Post Office scandal!! Destroyed lives! *title edited by MNHQ*

[Magnificentmug12]

Genuinely can’t believe and completely shocked by the news today of Royal Mail! Just watched the panorama episode and a mother, who had children, and was also pregnant at the time got handcuffed and took to prison, whilst the Royal Mail just watched, knowing....knowing she was innocent!! That takes a monster!

Do you think money and government power should not be enough to stop those who done this, to be sentenced and sent to prison?!

I will never spend another penny on the Royal Mail- I can not believe what they have done! So horrific! People have even taken their own lives because they couldn’t cope with it!

I’m so shocked!!

The individuals concerned were told that, yes, but there must have been senior people in the PO who could see that there were lots and lots of cases coming through. Was it all arse-covering from those who had commissioned and signed off the dodgy accounting system?

What about crime stats? Defrauding the Post Office can't be that common a crime. There's no point in collecting stats if nobody looks at them carefully to analyse trends and identify problems building up.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

The individuals concerned were told that, yes, but there must have been senior people in the PO who could see that there were lots and lots of cases coming through. Was it all arse-covering from those who had commissioned and signed off the dodgy accounting system?

What about crime stats? Defrauding the Post Office can't be that common a crime. There's no point in collecting stats if nobody looks at them carefully to analyse trends and identify problems building up.

Part of the issue was that the Post Office has its own criminal investigation system. The police weren't involved, the Post Office investigated and prosecuted outside of the police system.

Just let that sink in.

There is absolutely no doubt that the people at the top of the Post Office knew what was going on, and supported prosecutions based on false evidence. It was superlative arse-covering. And none of them - not one - has been held to account.

The podcasts are a good source of info but this Private Eye report is even better... www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-in-the-post They have been reporting on this absolute scandal for years. Not one of the people in charge has been held to account, and it doesn't look like they will be. Fucking shameful.

In the radio series they explain that the PO has its own investigative dept and equivalent of the CPS. So to some extent they were judge and jury - and they would also withhold vital information which would help mount a defence. There must have been middle management that thought these 'thefts' make no sense but I can only assume they were overruled.

The woman who was in charge at the time (an Anglican minister!) still holds positions with Morrisons, Dunelm, and is a member of the CofE’s ethical investment advisory group. She walked away from the PO £5million better off (now, what was it that the Bible said about rich men, the kingdom of Heaven and camels...?)

www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/23/post-office-aggressive-pursuit-of-staff-ex-boss-paula-vennells

One reason that the cost of the scandal has run into the hundreds of millions of pounds is the vigour with which the Post Office continued to pursue its staff, even in the face of mounting evidence that they had done nothing wrong.

Much of that unwavering legal aggression occurred under Vennells’ seven-year tenure. At the high court, Mr Justice Fraser said the company had simply ignored the reality of what had happened, effectively “maintaining that the Earth is flat”.

Shame on her.

It's one of the most appalling miscarriages of justice in history, I am sickened by it.

To know that you had done nothing wrong, but being told that all the evidence was there, it hadn't happened to anyone else so it can't be an error (lies), pressured into pleading guilty, with the threat of many years in prison hanging over you otherwise.... losing your livelihood, friends, family, who now think you are a criminal, because the British justice system is fair so it must be true... it's outrageous.

[quote LizzieMacQueen]They were each told they were the only ones affected. It's a shocking thing to have happened.

Second the post above to listen to the Radio 4 series on it. You can find it on BBC Sounds.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j[/quote]
I'm just listening to the first 3 minutes of that podcast... I'm in tears already. That poor man and his pregnant wife.

@Clymene

You've got that the wrong way round *@MissLucyEyelesbarrow* Royal Mail separated from the Post Office in 2012. Before that they were part of the Post Office.

This is on the Post Office, not RM.

I don't think we're disagreeing? They were a single organisation till 2012, then were split into two. The Royal Mail has significant culpability in this scandal. It was the Royal Mail (as the parent company till 2012) that commissioned Horizon and that brought the original prosecutions.

I know people who were directly affected by this, not imprisoned but made to pay substantial shortages back which they always maintained had nothing to do with them.

They are getting every penny of it back but the whole thing stinks.

Absolutely shocking. Heard about it a while back but was watching the news last night about it. I was rather heartened that the village rallied round one woman and she now does cleaning for them. They believed she was innocent, but the poor woman who went to a supermarket and her face was splashed all over the papers!

It's not Royal Mail. It's the Post Office. They're two separate entities.
My parents ran a PO for decades. It nearly killed me dad with the stress. A weekly late night balance every Wednesday to reconcile the system. I dread to think how much of their own money they put into the business to rectify the "shorts" that the system said they had every week.
When they finally retired, my dad didn't weeks burning every last piece of paper that he had. As he hated the job so much. I think he found it cathartic, but I wish he'd kept them so that they could maybe claim back some of that money.
It's an absolute fucking disgrace.

MY dad, not me dad

SPENT weeks

Ffs

Shocking. Disgusting. Appalling.

Dreadful. I'd have thought seven figure payouts (each) would be in order. Not that anything could really compensate for the trauma.

It will probably be quite complicated to work out as I know quite a few accepted a full settlement for their financial claims after years of battling it (not all were jailed) but that was not as much as their losses - they accepted it to be done with it and no more was then on offer.

Utterly disgusting, shocking - and frightening. Yes the Post Office have their own independent criminal investigation and prosecution powers, which they abused to the utmost. Am I right in thinking HMRC have the same powers?

I really hope these poor people are properly compensated for all their trauma.

One of the things that troubles me is that the PO had an inhouse team of lawyers and the most senior of those must have been aware of what was going on. How could they ethically sit by and watch as one case after another arose on the same grounds?

This is shockingly not uncommon. I know someone working at a sizeable company and they 'lost' 100k in the system. They recounted the story that were minutes away from being dismissed because the systems had to be shut and the loss would have been counted against him as fraud. They found it in some accounting mistake.

To do this to hardworking employees in Post Office offices was absolutely disgraceful. They should be bloody well compensated. I think it was a horrific practise.

It just doesn’t make logical sense to me that so many higher powers know about this yet those responsible are not being held accountable!

It’s just madness!

It’s so completely tragic for the victims and absolutely rage-inducing that the big wigs and all those who just kept going with the blaming and outright lies will just get away with it! I don’t know how these morally bankrupt people sleep at night.

@Londonmummy66

One of the things that troubles me is that the PO had an inhouse team of lawyers and the most senior of those must have been aware of what was going on. How could they ethically sit by and watch as one case after another arose on the same grounds?

On several occasions the accused had to defend themselves in court, unable to afford a legal team. While you can imagine for sometime senior managers wouldn't have been aware what was going on but at some point very senior staff inc the CEO would have had to make a call on this and yet they, to this day, have only made the most mealy mouthed apologies. At one point the PO were effectively forced to call in a well respected company to look into this mess. When the reports weren't going their way they dismissed them. But not before the CEO had professionally insulted them in front of a select committee hearing.

I said this on the thread in AIBU but Private Eye’s report posted upthread is the definitive account. Absolutely worth a read.

What gets me is how much extra money the Post Office must have made from these poor postmasters putting their own money in to “put right” the discrepancies and then making them pay the Post Office’s court costs as well!

The sounds podcast is excellent I listened to it while painting and it really stayed with me. I use the post office almost daily with my work and often pass the time with the lovely professional helpful postmaster. To think of this happening to him is awful.

It’s like your worst nightmare isn’t it - accused of something you didn’t do and losing your Liberty good name and livelihood. You couldn’t make it up. Shame on that management team. Short of physically harming or killing someone this is the worst thing you can do to someone.