This absolutely was a fraud. The (unfair) contract required postmasters to make good any shortfalls. The hundreds who were prosecuted either refused or ran out of their own money to make up the shortfalls. Many were sacked because they refused to sign the accounts, losing their livelihoods, pensions, life savings, homes and good names as a result. Thousands more were just quietly putting their own money in, sometimes unfairly suspecting an employee of theft, due to errors the Post Office knew about but refused to admit.

And a primary driver of the scandal was the imperative to make the Post Office profitable so that it could be privatised, with investigators paid partly based on how much money they recovered. New Labour and the Coalition both have much of this blood on their hands.

Gut-wrenchingly awful. The senior people responsible need to lose their livelihoods, pensions, life savings, homes and good names. I’m not a fan of carceral solutions and Noel Thomas, imprisoned for nine months before his conviction was overturned, says he would not wish it on anyone. He is right. But destitution is something these people visited on hundreds of people for their own financial gain and those gains need to come back to the people they harmed.

This is a useful Computer Weekly summary which links to all its pieces over the years: Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know

As if Toby Jones wasn’t enough of a national treasure, it’s his series “Mr Bates Vs The Post Office” that’s shining a light on this scandal again

Well worth a watch. You may not recognise his name but pretty much everything he’s done is fantastic

This is the best summary I could come up with:

LONDON (AP) — U.K. police have opened a fraud investigation into Britain’s Post Office over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing money when a faulty computer system was to blame.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were accused of theft or fraud because computers wrongly showed that money was missing.

The real culprit was a defective computer accounting system called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, that was installed in local Post Office branches in 1999.

The Post Office maintained for years that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty when the system showed money was missing.

Lee Castleton, a former branch manager who went bankrupt after being pursued by the Post Office for missing funds, said his family was ostracized in their hometown of Bridlington in northern England.

Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read, appointed after the scandal, welcomed the TV series and said he hoped it would “raise further awareness and encourage anyone affected who has not yet come forward to seek the redress and compensation they deserve.”

The original article contains 560 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!