Forensic Document Examination

A forensic document expert pits his or her wits against fraudsters by identifying modifications to documents. They might do this by showing differences between the make-up of inks used to write the document and an ink used to modify the document; they might scrutinize print or type characteristics or handwriting style – differences might indicate changes; on the other hand, they might look for deletions from a document that might change its meaning – imagine a will that reads ‘My only son is not included in this final will and testament’: simply removing ‘not’ conveys the opposite meaning, and perhaps a great deal of money is inherited. In this chapter, I will explore some of the methods used by forensic document examiners to identify fraud, counterfeiting and forgery. Forensic document examination is an extensive field and I can only attempt to give a flavour of the crimes and methods used to expose them – the subject deserves an entire book, not just a chapter– and indeed there are many such books for the interested reader.