Post office Horizon scandal just got worse

[Gfamily]

(I can't find her actual leaving date anywhere).

Companies House has her resigning from POL on 30 April 2019
https://find-and-update.company-informa ... pointments

[Brightonian]

Post Office investigators allegedly got bonuses for convictions and confiscations of money: https://news.sky.com/story/post-office- ... s-13045910

[JQH]

Blackcountryboy posted a link to a discussion of this very issue a couple of pages back.

[jimbob]

https://youtu.be/2a0b9Q7JMuc?si=Y6AEpoXAKYbF67LF

Post Office investigator (still working in a similar role in the PO) hardly covering himself with glory as he didn't seem to think that news reports on the Horizon system in a 2012 email from a colleague should have informed his investigations or allowed him to question the Horizon system.

[TopBadger]

I saw the evidence live on TV around lunchtime. He didn't cover himself in glory, in word or attitude.

Normally - with system issues - there is an expectation that everyone is affected equally. Was that the case?

Has the system issue that cause the reporting differences actually been tracked down yet?

[noggins]

There is no one issue, it was riddled with bugs.

[Rich Scopie]

Just watching the Post Office enquiry. They're referring to a document dated 29/02/2005.

Now, I know working with times and dates can be a bit of a bugger in code, but if Fujitsu didn't realise that 2005 didn't have a 29th of February, I'm hardly surprised that the Horizon system was riddled with bugs.

[jimbob]

https://nitter.net/TomWitherow/status/1 ... 16929?s=20

Post Office inquiry today:

I'm down at Aldwych House for the evidence of Robert Daily, the investigator in the late Peter Holmes's case.

He has admitted he "erroneously" put his wife's education achievements on his CV when he re-applied for his job in 2008.

Hope he's charged with fraud. He didn't cover himself with glory for the rest of the thread

[jimbob]

https://nitter.net/AlanRamsay10/status/ ... 53203?s=20

Same person

#PostOfficeScandal
So next 2 days are Robert Daily and Raymond Grant.
They searched mum & dad's house and took away all mum's jewellery, even though she didn't work for the Post Office. Kept it for 7 months, under the 'Proceeds of Crime Act', even though dad was never charged.

[Martin Y]

To be fair, investigating for evidence of unexplained wealth, or a paper trail for where the proceeds of a suspected theft might have gone is a job the investigators should have been doing. And their failing to find it ought to have been a big red flag that Fujitsu were bullshitting them.

Reading the seemingly careful wording in his email that "there is no evidence that someone has ever 'hacked in' remotely to the Horizon system". I'm reminded (though drama now rather blurs with reality) of an investigator admitting that email he sent was not his own words, but written for him.

[dyqik]

To be fair, investigating for evidence of unexplained wealth, or a paper trail for where the proceeds of a suspected theft might have gone is a job the investigators should have been doing. And their failing to find it ought to have been a big red flag that Fujitsu were bullshitting them.

Reading the seemingly careful wording in his email that "there is no evidence that someone has ever 'hacked in' remotely to the Horizon system". I'm reminded (though drama now rather blurs with reality) of an investigator admitting that email he sent was not his own words, but written for him.

No evidence of an external hack just means that the system didn't have a means of detecting external hacks.

[Martin Y]

Indeed. It encourages us to infer significance; that the lack of evidence of any hacking indicated there was none, without actually claiming it. It also takes "unauthorised remote access" to mean unauthorised by POL or Fujitsu rather than unauthorised by the user, which is rather convenient wording when it's now known Fujitsu staff could tinker in live accounts without the account holder's knowledge this was even possible.

[Stranger Mouse]

https://nitter.net/AlanRamsay10/status/ ... 53203?s=20

Same person

#PostOfficeScandal
So next 2 days are Robert Daily and Raymond Grant.
They searched mum & dad's house and took away all mum's jewellery, even though she didn't work for the Post Office. Kept it for 7 months, under the 'Proceeds of Crime Act', even though dad was never charged.

Surely even under the Proceeds Of Crime Act they would need some justification for thinking that a third party’s belongings were actual proceeds of crime

[jimbob]

https://nitter.net/AlanRamsay10/status/ ... 53203?s=20

Same person

#PostOfficeScandal
So next 2 days are Robert Daily and Raymond Grant.
They searched mum & dad's house and took away all mum's jewellery, even though she didn't work for the Post Office. Kept it for 7 months, under the 'Proceeds of Crime Act', even though dad was never charged.

Surely even under the Proceeds Of Crime Act they would need some justification for thinking that a third party’s belongings were actual proceeds of crime

I would have thought so.

[sTeamTraen]

Surely even under the Proceeds Of Crime Act they would need some justification for thinking that a third party’s belongings were actual proceeds of crime

I would have thought so.

Is a spouse really a third party, though? If you were indeed embezzling money, or importing drugs by the pallet load, and knew that you just had to put the Lambo in your wife's name to get round POCA, I think a lot of people would do that.

My understanding is that your spouse can't be called on to testify against (or perhaps even for) you, because their loyalty is assumed to be legitimately towards you regardless of what you're accused of (quite sweet, really), so surely there has to be some quid pro quo for that.

[jimbob]

Surely even under the Proceeds Of Crime Act they would need some justification for thinking that a third party’s belongings were actual proceeds of crime

I would have thought so.

Is a spouse really a third party, though? If you were indeed embezzling money, or importing drugs by the pallet load, and knew that you just had to put the Lambo in your wife's name to get round POCA, I think a lot of people would do that.

My understanding is that your spouse can't be called on to testify against (or perhaps even for) you, because their loyalty is assumed to be legitimately towards you regardless of what you're accused of (quite sweet, really), so surely there has to be some quid pro quo for that.

You still need a court order

[temptar]

I always saw that as being typical of assuming the wife was a possession of the man against whom accusations were made. In a time when women were financially dependent on their husbands that suggested they would lie to protect.

[Sciolus]

I always saw that as being typical of assuming the wife was a possession of the man against whom accusations were made. In a time when women were financially dependent on their husbands that suggested they would lie to protect.

That's an attitude that would be consistent with the OP of this thread (racism).

[snoozeofreason]

The scandal played out slightly differently in Scotland compared to England, because prosecutions there were handled by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, rather than the Post Office itself. The COPFS provisionally decided to halt prosecutions in 2013 but was dissuaded from that course of action by the PO, who argued ‘had been assessed by [Cartwright King, solicitors to the PO] to raise a considerable public relations storm for POL [Post Office Limited] if it were followed’.

Details here

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-lawyers-feared-pr-storm-if-prosecutions-halted/5118514.article

[snoozeofreason]

There's a good (and short) documentary about the way the scandal unrolled in Scotland in the BBC Scotland "Disclosure" programme.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w5w7/disclosure-scotlands-post-office-scandal

The fact that the PO could not conduct its own prosecutions in Scotland doesn't seem to have been as much of a safeguard as one might have hoped. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service didn't definitively stop prosecuting until 2015 and then didn't look into previous convictions, which it knew might be unsafe, until after Alan Bates victory in the English and Welsh civil court in 2019.

[jimbob]

Check out this thread at Thread Reader App. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1760 ... =topunroll

Impact on a postmaster who got out when she kept reporting shortfalls of £320 including when in the presence of a trainer.

And was told by the helpline that the money would be back, which it was, so the trainer knew that there was backdoor access to her accounts.

[Zelot]

https://www.channel4.com/news/covert-re ... -for-years

More revelations.

[noggins]

But,, of course Fujitsu could alter accounts. You can't design and run a database without super-duper-admin rights.
The issue is the governance of the access.

[sTeamTraen]

But,, of course Fujitsu could alter accounts. You can't design and run a database without super-duper-admin rights.
The issue is the governance of the access.

Yes, I'm wondering what this latest information changes. Is there any suggestion that the money that went missing was due to anything other than a bug when a transaction was carried out? Or is there a claim that it happened when night-time staff at Fujitsu opened up the system and either stole it or just pressed random buttons for the hell of it?

[noggins]

There is no evidence that Fujitsu's interventions were causing the actual shortfall.

Rather, there were shitloads of bugs, some of which managed to come to the attention of Fujitsu, who then flailed around firefighing them , with no proper control...

....and therefore the POs mantra that Horizon was infallible was complete and utter bollocks.