Either this story was not widely covered in the US, or I just missed it until now.
The British post office went from paper book keeping and records to computers around 2000. A subsidiary of Fujitsu created a program for them, but it malfunctioned and showed that lots of small contracted out offices were missing money.
People lost their government contracts to run their small offices in these small towns, hundreds were prosecuted for theft, people mortgaged their homes to repay the “shortages”, people spent time in prison, and some committed suicide after they were financially ruined. Not to mention the loss of reputation to these small business owners who looked like embezzlers.
And when people called the “help desk” to try to sort out how this could have possibly happened, they were all told it was only them, and that no one else was having any issues, even though they knew the problem was widespread.
And the government/postal service fought very hard to not repay people and drag it out forever even though they knew damn good and well it was their program at fault. Some people died of old age before getting repaid or vindicated.
What a nightmare for people. Anyway, they have reluctantly paid out a couple hundred million to their victims, but many accuse officials of still dragging their feet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036
Did anyone else hear about this over the last 10 years or so?
