London Oyster Fraud

[penguin12345]

To get some perspective on the morality here I only took the money because it was £1, if it was more I would have returned the card in the hope the original owner would not be out of pocket. TFL charges £5 for a lost oyster card and (I think) an additional £5 for admin for transferring funds.

 

My thought was I might as well donate this money to charity since the original holder was not getting their money back.

 

I have donated to charity (more than £6). The £6 in isolation is going towards purchasing a goat for a poor african family, as was my original intention when deciding not to hand the card in.

 

To claim what I have done is immoral is quite frankly ridiculous and offensive (in my opinion). Just because something is legal does not make it moral and vice versa. I never intended to personally benefit from the money. That said thank you to everyone who posted in this forum, your views, perspectives and experience is greatly appreciated and a special thanks to those who have put my mind entirely at rest.

[penguin12345]

"To claim what I have done is immoral is quite frankly ridiculous and offensive (in my opinion)"

 

I'll rephrase this: it's not how I would personally have viewed these actions.

If you found £5 on the floor would you give it to charity/someone homeless or would you give it to the police?

[Old-CodJA]

"To claim what I have done is immoral is quite frankly ridiculous and offensive (in my opinion)"

 

I'll rephrase this: it's not how I would personally have viewed these actions.

If you found £5 on the floor would you give it to charity/someone homeless or would you give it to the police?

 

 

How exactly do you define morality in respect of taking ownership of property then?

 

You knew that the value of that Oyster did not belong to you, but let us look at your own words as quoted below:

 

 

-

I gave the card in, said a friend gave it to me as he was leaving london.

 

I then gave my name (partially, not surname), gave a fake address and signed it.

 

 

By your own admission, you decided to lie and say you were given the card

 

You decided to lie by giving a fake address in what might be considered by some to be an ill thought out attempt to ensure that you were not found out.

 

You clearly recognise this was wrong, otherwise why the apparent remorse, or was your post on here quite simply an exercise in seeking reassurance from others that you have indeed got away with it?

 

You seem to have got away with it, I really am satisfied that it is left at that, but that doesn't make this right in any way shape or form.

 

The really easy thing to do was hand the card in and say 'I just found this Oyster, someone may be looking for it'.

 

Nonetheless this is 'very small beer' so far as the amount of money gained by you is concerned and my fear was for others, perhaps more deserving of help and advice, who might be unnecessarily worried by the thought that the very serious punishment of prison might be awaiting every small offence.

[penguin12345]

Morality is a very complex field as everyone posting here is aware. All I was ever trying to do was get money which was otherwise going to sit in a holding account and never be returned to its original owner go to a useful cause. This was my intention from start to finish.

[BazzaS]

Morality is a very complex field as everyone posting here is aware. All I was ever trying to do was get money which was otherwise going to sit in a holding account and never be returned to its original owner go to a useful cause. This was my intention from start to finish.

 

Except the "useful cause" was your use!, and you weren't entitled to it........

 

If you found a £5 note with a £1 coin, you can:

a) leave it where it is

b) take it and use it, or

c) hand it in.

 

In theory, option b is "theft by finding".

Yes, it was found rather than directly taken from someone, but it is still appropriating their property, with _dishonest_ intent to permanently deprive.

 

In practice, this is "small beer", and (equally for the Oyster situation you describe) unlikely to result in a prosecution.

People shouldn't post doom & gloom to scare you.

 

When discussing morality: how big does a theft have to be to be immoral?

How do you know that Oyster didn't belong to someone to whom the £6 made a significant difference?

 

Donate it to charity by all means, but morally the way to do so is to hand the oyster in, not take the £6, use it to get home and then later salve your conscience by saying "It's OK, I've donated to charity"

 

I think it is wrong to potentially scare people by posting "you'll be prosecuted for fraud" in this scenario.

I think it is also wrong to try to claim it is somehow moral to have taken the £6 "to put it to a useful cause". If that "useful cause" is you, even temporarily .... That is just persuading yourself it is OK, when it isn't.

[rebel11]

How many Oyster Cards are discarded and lost each year?

 

In 2009 it was over 1,000,000.

 

What percentage of Oyster Card owners get refunds once a Oyster Card is handed in when it's been found?

[Old-CodJA]

This is the general guidance used by Police & CPS on this subject:

Stealing by finding:

 

The test must be whether a finder has taken all reasonable steps to find the owner.

 

Depending on the item this could mean simply asking people in the immediate vicinity, or with something like a bank card or similar item with monetary value, having taken steps to hand it in at the police station or bank etc. at the earliest possible opportunity.

 

Whether the finder’s effort to find the rightful owner was or was not reasonable would be a matter for the CPS or the courts if they were charged. The prosecutor might have a reasonable suspicion to proceed, but if after interviewing the finder and making their own inquiries they were satisfied that the finder had acted lawfully that would be the end of it.

 

Simply having enough information to make a report gets nowhere near the threshold needed to actually charge the finder with an offence.

[unclebulgaria67]

Close the thread, as it has become about morality of using a discarded travel card with £1 of travel left plus the £5 deposit. As has been explained earlier, the card appears to be for a temporary user, as it was not registered to someone. TFL therefore might not have been able to refund the original purchaser and it would just have retained the money.

 

If Penguin hears anymore about this, they can add a new thread and the site team can open this thread again if needed.

[king12345]

If the oyster card had been handed in, it would have been returned to tfl and any credit would have been left in their account.

Because the card was not registered, the owner wouldn't have been able to get it back in any case.

Lost card, handed in at the station, customer comes back later and claims to have lost the oyster, supervisor will ask if the card was registered, customer replies no, supervisor does not return card.

This is the procedure.

After all, if I am standing in the queue while someone hands in an oyster card, I could go back later claiming I lost it.

That's why tfl would not return a non registered oyster card.

If the person losing it had recharged it with a bank card belonging to them, they still had to go through a process of enquiry, the supervisor would not have the facility to check what bank card was used to top up the oyster, therefore he/she would not return it.

So in summary, in this case the £6 would have gone into tfl coffins.

I let you be the judge of wether this is right or wrong.

Imo tfl should donate to charity all unclaimed oyster funds as well as all profits made by maximum fare for incomplete journeys (70M last year).