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Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

Can someone confirm an issue I raised previously. I suggested that it would be impossible to steal large sums from the post office and hide it. Am I correct in this assumption and do you agree this is a major flaw in the accusations against the postmasters. Is it credible that large lnumbers of postmasters would at the same time committing an offence they had little or no chance of getting away with.
 
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Welshman said:
Can someone confirm an issue I raised previously. I suggested that it would be impossible to steal large sums from the post office and hide it. Am I correct in this assumption and do you agree this is a major flaw in the accusations against the postmasters. Is it credible that large lnumbers of postmasters would at the same time committing an offence they had little or no chance of getting away with.
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Some sub-postmasters were being accused of stealing amounts more than they would expect to earn in a year. Not being able to show evidence of unexplained wealth is a major flaw in the POs investigation and it is ridiculous that appears to have been ignored.

It was not credible that Horizon suddenly uncovered large scale theft by sub-postmasters that had previously gone undetected. Again, if there was such a level of theft, there would have been a lot of very wealthy sub-postmasters living the high life, way beyond their expected means.
 
catsmate said:
It would cache transactions and later commit them, not an unusual concept to compensate for poor connectivity, but one that users weren't trained on. IIRR this was discussed in the BBC programme back in 2015.
User training costs money and eats into the profit margin on IT projects.
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Unrelated, but accounting system IT is not the only thing where this applies. Just as an aside, this is exactly what Boeing were trying to avoid with the 737-MAX8. They were marketing the A/C as requiring no expensive simulator training, and used a flawed piece of hardware and software to make it fly and handle like previous models.

The lessons in both cases? Cutting corners to save money has consequences. In the case of Boeing, it was two aircraft crashes and almost 350 people killed - in the case of the Post Office its over 900 lives severely impacted, livelihoods destroyed and several suicides.
 
If someone had a post office franchise how much could post masters earn and did holding a franchise provide a good income. If a post office franchise provided a good income is this yet another hole in the accusations made by the post office against post masters. Would large numbers of post masters committ fraud that couldn't go undetected and threaten a valuable source of income and if caught they would at best have their contract terminated and have to pay back money taken and at worst go to prison.
 
Welshman said:
Can someone confirm an issue I raised previously. I suggested that it would be impossible to steal large sums from the post office and hide it. Am I correct in this assumption and do you agree this is a major flaw in the accusations against the postmasters. Is it credible that large lnumbers of postmasters would at the same time committing an offence they had little or no chance of getting away with.
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Yes, as I mentioned none of the allegedly stolen money was ever found. Which would suggest to a reasonably intelligent person, that there was a flaw in the allegations.
 
smartcooky said:
Unrelated, but accounting system IT is not the only thing where this applies. Just as an aside, this is exactly what Boeing were trying to avoid with the 737-MAX8. They were marketing the A/C as requiring no expensive simulator training, and used a flawed piece of hardware and software to make it fly and handle like previous models.

The lessons in both cases? Cutting corners to save money has consequences. In the case of Boeing, it was two aircraft crashes and almost 350 people killed - in the case of the Post Office its over 900 lives severely impacted, livelihoods destroyed and several suicides.
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Very true, I was specifically referring to IT/ICT because that's my area of expertise but the principal applies to most specialised and complex areas of endeavour.
 
Apparently the Post Office claimed £934m tax relief for its compensation payments to the postmasters it persecuted. Apparently it's also unlawful, so the Post Office now faces an unexpected £100m tax bill. It may be insolvent.
 
Welshman said:
If someone had a post office franchise how much could post masters earn and did holding a franchise provide a good income. If a post office franchise provided a good income is this yet another hole in the accusations made by the post office against post masters. Would large numbers of post masters committ fraud that couldn't go undetected and threaten a valuable source of income and if caught they would at best have their contract terminated and have to pay back money taken and at worst go to prison.
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The average is £36k a year.

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/sub-postmaster-salary-SRCH_KO0,14.htm

But they all also have shops and/or cafes to go with the PO, so it will be more than that. There was a suggestion the thefts were to cover losses with the shop/cafe part of the business, but I saw no evidence of that being presented by the PO investigators.
 
Was getting a post franchise difficult and did franchise owners have to invest a lot of money to obtain a franchise. I would assume franchise applicants would be checked for criminal convictions and am I correct people with convictions could not get franchises. This creates more holes in the accusations against the post masters. Would large large numbers of postmasters with no previous convictions turn to large scale fraud and jepordise franchise they have invested large sums of their own money in.
 
Discussing contract tendering with a mate last night, he said that Fujitsu were known to submit broad, cheap tenders where "could you just," would be "that would be extra" and that seems to have dogged Horizon. I don't know how much of this has been discussed up thread, but one wonders how much of Horizon was built upon old ICL technology, giving Fujitsu/ICL a head start and maybe why they can't be extracted from the deal now.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
Discussing contract tendering with a mate last night, he said that Fujitsu were known to submit broad, cheap tenders where "could you just," would be "that would be extra" and that seems to have dogged Horizon. I don't know how much of this has been discussed up thread, but one wonders how much of Horizon was built upon old ICL technology, giving Fujitsu/ICL a head start and maybe why they can't be extracted from the deal now.
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This was, and is, utterly endemic in IT projects especially in the public sector.
Civil servants are generally clueless, especially about technical matters, but refuse to admit their ignorance. Hence they're played, very easily, by technical sales teams, and "change controlled" to death because they can't formulate a proper RFP.

A 100% upsell was commonplace when I worked in professional services with REDACTED1, REDACTED2 and REDACTED3, and over 200% not unknown. And I worked alongside FujItsu/ICL sometimes, especially with the kind of customer who felt that multiple technical consultancy companies in parallel made for a better project (it doesn't, it typically increases overall costs 15-30%).

One "government" project had the client switch from us supporting the new implementation to Fujitsu. Unfortunately there was no mandated level of documentation, so we shredded and deleted everything, leaving the client and Fujitsu to figure the environment out from two A4 pages of information. It cost each of them several millions.
 
And how much worse could this get?

Post Office may face £100m tax bill over victim payouts - experts
...Mr Neidle estimates that deducting postmaster compensation from the Post Office's trading profit would mean that it underpaid more than £100m in corporation tax...
...The largest determinant of bosses' pay is a measure the Post Office calls "trading profit", which excludes the money set aside to compensate scandal victims, thereby increasing the pay of executives...
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So basically trying to write off the compensation against their tax bill and completely ignoring it to pay the bosses a fat bonus.
 
Post office owner says Horizon system was used to frame him for wife’s murder

Robin Garbutt was convicted of killing his wife in March 2010 but has always maintained his innocence.

'With no DNA evidence to link him to the murder or the metal bar used to kill Diana, Garbutt was convicted in part after the jury heard evidence from a Post Office investigator using data from the Horizon system. This purportedly showed he was stealing money from the Post Office and then killed his wife to cover up his theft.' The jury was told the pattern of transactions resembled other fraud cases.

Haven't had time to look at the details. Perhaps one to discuss in Trials and Errors.
 
Elaedith said:
Post office owner says Horizon system was used to frame him for wife’s murder

Robin Garbutt was convicted of killing his wife in March 2010 but has always maintained his innocence.

'With no DNA evidence to link him to the murder or the metal bar used to kill Diana, Garbutt was convicted in part after the jury heard evidence from a Post Office investigator using data from the Horizon system. This purportedly showed he was stealing money from the Post Office and then killed his wife to cover up his theft.' The jury was told the pattern of transactions resembled other fraud cases.

Haven't had time to look at the details. Perhaps one to discuss in Trials and Errors.
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Yes, I saw that. The case against Garbutt was extremely weak, and entirely lacking in motive. Given the problems with the CCRC regarding the case, and the unquesioning acceptane of the Horizon data, one hopes the case is rapidly reviewed.
But I have little hope.
 
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