Thinning the Herd: How Institutions Quietly Crush Financial Crime Victims

What do you do when you’re the victim of a life-altering financial crime—only to find the very institutions meant to protect you are working against you?

You’re not alone. And you’re not imagining it.

We saw it in the Post Office scandal, one of the most shameful episodes in modern British justice. But this tactic—the quiet, calculated crushing of legitimate claims—isn’t unique to the Post Office. It’s happening across multiple state-backed bodies. It has a name: “thinning the herd.”

And it’s every bit as brutal as it sounds.

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The Playbook of Power: Suppress, Stall, and Silence

In an internal 2019 email revealed during the Post Office court battle, solicitor Andrew Parsons (yes, still a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson) laid it out in black and white.

Here’s the strategy:

• Avoid early settlement to stop others coming forward.
• Delay justice, hoping victims give up or run out of funds.
• Pick off weaker claims using technicalities like being “time-barred.”
• Reduce group size until the economics of justice no longer stack up.

In their own words: “By thinning the herd, you undermine the economics of the group.” Less claimants = less damages = less pressure. It’s not justice. It’s a war of attrition.

And who funded this legal onslaught? You guessed it—taxpayers’ money.

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This Isn’t Just About the Post Office

Let’s be clear—this isn’t an isolated case. It’s a blueprint being used in broad daylight by other state institutions too. Here’s where the same playbook may be in play:

🚔 Law Enforcement & Investigations

• Action Fraud, City of London Police, even the National Crime Agency—overwhelmed and under-resourced, some reports simply vanish.
• Serious Fraud Office often settles high-profile cases quietly with no real accountability.

⚖️ Regulators Meant to Protect You

• FCA fines the firms, but what happens to victims?
• ICO? Only useful if your data was stolen—what if your life savings were?

💼 Compensation Bodies

• Financial Ombudsman Service once free and accessible, now charges £250 for legally represented claims.
• FSCS can take years to process, often too little too late.

🏛️ Government Oversight?

• Departments like HMRC, Companies House, and Insolvency Service can investigate—but often only after mass damage is done.
• And where are the MPs when hundreds are left ruined? Many raise the flag—but others look the other way.

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Justice, But Only If You Can Afford It

Let’s be honest: fighting financial crime in Britain today feels like trying to climb Everest in flip-flops.

The Post Office spent millions to avoid accountability. Victims had their lives shattered. Many still wait for compensation. Others have died waiting.

And still—nobody’s gone to jail.

Why? Because the real purpose of “thinning the herd” isn’t legal efficiency. It’s about protecting the hierarchy. Suppressing precedent. Preventing justice from becoming contagious.

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So, What Now?

You deserve better. We all do.

This isn’t just about justice—it’s about restoring trust in the institutions we fund and rely on. But trust must be earned, not enforced.

So here’s the challenge:

• Don’t stay silent. Share these truths.
• Hold institutions to account. Ask your MP what they’re doing about it.
• Demand systemic change. Not just apologies—but reform, compensation, and prosecutions.

Because unless we stop the thinning of the herd, we’ll keep seeing good people sacrificed to protect bad systems.

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🗣️ Over to You

Have you—or someone you know—been stonewalled by one of these bodies? What would real justice look like to you?

Let’s name the tactics. Call out the players. And build a system that works for the people—not just the powerful.

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The Evidence

From: Andrew Parsons
Sent: Sunday, 9 June 2019
To: Ben Foat; Rodric Williams
Subject: RE: Group Litigation – Annual Report and Accounts – Disclosure

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Ben,

The concern at the outset was that any early settlement would be seen as conceding the Cs arguments on the SPM contracts and Horizon. This would then possibly open the floodgates to more claims. So the plan was for Post Office to try to secure some positive decisions in its favour before broaching the topic of settlement.

The strategy was to contest the Common Issues trial, because based on the advice from Counsel, Post Office should win on most points. With the Common Issues expected to be resolved in PO’s favour, either the Cs funding would collapse or they might walk away for a modest settlement that, when viewed against a positive Common Issues judgment, would not set a dangerous precedent. With this in mind, before the CI judgment was handed down we had already agreed a mediator with Freeths and had begun planning for settlement discussions.

Further, Post Office had Deloitte review the Horizon system at the outset of the litigation and they advised that Horizon was robust and extremely unlikely to be the cause of shortfalls in branches. This therefore gave us a back-up plan in case a resolution didn’t come immediately in the wake of the Common Issues judgment. Deloitte gave us a degree of confidence in winning the Horizon trial, and that might then cause the Cs funding to collapse or a modest settlement would be possible.

If this didn’t work, then the next step was to “thin the herd”.

By this we meant identifying sub-groups of Claimants whose claims could be defeated on a technicality or legal point. For example, trying to strike out all the time-barred claims. By “thinning the herd” you undermine the economics of the group.

Less Claimants means less damages which makes the funder’s return on investment lower to the point where they would prefer to settle rather than invest more money.

The strategy was never to seek an outright win through the Court process, for that would mean ultimately defending 500+ individual claims in 500+ separate trials (because the cases turn on their own facts and the utility of dealing with them as a group gradually erodes as more “group issues” are resolved and you are left with individual issues).

Even if Post Office’s legal case was perfect, securing a full resolution through the Courts would take years and be massively disproportionately expensive. Hence, the above plan to build leverage and air cover through the Court process to force a settlement or a collapse of the litigation.

I hope this helps explain why there hasn’t been an overall opinion on the merits of the litigation in general.

Kind regards,
Andrew Parsons

Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP

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​Andrew Parsons, still a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, played a significant role in the legal strategies employed by the Post Office during the Horizon IT scandal. His actions have come under scrutiny, particularly during the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.​postofficescandal.uk+8lawgazette.co.uk+8ft.com+8en.wikipedia.org+3postofficescandal.uk+3YouTube+3

Key Aspects of Andrew Parsons’ Involvement:

• Advising Against Apologies: In 2013, Parsons recommended that the Post Office remove apologies from communications with sub-postmasters, suggesting a “cold, procedural approach” to avoid admitting culpability. ​lawgazette.co.uk+4en.wikipedia.org+4theguardian.com+4
• Disparaging Remarks: In 2015, he referred to sub-postmasters Jo Hamilton, Noel Thomas, and Seema Misra as “liars and criminals” in internal communications, proposing to challenge their credibility publicly. ​ft.com+5postofficescandal.uk+5postofficescandal.uk+5
• Litigation Tactics: Parsons discussed strategies to prolong litigation to increase costs for the claimants, aiming to pressure them financially. ​lawgazette.co.uk+1en.wikipedia.org+1
• Document Disclosure: He advised limiting written records and suggested verbal notifications to insurers to avoid creating a paper trail, potentially hindering transparency. ​theguardian.com+2postofficescandal.uk+2ft.com+2

During the inquiry, Parsons acknowledged that some of his language was “too strong” and expressed regret over certain decisions, but he maintained that his firm acted appropriately overall. ​en.wikipedia.org+4lawgazette.co.uk+4postofficescandal.uk+4

His involvement exemplifies the adversarial legal strategies that contributed to the prolonged suffering of many sub-postmasters affected by the Horizon IT system failures.​en.wikipedia.org+5en.wikipedia.org+5ft.com+5

For a more in-depth understanding, you might find this video from the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry insightful: