Police probe UK Post Office for accusing over 700 employees of theft. The culprit was an IT glitch

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

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. In fact, a faulty computer system was to blame. The Metropolitan Police said late Friday that it was investigating “potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions.” 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. Many were financially ruined, and some were sent to prison. The real culprit was a defective computer accounting system called Horizon. The long-simmering scandal stirred new outrage with the broadcast this week of a TV docudrama, “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office.”