[zinok]

Post Offices handle a large amount of cash, much more than any other business of their size. Many of the sub-post offices in question would be paying out pensions and welfare benefits in cash to a large proportion of local customers. If someone was stealing from the post office, they could easily do so in cash.

[ClumsyPilot]

So 500 peiple stole millions and the prosecution cannot show where a single penny went, noone even got a new car or TV? Did they eat the money?

And all the evodence the prosecution has are electronic records, entirely in their control, which they could fake and which were never checked by a third party for basic errors? This is a colossal miscarriage of justice

[lupire]

It's hard to spend $70K in cash, though.

[zinok]

Perhaps it is, but if there had been credible evidence of a theft 'I would not have been able to spend all that money in cash' is not the basis of a solid defense.

There have been genuine cases where accountants, bank managers, and so on have embezzled large sums of money, including in cash, and spent it all untraceably on things like feeding a gambling addiction.