Forgery

Forgery School

To forge a signature, practice copying it by writing it backwards, upside down or both. This technique supposedly neutralises our personal handwriting tendencies.

This method is so yesterday.

Crude forgeries and deceptions - today's equivalents of Gianni Schicchi - are still attempted today, but modern fraudsters use word processors, image manipulating software like Photoshop, and other sophisticated electronic and mechanical resources to duplicate entire documents - wills, banknotes, contracts - as well as signatures.

In his day, writer Eustace Budgell was a bit of a somebody. The better-known essayist and poet Joseph Addison - co-founder of The Spectator, contributor to The Tatler - was his cousin. Budgell founded and contributed to The Bee, which enjoyed a two-year run. He was also wealthy enough to lose £20,000 (an enormous amount in the seventeenth century) in the South Sea Bubble.

When he inherited a fortune, his luck seemed to have improved - until he was accused of forging the will that provided the gift. Facing a court case that he was likely to lose, Budgell cheated justice by filling his pockets with stones, wading into deep water and drowning himself.

 

Forgery Fighters

Are they getting away with it? Some probably are, but the cops are keeping pace with the robbers, utilising ever more sophisticated equipment and techniques to trap the unwary.

In 1983 diaries surfaced that purported to those of Adolf Hitler, and at least one prominent Hitler expert pronounced them genuine.

However, modern chemical analysis of the paper easily exposed them as forgeries made after the death of the German dictator.

A vast array of other extraordinary techniques can be deployed against the bad guys.

A multipage will, for example, can be tested using spectral analysis to see if the pages were produced by more than one printer. Thus, a forged sheet inserted into a genuine will can be unmasked by the invisible 'signature' left by the printer.

Ink can provide clues. In analysing signatures, the chemical qualities of the ink can be determined using extremely sensitive digital microscopes.

Powerful microscopes can determine the amount of pressure applied by the pen to the paper, and stereo microscopes provide three-dimensional views. If the forger presses the pen harder or softer than the legitimate signer, the forgery can be detected.

Forgers of the traditional write-it-backwards method are now up against signature-detection experts who can determine if writing was done in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.

In 2004, a popular television news programme on America's CBS network obtained several 1970s memos pertaining to then-President George W Bush's military service. The memos were supposedly written by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, and they suggested that Mr Bush had received special treatment during the Vietnam War.

Were the documents genuine? Killian wasn't around to say yay or nay; by the time the document surfaced, he had been dead for 20 years.

So CBS relied on their tried and tested journalistic instincts, declared the documents authentic, and fell flat on their faces.

Although the memos dated from the era of the typewriter, they had been produced on a word processor using ordinary software. And ordinary teenagers could have pointed this out. In fact, many of them did, heightening the network's embarrassment .

 

Dinah Lambert and Lorna Maudsley: Case Study

For a tenner, the price of a pre-printed will form from a local stationer's, Dinah Lambert sought to inherit all of her widowed mother's estate instead of sharing it with three step-siblings.

In 1981 Dinah's fit and fiftyish mother, Lorna Maudsley, wrote a will dividing her estate between five children: Dinah and her brother Harold, and their three step-siblings. Lorna's late husband had these three children in an earlier relationship.

Over the next few years, Harold disappeared, so Lorna wrote a new will, dividing her estate into four rather than five shares.

In 2004, Lorna was in hospital, clearly approaching her end. Dinah bought and filled in a will form leaving virtually everything to herself. Her "witnesses" were her long-lost brother and his wife. She signed their names and also her mother's. The latter died three days after the date on the will.

Dinah also forged a cheque, helping herself to £8,000 from her mother's current account. Claiming that she was executing her mother's will, she turned over that money to her step-sisters and step-brother.

They were neither deceived nor bought off. Dinah's step-brother smelled a rat, the police uncovered the forgeries, and her brother said that he had not witnessed anyone sign the will. Dinah pleaded guilty shortly before her trial was scheduled to start, and she was jailed.

Clarkson, Hobbs and O'Connor

William Clarkson (d.1934) was a costume and wig maker who may or may not have written one or two holographic wills.

William Hobbs was a clerk, accounted and convicted fraudster. Edmund O'Connor was a not yet convicted solicitor.

Clarkson's will of 1929 left his residuary estate to Hobbs. His will of 1931 left everything to Max Brezinski and his daughter, despite the fact that this will was never found. A judge satisfied himself that it existed based on testimony by one witness who claimed that he had signed the will, and another court witness who testified that Clarkson has showed him the document.

This non-existent 1931 will was allowed but the larger case was not closed. Expert witnesses testified that the 1929 will was a forgery and that bleach had been used to eradicate parts of it. Hobbs got five, and O'Connor got seven, years in the slammer.