Being reported today that investigators were being paid a bonus per conviction...
Last month, Gary Thomas** – a former member of the Post Office security team between 2000 and 2012 – told the public inquiry there were “bonus objectives” for investigators.
Asked if influenced his actions, he said: “I’d probably be lying if I said no because … it was part of the business, the culture of the business of recoveries or even under the terms of a postmaster’s contract with the contracts manager.”
In an email sent in 2015, Thomas wrote that the Post Office was missing its profit targets because “we stopped getting £XX million (sic) from bloody good financial recoveries.”
He also said “…that there is FFFFiiinnn no ‘Case for the Justice of Thieving Subpostmasters’ and that we were the best Investigators they ever had and they were all crooks!!”
At the Inquiry, Thomas accepted this was “disgraceful” and apologised to “absolutely everybody” because “I’ve labelled absolutely everybody, so I can’t defend it”.
** Gary Thomas started his career in the Post Office as a counter clerk, rising to Crown Office branch manager, before joining the Security Team in 2000, moving to another role in 2012.
He had no previous experience of criminal investigations before joining the security team.
He went on a three week residential course, and before long he was carrying out investigations of sub-postmasters. Thomas describes the remaining training he got from the Post Office to be “minimal”. He left the Post Office in 2017.
Gary Thomas Let’s have a look at another one of the frontline plods who made it their business to investigate Subpostmasters and recommend them (or not) for prosecution based on what, at time…
www.postofficescandal.uk