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Fare dodging hedge fund manager. Right or wrong to let him off?

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  • Some of this doesn't add up from what has been reported. I don't quite understand how having an Oyster card has helped him. I travel from Battle, three stops beyond Stonegate, and we have our tickets checked at least once each journey, morning and night. I assume he has too so if he hadn't had a ticket then he'd have had to have bought one on the train. It's perfectly okay to board without a ticket as you are able to purchase on board as ticket office could easily be busy when you arrive. Seeing as most trains are fast from High Brooms to London Bridge during rush hours you can't even say you got on at Orpington, for example, to reduce the price you pay. Interesting too that he paid back over 42k. A season ticket from Stonegate costs £4,500 a year so over five years, allowing for year on year price increases, he could have bought season tickets for say 21.5k. I assume they have calculated what he owed on him having made single, maybe return, daily journeys.

    Personally, he's a scumbag. I hate people who are not prepared to pay their way, think they can get one over on the train company and us, the passengers, who suffer fare rises because of knobs like this. I'm glad he has had to repay this money but not that he remains anonymous. I think he should be made to wear a sign round his neck saying 'I'm the fare paying cheat' for a year and hopefully that will shame him into not doing it again. He's lucky his employers don't know, I don't a hedge fund company would want to employ someone so dishonest.

    I am puzzled too at how he got away with it.

    That is to say, why did he not get blocked by the barriers in London?

    Surely the system (if he was using an Oyster as reported) would have picked it up as being invalid because he had not 'checked in' elsewhere on the system?

    Also, surely the barriers at London mainline stations must have some way of realising a 'short journey' Oyster card as being suspicious in the morning rush as trains arrive from the Home Counties?
  • PL54
    PL54 Posts: 10,757
    PL54 said:

    Couldn't believe this was on the front page of the Times yesterday.

    Get you....The Times eh....
    And a flag from Henry the cock as expected
  • Hastingsaddick
    Hastingsaddick Posts: 4,079

    Some of this doesn't add up from what has been reported. I don't quite understand how having an Oyster card has helped him. I travel from Battle, three stops beyond Stonegate, and we have our tickets checked at least once each journey, morning and night. I assume he has too so if he hadn't had a ticket then he'd have had to have bought one on the train. It's perfectly okay to board without a ticket as you are able to purchase on board as ticket office could easily be busy when you arrive. Seeing as most trains are fast from High Brooms to London Bridge during rush hours you can't even say you got on at Orpington, for example, to reduce the price you pay. Interesting too that he paid back over 42k. A season ticket from Stonegate costs £4,500 a year so over five years, allowing for year on year price increases, he could have bought season tickets for say 21.5k. I assume they have calculated what he owed on him having made single, maybe return, daily journeys.

    Personally, he's a scumbag. I hate people who are not prepared to pay their way, think they can get one over on the train company and us, the passengers, who suffer fare rises because of knobs like this. I'm glad he has had to repay this money but not that he remains anonymous. I think he should be made to wear a sign round his neck saying 'I'm the fare paying cheat' for a year and hopefully that will shame him into not doing it again. He's lucky his employers don't know, I don't a hedge fund company would want to employ someone so dishonest.

    Wife travels up from Hastings and tells me the same re having her ticket checked...and your dead right the figures don't add up.
  • shirty5
    shirty5 Posts: 19,235
    This report just shows how incompetent South Useless really are.
  • charltonkeston
    charltonkeston Posts: 7,369
    And he's a palarse supporter.
  • ValleyGary
    ValleyGary Posts: 37,987

    Some of this doesn't add up from what has been reported. I don't quite understand how having an Oyster card has helped him. I travel from Battle, three stops beyond Stonegate, and we have our tickets checked at least once each journey, morning and night. I assume he has too so if he hadn't had a ticket then he'd have had to have bought one on the train. It's perfectly okay to board without a ticket as you are able to purchase on board as ticket office could easily be busy when you arrive. Seeing as most trains are fast from High Brooms to London Bridge during rush hours you can't even say you got on at Orpington, for example, to reduce the price you pay. Interesting too that he paid back over 42k. A season ticket from Stonegate costs £4,500 a year so over five years, allowing for year on year price increases, he could have bought season tickets for say 21.5k. I assume they have calculated what he owed on him having made single, maybe return, daily journeys.

    Personally, he's a scumbag. I hate people who are not prepared to pay their way, think they can get one over on the train company and us, the passengers, who suffer fare rises because of knobs like this. I'm glad he has had to repay this money but not that he remains anonymous. I think he should be made to wear a sign round his neck saying 'I'm the fare paying cheat' for a year and hopefully that will shame him into not doing it again. He's lucky his employers don't know, I don't a hedge fund company would want to employ someone so dishonest.

    I am puzzled too at how he got away with it.

    That is to say, why did he not get blocked by the barriers in London?

    Surely the system (if he was using an Oyster as reported) would have picked it up as being invalid because he had not 'checked in' elsewhere on the system?

    Also, surely the barriers at London mainline stations must have some way of realising a 'short journey' Oyster card as being suspicious in the morning rush as trains arrive from the Home Counties?
    You are right, there is no way to get out of London Bridge. So he must get through the barriers behind someone and then come back through and check in using oyster, or lean over the barrier and swipe from the entrance side.

    If he tried to just swipe out at Cannon Street then his oyster wouldn't work as at no point on his inward journey has he swiped in.
  • randy andy
    randy andy Posts: 5,457
    The article clearly states he never checked in and therefore when he checked out he was charged the minimum.oyster fare for not checking in, which was £7.20.
  • Can't be many hedge fund managers in Stonegate. Has he been identified and hung yet?
  • ValleyGary
    ValleyGary Posts: 37,987

    The article clearly states he never checked in and therefore when he checked out he was charged the minimum.oyster fare for not checking in, which was £7.20.

    I always thought that If you don't check in with Oyster the barrier doesn't work when you check out and SE staff usually give you a £20 fine.

    I know that if you check in and then don't check out you get charged the minimum £7.20.
  • Granpa
    Granpa Posts: 2,995
    In line with his occupation, make him cut the hedge around Buckingham Palace for a year !

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  • boggzy
    boggzy Posts: 3,596
    edited April 2014
    Reckon good quality faked season ticket from his station with photocard, and a zone 1 oyster season to get in and out.
  • paulsturgess
    paulsturgess Posts: 3,824
    Seems far fetched but I heard a suggestion / rumour on the radio that it had been made up by the train companies as a deterrent for people doing it.

    Can't believe that myself but I had a look at Stonegate station on google earth. Absolutely nothing around there. If you really wanted to identify him surely it wouldnt be that arduous.
  • newyorkaddick
    newyorkaddick Posts: 3,052
    The likelihood is that if the case had gone to court, Southeastern would have struggled to prove that he had travelled without a fare on more than a few occasions (certainly in the face of expensive cross-examination). They would have needed to trawl through CCTV evidence and even that in itself would only prove he travelled, not that he didn't have a valid ticket (which he could have claimed to have purchased for cash on a day-by-day basis).

    However as has been noted it would not be in this person's interest to have the case in the public domain given the 'integrity' issue so a forty grand settlement is likely an extremely good result for Southeastern.
  • He gets the train from Stonegate (East Sussex).
    Should be named and shamed. How many of us could afford the £43,000 payback!
    My daughter and son-in-law both travel from there and are fuming he has virtually
    got away with this. But there again he is a Hedge Fund manager!
  • soapy_jones
    soapy_jones Posts: 21,358
    Should be dragged out into the nearest town square and there to be hanged drawn and quartered in front of a baying crowd of poor people.

    It makes me SO ANGRY!
  • The article clearly states he never checked in and therefore when he checked out he was charged the minimum.oyster fare for not checking in, which was £7.20.

    You're right, the story linked in the article gives a fuller explanation....

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-27011497

    .....that is clearly a major flaw in the system, I'd have thought that an alert should be raised if an Oyster continually 'defaults' like this to the £7.20 payment.

    Obviously not!
  • cafcfan
    cafcfan Posts: 11,200

    Should be dragged out into the nearest town square and there to be hanged drawn and quartered in front of a baying crowd of poor people.

    It makes me SO ANGRY!

    Sounds like you should move to Iran or the tribal regions of Pakistan - you'd like it there.
  • soapy_jones
    soapy_jones Posts: 21,358
    cafcfan said:

    Should be dragged out into the nearest town square and there to be hanged drawn and quartered in front of a baying crowd of poor people.

    It makes me SO ANGRY!

    Sounds like you should move to Iran or the tribal regions of Pakistan - you'd like it there.
    Can you get there on a stolen Oyster card?

    Grrrrr!
  • LenGlover
    LenGlover Posts: 31,661
    Jints said:

    LenGlover said:

    Traditional standards of morality are no longer a consideration in 21st Century Britain as exemplified by the actions of the parasitical scum whom masquerade as MPs and MEPs.

    What nonsense. The political classes were way more rapacious and corrupt on the "good old days" than they are now.

    Rotten boroughs, sales of peerages (Lloyd-George & Wilson to mention just two). The Marconi scandal, the Shell crisis, Suez, the list goes on and on.

    Miller's little bit of accountancy wouldn't even have registered in the old days. Who now remembers that Chruchill secretly took £5,000 (millions today) from Burmah oil to lobby for concessions in Persia.
    Churchill (theoretically at least) was acting in the interests of British taxpayers by securing oil supplies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company

    Who, other than herself, benefited from the actions of Maria Miller and the countless others of her ilk?
  • Skin him alive and roll him in salt. Rich bastard should be named, shamed. Then shot.

    End of.

    You're too soft!

    Hang him upside down on a meat hook in a disused warehouse where nobody can hear him. Then flog him with a cat o'nine tails each with a razor blade on the end that's been dipped in sulphuric acid.
    If he surives that, he gets a complimentary season ticket from Lee to Hither Green.




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  • kentaddick
    kentaddick Posts: 18,729
    he couldve hopped off, checked in in orpington (don't they have oyster terminals on the platforms, so if you come from outside london and have an oyster you can check in) and then checked out when he got to london. But it says he never checked in, weird.
  • seth plum
    seth plum Posts: 53,448
    I didn't know there was so much money to be made from shrubbery.
  • man_at_milletts
    man_at_milletts Posts: 5,620
    edited April 2014

    The article clearly states he never checked in and therefore when he checked out he was charged the minimum.oyster fare for not checking in, which was £7.20.

    I always thought that If you don't check in with Oyster the barrier doesn't work when you check out and SE staff usually give you a £20 fine.

    I know that if you check in and then don't check out you get charged the minimum £7.20.
    Correct, I witnessed somebody arguing the toss over this at CX this morning. She hadn't checked in, and got caught, £20 fine straight away.

    As I said earlier, we aren't getting the full story on this.

    If nothing else, the train company have been negligent in not checking whether he was traveling on a valid ticket for an inordinate amount of time.
    Wouldn't look good in court.

    I don't condone what he did.


  • AddickUpNorth
    AddickUpNorth Posts: 8,325
    seth plum said:

    I didn't know there was so much money to be made from shrubbery.

    Daylight?
  • Riviera
    Riviera Posts: 8,167
    He needs to be named and shamed.
  • A-R-T-H-U-R
    A-R-T-H-U-R Posts: 7,678
    OK He is called Tony and he used to wet the bed until he was 21.
    And he wears women's clothing under his suit when he travels illegally on the train.
  • cafcfan
    cafcfan Posts: 11,200
    So, there we have it - banned for life from working in financial services. Interesting quote, too, from the FCA that he should have been a role model in the light of other recent matters relating to a club in Sheffield.

    bbc.com/news/business-30475232
    Riviera said:

    He needs to be named and shamed.

    And he has been.

  • cabbles
    cabbles Posts: 15,256
    cafcfan said:

    So, there we have it - banned for life from working in financial services. Interesting quote, too, from the FCA that he should have been a role model in the light of other recent matters relating to a club in Sheffield.

    bbc.com/news/business-30475232

    Riviera said:

    He needs to be named and shamed.

    And he has been.

    However he added that "the size of the settlement [with Southeastern] could be said to have led to a distorted perception of the scale of my wrongdoing".

    No mate, you really don't get it do you. Millions of fare paying passengers earning a fraction of what you have earned in your life, paying their fares, going to work, plugging away. You on the other hand, were a knob head who can actually afford the ridiculous train fares charged without it impacting your life financially, yet you still chose to take the piss.
  • Lincsaddick
    Lincsaddick Posts: 32,357
    'saving' 42 grand has probably cost him millions .. here endeth the lesson
  • What a silly billy.