The recent series on C5 has demonstrated some very successful outcomes.
Serial fare dodgers have learned that buying tickets for ‘shortened’ journeys is not a methodology that can be deployed in order to escape capture through fare evasion and defrauding the Train Operating Company’s (TOC’s).
The TOCs all now have clever analytical people working in Fraud teams who have access to a minefield of data.
This data, has led to a number of high profile (and not so high profile) prosecutions, with the culprits losing careers and sometimes being very close to being imprisoned.
I have no doubt that with the increasing complexities of fare evasion methods being deployed, the size of these fraud teams will grow exponentially.
However, TOC’s need to be proactive in accelerating the size of their Fraud teams, before the problem dwarfs them, resulting in the ability to continue to re-invest at current levels.
As a source of reference, it is of course Raspberrys’ TIPS revenue protection system that is deployed by South Western Rail.
