Expert Solutions
Questioned Documents
FSS has a highly specialised and experienced team dedicated to the forensic study of documents. This covers a wide range of material, from letters, wills, contracts and bonds, to bank notes, cheques and credit cards.
The skills employed are well-established and proven in their effectiveness in detecting forgeries and identifying distinguishing features of inks, papers and writing styles that can serve as evidence to help secure a conviction.
Amongst the many areas of examination is the identification of the author of disputed handwriting to the exclusion of all others, and signatures can be examined to determine if they are genuine or a forgery. Graffiti, including “tags”, can also be compared to give an indication of the writer.
The detection and decipherment of indented impressions, often left behind when writing is made on a piece of paper while it is resting on others, can establish the origin and “history” of a document, link documents together, and in some case sequence entries, detect substitutions and date documents relative to one another.
Using specialised techniques, documents can be examined to detect alterations, additions, erasures and obliterations, and the paper, ink and printing substrate can be examined to distinguish between them.
Office equipment such as typewriters, laser printers, inkjet printers and photocopiers can leave behind identifying features on a piece of paper, which cannot be discerned with the naked eye. Such documents can be examined to determine association with each other or with the machine which produced them, and counterfeits examined to determine if they originate from the same source. The ribbons from typewriters and facsimile machines also hold information which can be read using our specifically designed equipment.
The painstaking work extends to the re-assembly of shredded documents – a process that is done entirely by hand – and the retrieval of information from documents that have been damaged, for example by burning or submersion.
The FSS also operates a malicious communications database that can compare and match the style of writing or drawings in abusive letters, ranging from disputes between neighbours to death threats made to public figures.