason you’ve not been contacted by GA is because there is nothing to suspect about your claims.

If someone knew 100% they hadn't made any false claims, surely a great deal would have gone to court and called Abellio's bluff? Sounds to me, especially from many posts made on here that made various admissions, that they likely had strong cases.

This seems to be the most succinct post on the matter. With £450,000 recovered in less than a year and not a single person coming here to tell us of their strong rebuttal to GA of the allegations, etc etc... other than the one woman who claimed a truly fantastical 118 journeys between Ipswich and London were disrupted beyond 15 minutes in 6 months, nobody has gone to the press...

The people who suggest "well GA just sent the same letter to everyone who claimed more than X times a year" seem fanciful to me.

 

[Graham H]

I absolutely agree with this. If a claim for a 2 hour delay has been submitted by a passenger in error then GA should have rejected it. It seems that GA have paid out claims en-mass and 18 months later are looking into the detail. This doesn't seem acceptable to me.


Given that many TOCs require claims to be submitted through the Delay Repay system I think it's a bit rich of GA to be requiring these claims to be repaid. I understand why you feel the need to settle but I would certainly raise this with your MP and also consider raising a complaint via Transport Focus. Perhaps the Rail Ombudsman might be interested as well (although they do seem to struggle with anything slightly complex!)

As an infrequent traveller I have 'abandoned' the journey twice (SWT and Southern) and returned home. In both cases the on board staff confirmed delay repay was the route to claim. As mentioned way back by another poster on both of their claim sites, ticking the 'cancelled train' box opened up a free format box in which I could explain what happened and the decision taken. If delay repay wasnt correct then either TOC could see what I had done and if wrong (not fraudulent) would presumably have advised me to claim via another route. As it was, both claims were paid in full. Is abandoning a journey part way through handled differently to not travelling at all ? On another cancelled train trip I wrote in the box the route I had taken instead to explain why I felt I was xx minutes late. Do these boxes exist still on DR claims or is GA unusual in not allowing any explanation as I would have thought this would identify genuine mistakes on input by the customer ?

 

[Haywain]

Is abandoning a journey part way through handled differently to not travelling at all ?

No, they are essentially the same thing but may be treated slightly differently depending on the ticket type. Also, a journey abandoned on the return leg will be treated somewhat differently.

On another cancelled train trip I wrote in the box the route I had taken instead to explain why I felt I was xx minutes late.

That was a delay, not a cancelled trip, if you took an alternative route. Therefore, a delay repay claim would have been appropriate.

 

[Graham H]

No, they are essentially the same thing but may be treated slightly differently depending on the ticket type. Also, a journey abandoned on the return leg will be treated somewhat differently.

That was a delay, not a cancelled trip, if you took an alternative route. Therefore, a delay repay claim would have been appropriate.

Thanks thats a good response although on the two trips where the journey was abandoned part way through, both TOC's suggested I process delay repay (guards on train suggested it and the SWT guard handed out forms) and both were paid without issue and I had explained the trip was abandoned part way through in the free format box on the DR claim. I posted that to illustrate how some TOC use DR for cancelled trips but clearly GA dont which obviously means that if I ever abandoned a trip on GA I would incorrectly assume, based on my previous experience that DR was the correct process but thankfully the chance I would ever be on a GA service are very low. My second trip I realise I expressed it incorrectly and should probably have said train not trip but the train I was due to get was cancelled (reason put into the DR claim) and I had several alternative options so merely used the free format box to explain the route I did take just in case I guessed wrongly and might have got to my destination quicker by another route I hadnt thought of. The gist of my post was intended to show that the uninitiated users of GA might not realise that they required a different claim route for a journey abandoned part way through and I strongly maintain thats not a fraud if incorrectly using DR, just a mistake and that the existence of the drop down free format box for the claims I made on Southern and SWT are really useful to make comments on what happened and why I am claiming, maybe if GA had such a box there would be a lot less hassle?