(4) Unless the person who criminally possesses stolen property participated in the stealing, the person who criminally possesses stolen property and a person who has stolen the property are not accomplices in theft for the purpose of any rule of evidence requiring corroboration of the testimony of an accomplice.
(d) A person may not obtain control over property knowing that the property was lost, mislaid, or was delivered under a mistake as to the identity of the recipient or nature or amount of the property, if the person:
(4) Subject to paragraph (5) of this subsection, a person who has four or more prior convictions under this subtitle and who is convicted of theft of property or services with a value of less than $1,500 under paragraph (2) of this subsection is guilty of a misdemeanor and:
(2) The Chief Judge of the District Court and the Administrative Office of the Courts, in conjunction with the Motor Vehicle Administration, shall establish uniform procedures for reporting a violation under this subsection.
(j) A person who violates this section by use of an interactive computer service may be prosecuted, indicted, tried, and convicted in any county in which the victim resides or the electronic communication originated or terminated.
The numbers are not good. Nearly 4,400 vehicles were stolen in Colorado Springs in 2023, which is about 12 per day. Police estimate that the number went up 33%. Find out what our officers are doing and what YOU can do to fight back.
It is the question I have probably been asked the most over the years. The long answer is in the podcast I have recorded with Mark Baker (left in the photo above), a long-serving Subpostmaster and union rep, and Ron Warmington (right in the photo above), now Chairman of Second Sight, the forensic accountancy firm that went into the Post Office in 2012 and uncovered the sort of disaster which could very well be (and was eventually proved as being) responsible for serious miscarriages of justice. Between us, we cobbled together a list of 14 different destinations, which I have listed below.
It is therefore perfectly likely that the Post Office took money which rightfully belonged to its Subpostmasters and used it to bolster its bottom line. This was part-admitted by Post Office CEO Nick Read in a parliamentary committee meeting in January 2021:
Chair: But you have to do a profit and loss account, do you not, Mr Read, with money coming in and money going out? If victims were putting money into the Post Office, surely you know that money came in from somewhere. Did it just go to your bottom line?
Nick Read: It went into a general suspense account.
A customer deposits 1000, but the assistant keys in 10,000 by mistake. How easy or common was it for Horizon users to make errors at the counter, how easy were they to find and how were they resolved?
Over time, the Post Office changed its branch and Head Office operational processes to speed things up, but often, in doing that, they INCREASED the likelihood of errors that would harm their Subpostmasters. An example of this was when the Post Office phased out paying-in slips. Placing screen icons next to each other such as a banking deposit icon next to the withdraw cash icon.
Furthermore after this it has been shown justice can be perverted when you allow businesses to investigate, charge and bring legal prosecutions with zero police involvement. That accident statue needs changing and all fraud and criminal prosecutions needs to go via the CPS only and be investigated by the SFO, police or such independent organisations but not by the same parties as involved.
Lastly those who profited or covered up serious fault lying to the subpostmasters that they where the only ones etc., need to have there money and houses taken just as they inflicted such on the subpostmasters.
1. what is the Cash Account?
Is it a piece of software that keeps a running total, and is then used as the source for the reports, balancing etc., or is it a calculation made for reports and balancing when called?
I worked for EPOS suppliers to the forecourt industry, and have experience of several generations of software, database and record keeping. All seems to have been far in advance of what Fujitsu provided.
Yes. I am generally opposed to the DP, but for crimes as heinous as these, committed over such an extended period, and compounded by recent perjurious conduct at the Inquiry, I see an argument for it.
These 2 operators destroy financial reputations based on lies and falsehoods and you just know they have had their paws in the pot, so in my opinion should, be made to join in the compensation scheme!
Precisely! An uptick in huge shortages registering daily. SPMs who had been stellar for years if not decades are accused of theft. Ugly. So very ugly.
And where were the Fujitsu whistle blowers? This really confounds me. A phone call to the right person to say that the Fujitsu system had problems. An anonynous letter to the press. Some small act of compassion.
Were any postmasters subject to errors in their favour? If not, has it been looked into that the errors were actually the result of hacking of the software to generate an income stream for criminals, underwritten by the subpostmasters?
I wondered about that too. Well not that it may have been hacked but that since the Horizon system is faulty I imagine some accounts may have gained money, which must have caused account not to balance too. What did PO and Fujitsu do about that, how did they handle that excess credit?
Have any subpostmasters reported what happened in those cases?
Having watched the drama and since read everything I can get my hands on. It becomes more and more obvious this was a criminal cover up by those at the top of Fujitsu and the PO of a seriously flawed system. They must be held to account instead of wallowing in their payoffs while so many have and still are suffering!
That is exactly what the Post Office has done to over 700 Sub Postmasters.
As a result, surely everyone on the prosecution side; investigators, lawyers, witnesses, and executives of the Post Office and Fujitsu, should be prosecuted for conspiricy to theft.
Effectively, this has been a scam, orchestrated through the UK criminal courts.
Discraceful is insufficient to describe it.
As someone else has pointed out none of the accused shown signs of coming into a lot of money. Surely the police would have looked into their bank accounts as they do on all good detective shows. This would have shown without a doubt that they were innocent.
As I understand it sub postmasters get a salary from the post office but are also self employed so presumably they had their own accountants to prepare their accounts and tax returns. As a retired accountant from a small firm I would have hoped that if I had any such clients I would have been able to help them, and at least throw doubt on the system by analysing where the money had come from and gone to on a particular day. Was the Horizon system such that this information was not available?
For the future, I would suggest that damages should be independently assessed as they were after pension mis-selling.
Any chance that any individuals who profited are liable to asset seizure under the proceeds of crime legislation?
Watching the 2nd episode and seeing the Union Rep in the Fujitsu facility watching a demonstration of how easy it was to alter a supposedly secure account and steal 20,000 from a sub-Post Office in Wales, for instance, made me jump to the conclusion that all the money was stolen by those people in that office at Fujitsu. I bought a Fujitsu laptop years ago and it was crap. It lasted 18 months.
Looking at the salaries and bonuses paid to the senior executives, who then publicly claim they had no knowledge of the day to day running of the business they are responsible for, would someone explain how they get these positions and command such salaries?
If I were Nick Read I would be hanging my head in shame. As for Paula Vennells, she should be stripped of her CBE and made to return ALL her salies for the period she was in control and that money given to the victims!
Why would a Fugitsu operative demonstrate a system that way. Showing a outside Union rep manipulation on a live system that way. I would have thought the Horizon system would have had dummy branches set up for to constantly validate the system. He could then have demonstrated what he wanted on a none live branch. Incredulous.
What comes out clearly from those brought before court is how public money was used against them by the post office. They had the full force of the law being used due to a contract drawn up to protect only Horizon and the Post Office. This one sidedness should have been picked up by any good Judge and given further investigation. This still happens today where ordinary people are looked upon as guilty before innocent.
There are clearly numerous occasions where the Horizon has identified a shortfall; if this was due to an issue with the system, how often were there surpluses? Also this seems to have happened to a small but still significant number of branches over a considerable period of time. Surely these issues would have happened to every branch.
How many branches were closed from when Horizon was introduced and these issues started to become public knowledge (say around 2012)?
This is a system was fundamentally flawed from the outset-Post Office and Fujitsu with total control and Sub Postmaster being held totally responsible with no visibility of the transactions. Sub postmasters contracts that were proved to be not legally binding by Independent Second Sight. Post Office having their own internal systems which by passed the Police and CPS.
There were various faults with Horizon over various periods. Some problems were branch specific e.g. poor / faulty comms connections causing transaction failures, hardware failures, (keypads, PCs etc), which the system was not robust enough to handle / recover from. Others due to specific configurations e.g. branches with multiple positions had faults which did not occur at branches with a single position. On top of this sometimes software faults happen because of a specific sequence of events, which may occur infrequently or even never at some branches due to the type of entries being made.
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