The Chicago judge, indicted for taking bribes, had been told to surrender all his records. But he didn`t-he hid the incriminating items instead. Then one day the judge and his wife were seen by a neighbor burning large amounts of paper in a barrel. Only days before, an IRS special agent had left a business card with the neighbor, who in turn called the agent to report the bonfire.
The next day, agents seized the barrel and lugged it to a nondescript 8th-floor office in a downtown Chicago building, where forensic experts found the ashes therein highly interesting. Document expert Ellen Schuetzner, using a pancake spatula, pulled layer after layer of ashes from the bottom of the barrel, laid them on pieces of glass and humidified them. Then she put them into a black box, showered the ashes with infrared and ultraviolet light and there, like magic, were pieces of the judge`s records, legible enough to make the judge plead guilty.
All in a average day`s work for the forensic experts in the tiny, cluttered Wacker Drive offices that house the nation`s Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division`s Forensic Laboratory.
On other such days the IRS-CID has used a copy machine to incriminate an organized-crime figure, a voiceprint to help indict a murder suspect and a laser to pull latent fingerprints from drug money.
Paper detectives, they call themselves, chasing a paper trail to catch the bad guys with state-of-the-art electronic and computer tools-lasers, voiceprints, ultraviolet and infrared light, image-enhancement technology developed in the space program, polygraphs, electronic audio enhancement and other objects such as spatulas, blow-dryers, aquariums and Super Glue.
”The evolution to electronic and computer tools adds a certain mystique,” lab director Jack Calvert explains. ”When we can`t explain something, we just say it`s magic,” he jokes. ”But the truth is, everything is in the hands of our experts. Forensics is not like medicine or technology. It`s exact only to the extent that the expert knows his business. And our 26 experts are some of the best in their fields.”
And they can work their magic with any clue handed them. Money from a drug bust? They`ll look for fingerprint traces with a laser. Records supposedly written before 1980? They can test the paper and ink to see if either is that old. A signature? They can tell if it`s yours or a forgery. A scribble over something? In a matter of seconds they can be reading whatever is under the scribble. And we already know what they can do with ashes.
This unique lab`s reputation of high-tech tools and world-class expertise is so widespread that government agencies from across the globe have asked for advice. The IRS lab has shared techniques with Russia, Holland, Argentina and Japan and have worked on cases with Italy, Switzerland and Europe`s Interpol.
Why does the Internal Revenue Service have such a world-class laboratory? ”Ever since Al Capone`s day, federal agencies have used tax evasion as a workable way to bring professional criminals down,” Calvert says. ”For some reason, the bad guys don`t want to pay taxes on their illegal money. But they should know, as the old saying goes, that there are only two things people have to do in this life: pay their taxes and die. So we hit them where it hurts-in their money. And it works.”
In 1973, when the IRS separated from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the lab was formed for the Midwest area. It consisted of two men, one of whom was Calvert. Soon, though, because other areas had no such help, the Chicago lab became the IRS` National Forensics Lab. But because of the city`s central location, the laboratory stayed in Chicago instead of moving to Washington, and it quickly grew to its cutting-edge level.
But the lab`s experts can never rest on their innovations, however great they may be. Their work with the Drug Enforcement Agency is a good example. As the IRS lab helps expose drug dealers by finding hidden income and detecting money-laundering, they must constantly adapt.
Confiscated drug money was once cleansed for signs of narcotics, but that kind of evidence wouldn`t wash today because almost 95 percent of our currency has been contaminated with drugs, according to Calvert. The $20-dollar bill used to snort a line of cocaine is spent, rubs against other bills in a cash register and contaminates them. Thus experts now might have to do a latent-fingerprint search on $50,000 worth of bills to find four or five with a drug-dealer`s fingerprints.
Most of the lab`s work, though, involves white-collar criminals (”bad guys who think they can outsmart us,” Calvert says with a smile). ”It`s a paper chase. Sometimes I think it`s a game to the perpetrators. But their egos are our best ally. Some little quirk trips them up, and the little quirks are what we work with best.”
The offenders run the gamut from the multiple-tax-return filer who, in protest, tries to clog the system with return after return signed by the likes of Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Capt. Marvel to the drug dealer who is buying boats and homes and jewelry beyond his reported means.
Multiple filing is a scam attempted by many-even prison inmates-who think the system is so large that a few extra bogus returns should slip by. With substantial refunds, of course.
There was the Bahama scam in which IRS computers spit out 1,000 identical returns calling for $1,000 refunds. Each was signed by ”Robert A. and Mary C. Smith,” postmarked from the Bahamas and listed the same Bahamas post-office box as the return address. IRS street agents staked out the box, but nothing happened, so IRS-CID experts were called in. They examined the
”handprinting” of the signature. Expert Jim Davidson explains:
”Everybody`s handwriting has some characters that are uniquely written. We showed the agents the `Smiths` ” unique characters, then suggested they search the signatures for identical characters on the customs declaration cards from the Bahamas two weeks before and after the postmark date.”
Agents spent two days doing so and finally zeroed in on a couple in North Carolina, based on the wife`s handprinting. Handwriting exemplars (specimens) showed the couple to be the guilty filers.
And not all handwriting . . . is handwriting, agents have found. ”A man with no arms was suspected of perpetrating a multiple-filer scam,” Calvert remembers. ”We subpoenaed him to give us `handwriting` exemplars written with his toes. They matched.”
The forensic magic takes place in various lab departments. The ink-and-paper experts in the questionable-documents section can learn an amazing amount from what we write, how we write and where we write.
In a dark storage area between offices, Davidson, the division`s head, switches on an ugly black box-a Video Spectral Comparator-perched on an old gray-metal desk. Adjusting his wire-rim glasses, he picks up an envelope. On it, written in black ink, is ”I.B. Morrison, $1,300.00” along with a dark scribble on the edge.
”Watch,” he says as he sticks the envelope into the box and begins pulling a colored emulsion bar slowly through a slit. The bar is made up of filters, each a different light wavelength. Most inks will glow, vanish or reflect under different wavelengths, Davidson says. ”Remember how things look under black light? It`s the same principle.”
Inside the box, all the letters but ”I.B.M.” and ”$300” vanish, and under the now-almost-invisible scribble is the amount, ”$25.”
Along with data on every sort of paper manufactured in the U.S., the lab has the country`s most extensive ink library- 6,000 inks dating back 30 years. In fact, three of the country`s nine certified ink-and-paper experts are here. If a document`s date is known, it can be determined through a quick chemical separation whether the ink was available at that time.
The truth the lab uncovers, though, isn`t always to the prosecution`s liking. Recently, the IRS ink experts examined a police investigator`s notes from a Michigan murder trial, notes allegedly written at the scene of the crime in 1978. Some of the ink on the notes, though, had been manufactured only recently, so it was clear the notes had been doctored. ”That kind of case shows that we are not interested in convicting people but in finding the truth,” Calvert points out. ”We`d much rather help find someone innocent than guilty.”
In the next room, full nearly to the bursting point with government-issue desks and cabinets, Davidson points to another gizmo.
Remember the crafty whodunit detective who would rub a pencil across the top sheet of a phone pad to expose the message taken down on the page before it? The lab has a machine that will do the same thing-only better. It`s an ESDA-Electric Static Detection Apparatus. The ”indentation” document is humidified to lay flat, then covered with cellophane and flushed with toner that fills in the crevices. The ”clue” appears without ruining the original.
”In one case concerning eight bogus (tax) returns, I could tell from the indentations not only that they were done at the same time but in what order,” Davidson contends. ”When I testified in the trial, I actually numbered the returns in the order the defendant filled them out because he filled them out on top of each other. That`s how sensitive the ESDA is.”
