About 15 years ago I had a job in a town not far from my home city, in a neighbouring local authority area. The cheapest option was a service subsidised by the neighbouring authority, and run by a quite small independent firm using small buses . It didn't have many passengers, and was run using tatty second or third hand mainly Optare midi buses. Sometimes I was the only passenger, and I used to chat to the regular driver. He told me the company made a nice profit even if nobody travelled. At first he sold me 10-journey tickets at the regular price of £12 a go, and punched each journey. After a bit, he started clipping the air next to the ticket and winking at me. The he offered me two tickets for £10. I must have looked puzzled, because he explained that, rather than increase wages 'through the books', the manager left piles of these tickets on his desk and said nothing when they vanished while he was away. He confided in me that he was planning to leave and get a job, like his pal had already done, driving lorries for a gravel firm. There, he said, he would be able to leave the quarry with more gravel than was written on his 'ticket', deliver the booked amount somewhere, and take the rest to 'the Gippos' for cash, which he would split with the (also underpaid) quarry transport manager. I began to feel I was in the wrong trade. Not really, though, I have a vivid imagination which provided images of courtrooms, jails, and a criminal record.
Later, I had a colleague (kind of, she worked for the same organisation) who passed claims for fake client taxi journeys from an equally fake taxi company run by her boyfriend, and they cleared £1 million quid over 4 years. They got 6 years jail each.
www.birminghammail.co.uk
