Part 6 (1/2)

The crossing of _t's_ and the dotting of _i's_ become matters of large moment in making comparisons of disputed handwritings. There is probably no matter in conjunction with a man's ordinary writing to which he gives less thought than the way he makes these crosses and dots. For that reason they are in the highest degree characteristic.

And it is precisely because of their apparently slight importance that the person who sets out to imitate another's handwriting or to disguise his own is likely to be careless about these little marks and to make slips which will be sufficient to prove his ident.i.ty.

Imitations of signatures are usually written in a laborious and painstaking manner. They are, therefore, decidedly unlike a man's natural signature, which is usually written in an easy fas.h.i.+on. The imitations show frequent pauses, irregularities in pen pressure and in the distribution of ink, and contain other evidences of hesitation.

Not infrequently the forger tries to improve on his work by retouching some of the letters after he has completed a word. Microscopic examination brings out all of these things and makes them tell-tale witnesses.

Comparison of handwriting is competent but is not itself conclusive evidence of forgery. Identification of handwriting is, if possible, more difficult than identification of the person which so often forms the chief difficulty in criminal trials. As illness, strange dress, unusual att.i.tude, and the like, cause mistakes in identifying the individual, so a bad pen or rough paper, a shaky hand and many other things change the appearance of a person's handwriting.

This kind of evidence ought never, therefore, to be regarded as full proof in trials where a handwriting is in dispute. Generally the best witness in a handwriting case is one who often sees the party write, through whose hands his writing has been continually pa.s.sing, and whose opinion is not the result of an inspection made on a particular occasion for a special purpose.

CHAPTER IX

GREATEST DANGER TO BANKS

Check-Raising Always a Danger--A Scheme Almost Impossible to Prevent--The American Bankers' a.s.sociation the Greatest Foe to Forgers--It Follows Them Relentlessly and Successfully--Chemically Prepared Paper and Watermarks Not Always a Safeguard--Perforating Machines and Check Raisers--How Check Perforations Are Overcome--How an Ordinary Check Is Raised--How an Expert Alters Checks--How Perforations Are Filled--Hasty Examination by Paying Tellers Encourages Forgers--The Way Bogus Checks Creep Through a Bank Unnoticed--A Celebrated Forgery Case--Forgers Successful for a Time Always Caught--Where Forgers Usually Go That Have Made a Big Haul--A Professional Crook Is a Person of Large Acquaintance.

Raising checks has become the greatest danger to the banks. There is no comparison between raising checks with a genuine signature and forging the signature itself, so far as ease of execution is concerned. After many years of arduous work and after great expenditures of money the banks have to admit sorrowfully that if a man wants to raise a check he can do it; and the detection, while, of course, inevitable when the paid check returns to the depositor, is not immediate enough to prevent the swindler from getting away with the money.

That is why the most implacable enemy of the men who dare raise or falsify a check is the American Bankers' a.s.sociation. This great concern in reality is a protective a.s.sociation, and it relentlessly hunts down all forgers first, last, and all the time. It never lets up, absolutely never, no matter time, money, or trouble. It bitterly pursues defaulters for the sake of justice, but it has still another object in its deadly trailing of forgers and check tampereus. That is because the whole banking structure hangs on signed paper. When it can be altered with impunity, away goes the financial system of to-day.

Hence the unrelenting hunting-down of forgers who trifle with men's names. On the books of more than one large detective agency of the country are cases more than ten years old. The forgers never have been found, but the hunt still goes on. Reports of the chase come in regularly and the books will not be closed until the hunt stops at prison doors or beside a grave.

Yet with all this remorseless hunting, check-raising flourishes so well all over the United States that the banks fear to give even a hint as to the sums of which they or their depositors are robbed each year. The magnitude of the amount would frighten too many persons.

For a time it was thought that the use of chemically prepared paper would prove a safeguard, because any erasure or alteration would show immediately. The chemicals used in its composition would make the ink run if acids were used to change the figures. But among the check-raisers there were chemists just as clever as the chemists who devised the prepared paper.

Then paper with watermarks woven through it was used. But it, too, became an easy mark for the chemists who had gone wrong.

Finally, and until recently, the banking world thought that it had struck the absolute safeguard by using a machine to stamp on the check the exact amount for which it was drawn, the machine perforating the paper as it stamped it. Certainly it does seem that when the paper is cut right out of the check, leaving nothing but holes, no change is humanly possible. But the completeness of this supposed safeguard has offered a tempting field for the check-raiser.

A special detective in the employ of the American Bankers'

a.s.sociation, who has spent half the years of his mature life in running down forgers and check-raisers, said that it was ”too easy” to raise checks, and that a good many more men than try it now would do it were it not for the well-known relentlessness of the a.s.sociation in running down offenders against any single one of its const.i.tuent members.

”Write me a check for any sum you want,” said the sleuth, ”and I'll show you.”

A check for $200 was written and pa.s.sed over to him. In less than two minutes, without an erasure of any kind, the check called for $500, and the work was done so well even in that short time that the writer would have been tempted to believe that he had made an error and really drawn the check for that amount had he not been sure to the contrary.

”That kind of raising is easy,” said the expert. ”You see it demands no interlining or extending of words. The check-raiser simply knows how well certain characters lend themselves to changes that cannot be detected. The capital _T_ in almost every man's handwriting can be changed to a capital _F_ without any trouble by even an unskilled crook.”

A check for $2,000 was raised to $50,000 almost in the wink of an eye.

”This is the easy and safer part of the business,” said he. ”But when a check is to be raised from a sum like $10 to, say, $10,000, and the drawer has written it so that there is no room between the word 'ten'

and 'dollars,' chemicals must be used. There is always more danger of detection in that. In the mere alteration of a check there is little.

Look here. I'll change your checks as fast as you can write them, and I bet a lot of my alterations will pa.s.s muster.”

A pad was hauled out and the writer filled the sheets out with carefully written amounts. The expert was as good as his word. He altered them almost as fast as they were written. Some, to be sure, were crude and would have betrayed the fact of alteration to the eye of any careful banker. But many were almost perfect, and all were wonderfully deceptive and showed what could be done by a crook who had plenty of time.

”But how about the perforations?” he was asked. ”How could a crook change them?”