Post Office Horizon IT Scandal

The government role that I take from this, is the amount of contracts Fujitsu still keep being given by the government. Sunak's nasty wife's connection just highlights the giving contracts to your mates thing, they gave going on.
 
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Jess Philips getting her life was a hoot.

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Where I work we have an internal Investigations and Prosecutions team. I’m involved in a fraud case right now and I am doing meticulous audits of records to report to the Fraud team, pass on to Investigations and they are liaising with police to build the case. The police have been able to obtain audits on bank transactions with our suspect and every transaction is being scrutinised.

HOW in ANY way any of these ever made it to multiple prosecutions without any of that at all, and just going on a “computer says the balance isn’t right so you just have stolen it” is beyond my comprehension.

Am I thick or is that what happened?
 
It is mindboggling what has happened here.

I'm guessing we're going to get another round of this type of thing with the cladding situation.
 
Christian said:
It is mindboggling what has happened here.

I'm guessing we're going to get another round of this type of thing with the cladding situation.
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And isn't there a BBC drama about Grenfell due later this year?
 
lolly said:
And isn't there a BBC drama about Grenfell due later this year?
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I didn't know that. I guess that makes the general election even more of a guaranteed wipeout then.

My mother is so cross about it all, and she'd normally only ever vote one way.
 
Ellie said:
Where I work we have an internal Investigations and Prosecutions team. I’m involved in a fraud case right now and I am doing meticulous audits of records to report to the Fraud team, pass on to Investigations and they are liaising with police to build the case. The police have been able to obtain audits on bank transactions with our suspect and every transaction is being scrutinised.

HOW in ANY way any of these ever made it to multiple prosecutions without any of that at all, and just going on a “computer says the balance isn’t right so you just have stolen it” is beyond my comprehension.

Am I thick or is that what happened?
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You might be interested in one of the PO Investigators being interviewed now in the pubic inquiry. His defence so far is "no one told use there were any issues with Horizon"

 
Bradshaw comes across as a (frankly inept) jobsworth who enjoyed wielding power over subordinates.
 
Eddie said:
Bradshaw comes across as a (frankly inept) jobsworth who enjoyed wielding power over subordinates.
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Completely incompetent! The investigators I’ve been dealing with call me constantly asking for lengthy explanations and clarifications of the audits. He doesn’t appear to have questioned anything.
 
I’ve been listening on Radio 5 as I am WFH and Bradshaw sounds like a typical large company bully. Yes, they have to be firm in that role but do much of his phrasing in the interviews is unprofessional at best.
 
I think he’s part of a much bigger problem of an old boys club at the post office and little technical understanding of the system and just assuming if the computer says yes then there’s nothing wrong. Probably was doing the same job before Horizon came in.
 
PercyPig said:
I think he’s part of a much bigger problem of an old boys club at the post office and little technical understanding of the system and just assuming if the computer says yes then there’s nothing wrong. Probably was doing the same job before Horizon came in.
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That’s not their job to do though. They should be referring to experts and questioning it to build the case and decide whether it’s worth prosecuting.

Hate turning it around all the time with what I’m dealing with (which has been a year long investigation relating to high value fraud), but the investigators I’m dealing with are very similar. Usually in their 60s, very old-school and not technically minded at all. But they’re very professional and careful to do what’s right, anticipating holes in the statements and making sure everything was accurate. They ask for evidence to back up everything.
 
Ellie said:
Where I work we have an internal Investigations and Prosecutions team. I’m involved in a fraud case right now and I am doing meticulous audits of records to report to the Fraud team, pass on to Investigations and they are liaising with police to build the case. The police have been able to obtain audits on bank transactions with our suspect and every transaction is being scrutinised.

HOW in ANY way any of these ever made it to multiple prosecutions without any of that at all, and just going on a “computer says the balance isn’t right so you just have stolen it” is beyond my comprehension.

Am I thick or is that what happened?
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My takeaway from it - certainly when the system was first rolled out - is that there was a perfect storm of factors.

In general, we are much more cynical about technology now. There was definitely a time growing up in the early '00s when I remember a perception of computers being infallible - if something went wrong, it must be a user error, etc. Thus, I can completely see where this notion of "computer must be right" came from, particularly when I'm quite sure the scene of one of the sub-postmasters repeatedly saying, "I'm so rubbish at technology" on the helpline reflects a fairly common occurrence (it still happens now).

Plus, it's only in the last decade that card spending has overtaken cash spending. Thus, I guess it would have been easier for stolen money to be concealed, whereas now you'd almost certainly have to try and get it into a bank account, somehow.

Admittedly, you'd think on the scale the investigations were happening, things would be a BIT more thorough. All the same, one of the things I don't think the ITV drama did awfully well was to reflect the context in which the businesses operated and how people generally lived their lives in terms of handling cash.
 
Most of the witnesses turned up not even knowing what day of the week it was and she turned up knowing every single page of every single witness statement (until it was convenient that she didn’t remember)
 
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