Vodafone set internal targets for its security staff to collect at least £1.5m annually in fines from its own franchisees — the small business owners running its UK high street stores — while ring-fencing the proceeds to offset departmental costs, according to documents seen by the Guardian. The scheme, detailed in an internal "consequence matrix," included penalties as steep as £10,000 for errors that allegedly cost Vodafone just £7.08, with escalating punishments that could ultimately strip franchisees of their stores or terminate their contracts entirely. The revelations form part of a High Court claim brought by 62 former franchisees who allege Vodafone "unjustly enriched" itself by up to £85m through tactics that MPs have compared to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal — a reference to the long-running British miscarriage of justice in which sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted based on faulty accounting software — though Vodafone has called such comparisons "wholly inappropriate" and maintains the fines were designed to ensure regulatory compliance, not generate profit.