Questioned Documents/Ink Dating

Types of Forgery

There are four main types of forgery. The first is blind forgery, in which the forger has no idea what the signature to be forged looks like. This is the easiest type of forgery to detect because it is usually not close to the appearance of a genuine signature. This type of forgery will sometimes allow an examiner to identify who made the forgery based on the handwriting habits that are present in the forged signature. In order to perform this type of examination, an examiner needs known cursive writing samples of the suspected forger in order to compare the handwriting habits in the questioned signature to the habits in the known cursive writing.

The second (and probably most common) type of forgery is simulation, in which the forger has a sample of the signature to be forged. The quality of a simulation depends on how much the forger practices before attempting the actual forgery, the ability of the forger, and the forger's attention to detail in simulating the signature. This type of forgery is usually easily detectable by a trained document examiner when examining the original document or even a copy. Because the forger is trying to simulate the handwriting habits of someone else, the forger's own [Page 1318]handwriting habits are masked. Therefore, it is often difficult to identify who forged a simulation.

The third type of forgery is a tracing. A tracing can be done by holding the model document and the questioned document up to light and using a pen to trace the lines of the model signature onto the questioned document. A tracing can also be done by using a blunt stylus on the questioned document to create an impression of the model signature in the paper. This impression is then filled in with a pen to create the appearance of the model signature. If the model signature used by the forger is not found, this type of forgery is sometimes difficult to detect from a photocopy.

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