Embezzlers, forgers, insurance cheats and others who rob and defraud with a pen, printer or pixel, be warned: The video spectral comparator, the scanning densitometer and the indentation materializer are out to get you.
They are among the high-tech tools being used by members of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners to spot fakes, identify inks and bring out latent impressions left by the slightest pressure of pen, pencil or typewriter.
They have arrived none too soon.
”The number of ways to do forgery have greatly increased,” said James Horan, a New York City ”forensic document analyst,” as most members prefer to call themselves. The 106-member society is holding its 50th annual conference in Milwaukee this week.
Once, specialists like Horan-who, while commander of New York City`s police crime lab, linked the ”Son of Sam” notes to murderer David Berkowitz- needed only a sharp eye for handwriting irregularities, ink chemistry and the idiosyncrasies of typewriters. Now they also have to deal with the subtleties of photocopiers, computer printers and fax machines.
Things will get even more complicated when single-unit computer/printer/
cop ier/fax machines reach the market. Combined laser fax/printer/copiers are already here.
It will be hard to tell if a document originated as a photocopy, first-generation laser-printed copy from a word-processing program or a fax, and whether it sprang from the computer`s keyboard or from a modem or off a disk from another computer, said James Blanco in a paper submitted to the gathering on ”New Trends in Xerographic Technology.” Blanco is with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in San Francisco.
Clipping and pasting a signature from one document to another or obliterating or rewriting information in a document have become popular ways to attempt fraud with a photocopier.
In one case worked by Paul Osborn, president of the society and a New York City-based examiner, the defrauder produced a photocopied document that had Osborn`s client agreeing to a financial arrangement he denied ever accepting.
Osborn had the lawyers gather every document with his client`s signature that could have fallen into the defrauder`s hands. Then he painstakingly compared them until he found one that perfectly matched the one on the fraudulent document. It was on an innocuous receipt that had nothing to do with the case.
”Nobody ever writes their name exactly the same each time,” Osborn said.
But new technology can also favor the defrauder and counterfeiter. Laser printers and photocopiers have such fine resolution and color reproduction that they pose worrisome problems for law enforcement.
Bad-check artists can digitize authentic-looking checks and print them out on safety paper using desktop computer publishing systems, Blanco wrote. One leading brand of personal laser printer can even print the magnetic strip on the bottom of a bank check, using the proper font.
And a new digital color laser copier introduced in May by Xerox is so good, Blanco said, it can produce several hundred hues of each primary color with engraving-like clarity.
Dan Purdy, a chief document examiner with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, addressed the gathering on the benefits of digital image processors, or DIPs, in tracing photocopied documents. Such documents can be traced to the machine that produced them by focusing the DIP`s lenses on so-called ”trash marks”-dirt on a copier`s platen glass, or flaws in the machine`s imaging elements, Purdy said.
Other participants are reporting their successes in using new approaches to their Sherlockian science. Using a video scanner and a sophisticated new imaging editing program, Linda Hart won a worker`s compensation case for a migrant farm worker named Pasqual Diego.
The employer claimed Diego did not work on the day he said he was injured. As proof, an employee roster on the date in question was produced. Diego`s name was not on it, but the name ”Johnny A. Vega, Sr.” was, and apparently had been written over another name.
Working with a 200 percent enlargement, Hart, a Miami document examiner, was able to coax out the original and eliminate the overwrite, one pixel at a time. Diego`s name was there.
”The computer (program) is able to distinguish 256 shades of gray,”
said Hart. Some systems can separate more than 4,000 shades of gray, according to a paper submitted by Purdy. The best the human eye can do is 50.
But the heart of the document examiner`s work is, for many, still handwriting. Its inescapable nuances are capable of identifying someone as precisely as a fingerprint.
Gideon Epstein, chief forensic document analyst for the U.S. Justice Department, traced Nazi doctor Josef Mengele`s handwriting to the name he used to escape Europe after the war, Gregor Helmut. More recently, Epstein provided some of the more concrete evidence against deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Epstein told how he took handwriting samples from Noriega in jail, seeking to match it with that on drug documents in the case. Noriega did his best to change his handwriting, he said.
”It was not his free and natural writing,” Epstein said. But so impressively did Epstein match the form of the letters in the drug documents with the samples that the defense conceded the drug document writings were by Noriega.
One of the earliest handwriting analysis cases discussed this week was that of the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted of the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh`s infant son.
Along with the boards from Bruno Hauptmann`s attic used in the kidnapper`s ladder, it was Hauptmann`s handwriting in the ransom notes that helped convict him, said James Fisher, a former FBI agent who spoke to the group about the case and wrote a 1987 book, ”The Lindbergh Case.” The case is considered a landmark in forensic analysis.
”Years later, the American Academy of Forensic Science had experts review the evidence. They concluded the 1930s work was way ahead of its time,” Fisher said.
Handwriting analyst Clark Sellers found handwriting peculiarities in the ransom notes that were distinctly Hauptmann`s: among them, T`s that looked like cent signs, and S`s that looked like the number 7.
To make his point, Sellers extracted enough letters from the notes to assemble Hauptmann`s name. Then he juxtaposed them with the real thing and showed the jury. They were virtually identical.
”Hauptmann might just as well as signed his name to those documents,”
said Donald Doud, a society member who later worked with Sellers.
