Post office fraud judgements

[Mercdriver]

Another two Scot’s postmasters cleared by courts after being found guilty of fraud.

Cannot understand why post office or Fujitsu management have not been charged with same fervour the prosecuted employees were.

Either Fujitsu employees, post office employees or both lied to the court to get a conviction. If an employee can be quickly taken to court why does the same not apply to the managers and directors.

Sad to read the stories of the employees whose life has been destroyed by this company.

[Alickadoo]

Piece on BBC Radio 4 Today programme about this.

Fujitsu is still being given more contracts.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366560655/Cont...

[5 In a Row]

This has been getting covered in Private Eye for years.

A lot of the senior bods at Royal Mail from that time appear to have continued on to successful careers in other large organisations and quangos.

[fourstardan]

You can watch the entire enquiry about this on Youtube with all of the original staff involved, it's quite interesting, certainly when I kicked off my IT career when some of the types of cowboys running this project were in there pomp.

It is astounding people did prison time for it.

[spikeyhead]

I'd be astounded if anyone from PO management or Fujitsu did time for it, but that is what many of them deserve

[Ambleton]

Me MIL used to run the village PO. Was a proper old one that was the front room of the house. Some days she'd be quite busy, other days she may only have one or two customers.

She's always known the horizon system was dodgy. She is very fastidious and did roll ups, inventory checks and cash checks at the end of every working day and submitted reports.

There were quite a few days where the system was saying she was short by some spurious small amount like 58p or something, even if it was impossible - eg, only had 4 customers that all paid by card. Now imagine that at a larger PO with multiple tills, hundreds of daily transactions, some very large, and maybe a till/cash roll up every week and an inventory check every 6m.

Over the years shes probably turned out about £100 in "pence" out of pocket (apart from one major incident that cost her several hundred in one chunk to do with out of circulation foreign currency). All in all I think she got off quite lightly.

[Lotobear]

Big business always gets away lightly in these situations as regular Joe is low hanging fruit and less able to mount a robust defence, makes me fking sick.

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

[spikeyhead]

Lotobear said:

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

No it isn't

[Zarco]

spikeyhead said:

I'd be astounded if anyone from PO management or Fujitsu did time for it, but that is what many of them deserve

He means the post masters who were prosecuted based upon the malfunctioning computer system.

I've listed to the excellent podcast on this, and the Private Eye stuff. What really takes the biscuit is the senior Post Office staff awarding themselves fat bonuses for investigating their own monumental fk up.

[pavarotti1980]

Alickadoo said:

Piece on BBC Radio 4 Today programme about this.

Fujitsu is still being given more contracts.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366560655/Cont...

What would be the timescale, approximate cost of a new or interim system or compared to the risk managed approach on extending the Fujitsu one?

I suspect if you answer that it would be tell you reason why they have been given the contract extension

[alangla]

ITV (or STV at least) have been heavily trailing their upcoming drama about this https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1weekweek-01-202...

EDIT: Seems they’ve done a documentary as well https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1weekweek-01-202...

[spikeyhead]

Zarco said:

spikeyhead said:

I'd be astounded if anyone from PO management or Fujitsu did time for it, but that is what many of them deserve

He means the post masters who were prosecuted based upon the malfunctioning computer system.

I've listed to the excellent podcast on this, and the Private Eye stuff. What really takes the biscuit is the senior Post Office staff awarding themselves fat bonuses for investigating their own monumental fk up.

I no, but I'd really like to see those responsible in the management and in Fujitsu to go through worse than the postmasters

[119]

Lotobear said:

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

Jesus fking Christ.

[bloomen]

Lotobear said:

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

I hacked the WEF nannites that 5G broadcast into me. No way can 'they' get me now.

The most depressing thing about it is the lack of application of Occam's razor.

Did several hundred previously spotless people turn into criminals overnight, or did some shoddy software punted by shoddy assholes balls up?

It's not hard.

[vaud]

Alickadoo said:

Piece on BBC Radio 4 Today programme about this.

Fujitsu is still being given more contracts.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366560655/Cont...

I'm not surprised on the Horizon contract.

No-one in the sector wants to touch it with a bargepole.

[Lotobear]

spikeyhead said:

Lotobear said:

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

No it isn't

It is; different businesses but both big institutions who will get off the hook due to vested interests

[PurpleTurtle]

Fujitsu are ridiculously embedded with the Govt so no heads will ever roll there, much as they should.

I've got a good mate who has contracted for Fujitsu for over 20yrs, in various security-cleared IT jobs, lots of work to do with military sites.

He keeps on coming to the end of short piece of work, they put him on the bench for an extraordinary amount of time, keep paying him, then find him something else to do. He's had multiple summers off just being paid to be sat at home doing nothing (he actually does a lot of nice country walks/pub crawls).

It just strikes me as a company that is awash with public money and as such that gravy train will not hit the buffers any time soon. Jailing a couple of their execs will not happen, sadly. (I'd love to be proven wrong on this).

[Zarco]

In my opinion it's the Post Office staff that deserve punishment rather than Fujitsu. It's the PO that decided to prosecute knowing the system was faulty, and tried to cover the whole thing up.

[Eric Mc]

Zarco said:

In my opinion it's the Post Office staff that deserve punishment rather than Fujitsu. It's the PO that decided to prosecute knowing the system was faulty, and tried to cover the whole thing up.

You really think that Fujistsu were totally innocent in this debacle?

[Lotobear]

bloomen said:

Lotobear said:

It's similar in some ways to the Covid vaccine situation, big pharma will never be held to account.

I hacked the WEF nannites that 5G broadcast into me. No way can 'they' get me now.

The most depressing thing about it is the lack of application of Occam's razor.

Did several hundred previously spotless people turn into criminals overnight, or did some shoddy software punted by shoddy assholes balls up?

It's not hard.

...I'm not sure what point it is you are attempting to make about WEF and 'nannites' (whatever they are) and 5G - what have they to do with the subject?

My point was quite simple - big business will always trump the little guy (nothing more than that).