Part 4 (1/2)
The signature, after being photographed, is carefully traced over with ink, and the body of the check is filled up for whatever amount is desired. The maker of the check is requested to identify the person who holds it, and as a general thing he does not wait to see the money paid. The moment his back is turned, the layer-down palms the small check and presents the large one. This way of obtaining money is without the a.s.sistance of a middle man. Private marks on a check are no safeguards at all, although a great many merchants believe they can prevent forgery by making certain dots, or seeming slips of the pen, which are known only to the paying teller and themselves. This precaution becomes useless when the forger uses the camera. Safe breakers are often called upon by forgers and asked to secure a sheet of checks out of a checkbook. When this is accomplished a few canceled checks are taken at the same time. These are given to the forger and he fills them up for large amounts, after tracing or copying the signature. The safe burglars receive a percentage on the amount realized. If your safe vault or desk is broken open, where your check-book is kept, carefully count the leaves in your check-book, also your canceled checks. If any are missing, notify the banks, and begin using a different style of check immediately. The sneak thief, while plying his trade, often secures unsigned bonds of some corporation which has put the signed bonds in circulation, leaving the rest unsigned until the next meeting of the directors.
Frequently unsigned bonds are left in the bank vault for safe keeping.
These are stolen and sent to the penman or ”scratcher.” Then a genuine signed bond is purchased, from which the signatures are copied and then forged. The same trick has been played on unsigned bank notes, but on the bank notes almost any name will do, as no person looks at the signature, as long as the note appears genuine.
The ingenuity of a countless army of sharpers is constantly at work in this country, devising plans to obtain funds dishonestly, without work, but, in fact, they often expend more time, skill, and labor in carrying out their nefarious schemes than would serve to earn the sum they finally secure, by honest labor. Every banker must, therefore, be on his guard, and should acquaint himself with the most approved means of detecting and avoiding the most common swindlers. This is just as necessary as it is to lock his books and cash in his safe before going home.
Next to the counterfeiter, the forger is the most dangerous criminal in business life. Transactions involving the largest sums of money are completed on the faith in the genuineness of a signature. Hence every effort should be made to acquire the art of detecting an imitation at a glance. This can be done only by considerable practice. It is a.s.serted that every signature has character about it which cannot be perfectly copied, and which can always be detected by an experienced eye. This is problematical, but certainly a skilful bank teller can hardly be deceived by the forgery of a name of a well-known depositor.
A banker should accustom himself to scrutinize closely the signatures of those with whom he deals. He should cut off their names from the backs of checks and notes, and paste them in alphabetical order in an autograph book devoted to that purpose, and compare any suspicious signature with the genuine one.
In consequence of the numerous frauds committed by forged checks, some of the European bankers have adopted the custom of sending with their letter of advice a photograph of the person in whose favor the credit has been issued, and to stop the payment when the person who presents himself at the bank does not resemble the picture. If this practice were to become universal, the object of preventing frauds could be well attained.
Instead of the signature being forged, the amount of a check, etc., may be altered. This is done either by changing the letters and figures, or by the use of an erasive fluid. The perfection with which the latter alteration can be performed is so complete that the most skilful eye cannot detect the imposture. A person may deposit a hundred dollars with a house in New York, and obtain their draft for that amount on Philadelphia; he then alters the one hundred to one thousand by erasing a portion of the letters and figures and cashes the draft at a broker's. The latter recognizes the signature, and has no suspicion of the fraud until too late.
The means to secure entire protection against this is by using an ink which cannot be erased by chemicals, or at least such chemicals as are familiarly known to the cla.s.s of criminals who make this a specialty.
Every well-regulated bank now uses a machine for punching or perforating a series of small holes in the check, so that any increase or decrease of the number of letters written is immediately detected.
Many banks have been swindled in the following manner: A check, say for ten dollars, is obtained from a depositor of a bank, and a blank check exactly like the filled-in check is secured. The two checks are laid one upon the other, so that the edges are exactly even. Both checks are then torn irregularly across, and in such a way that the signature on the filled check appears on one piece and the amount and name of the payee on the other. The checks having been held together while being torn, of course one piece of blank check will exactly fit the other piece of the filled check. The swindler then fills in one piece of the blank check with the name of the payee and an amount to suit himself, takes it with the piece of the genuine check containing the signature to the bank, and explains that the check was accidently torn. The teller can put the pieces together, and as they will fit exactly, the chances are that he will think that the pieces are parts of the same check, and becomes a victim of the swindle. The trick, of course, suggests its own remedy.
It is a well-known fact that there are banks in the country that have paid thousands of dollars on raised checks, and decided that it was cheaper for them to pocket the loss than to have the facts become known.
The New York Court of Appeals holds that the maker of a check is obliged to use all due diligence in protecting it, and the omission to use the most effectual protection against alterations is regarded as an evidence of neglect.
Here are a few points about raising checks and drafts that should be carefully noted: To successfully raise a check or draft requires so much less skill or art than to accomplish a forgery that it has of late become alarmingly prevalent. Often where a check or draft is printed on ordinary paper the original figures are removed by some chemical process so skilfully that no alteration can be detected, even with a strong magnifying gla.s.s.
It is not uncommon, when filling up checks or drafts, to take another pen, and with red ink write the amount across the face of the paper, and again make the figures in and through the signature. All these precautions may make tampering with the amount more difficult for a clumsy novice, but it only imposes a few moments' more work upon the accomplished manipulator. He takes his strong solution of chloride of lime and rain water, or other prepared chemicals, and with a pen suited to the purpose, by neutralizing and abstracting the coloring properties of the ink, he carefully obliterates such portions of the lines in the figures and written amounts as suits his purpose, then easily makes the alteration he desires, the red ink coming out as readily as black. And if the tint or coloring of the paper should have been affected by his cautious touch, he takes the proper shade of crayon or water-color, and carefully replaces the original shade.
Now, the signature not being touched, but remaining genuine, and the payer not being supposed to know who wrote the check, but only who signed it, he pays the amount specified, and the law holds the ”maker of the check responsible when there is nothing in its appearance to excite suspicion, and the signature is proven genuine.”
CHAPTER VII
THE HANDWRITING EXPERT
No Law Regulating Experience and Skill Necessary to Const.i.tute An Expert--Experts Held Competent to Testify in Court--Bank Officials and Employes Favored--An Expert On Signatures--Methods Experts Employ to Identify the Work of the Pen--Where and When an Expert's Services Are Needed--Large Field and Growing Demand for Experts--Qualifications of a Handwriting Expert--How the Work Is Done--A Good Expert Continuously Employed--The Expert and the Charlatan--Qualifying as an Expert--A System Which Produces Results--Princ.i.p.al Tests Applied by Handwriting Experts to Determine Genuineness--Identification of Individual by His Handwriting--How to Tell Kind of Ink and Process Used to Forge a Writing--Rules Followed by Experts in Determining Cases--The Testimony of a Handwriting Expert--Explaining Methods Employed to Detect Forged Handwriting--The Courts and Experts--What an Expert May Testify to--Trapping a Witness--Proving Handwriting by Experts--General Laws Regulating Experts--The Base Work of a Handwriting Expert--Important Facts an Expert Begins Examination With--A Few Words of Advice and Suggestion About ”Pen Scope”--Detection of Forgery Easy If Rules Suggested Are Observed--Expert Witnesses, Courts, and Jurors.
There is no rule of law fixing the precise amount of experience or degree of skill necessary to const.i.tute a handwriting expert. The witness need not be engaged in any particular business or claim to be a professional expert. He must, however, claim to have experience.
With that limitation, cas.h.i.+ers, paying tellers, other bank officers, attorneys, bookkeepers, business men, conveyancers, county officials, photographers, treasurers and clerks of railroads, etc., and writing teachers have in various cases been held competent to testify as an expert. And it has been held that experience with handwriting generally or specially will enable the witness to testify specially or generally thereto. Bank officials, and especially cas.h.i.+ers, tellers, and book-keepers, are usually regarded as competent by most courts to pa.s.s authoritatively upon handwriting.
Generally speaking, the witness must claim to be an expert, or at least show that he had the means of gaining experience. He need not claim to be an expert, but he must claim to have had such experience as will make him feel competent to express an opinion.
He may always give the reasons for his opinion, but he must confine his testimony to his opinion based on the handwriting itself, and not as affected by the facts of the case. He cannot state any inferences deduced from the facts. He must also testify himself. Evidence of what an expert has said with reference to a writing is inadmissible for the purpose of bringing that opinion before the court.
An expert may be tested with other papers in the case, but not with irrelevant papers, and the whole of the test paper must be shown him.
He is ent.i.tled to see it all.
Letter-press copies and duplicates made by writing machines are not originals and therefore cannot be used as a standard of comparison.