And can't the numbers be, I dunno, audited?!!?!!? WTF. Like, did all these numbers just get spit out to a jury and then these people were prosecuted? How in the hell?????
I'm not sure yet, but my impression is that the "Single Source of Truth" was an append-only message-list, written periodically to write-only CD-ROM. This was difficult to query, so extracts were pulled down to an investigator's workstation, to be processed into spreadsheet format, that the prosecutors and auditors could consume.
That conversion to spreadsheet-format was also unreliable, and required human intervention. So the data presented to the court wasn't the raw Single Source of Truth, but rather had been through a dodgy extraction process, in which human error was possible, and which resulted in Excel spreadsheets with hacked macros for "fixing" errors.
Excel itself is not famous for it's reliability and trustworthiness as accounting software.
I mean, the DOD/Pentagon has not been able to finish an audit and account for their finances to the GAO (General Accounting Office) for many years now. There's a proposal that they will be able to pass a clean audit in 2027.
