This is the second in a two-day series of reports (see Monday’s paper for part one).
By Kelly Young
news@jacksonvilleprogress.com
As both a private investigator and a hand writing expert for 25 years, Don Lehew has handled more than his share of forgery cases over the years. In Lehew’s experience, more and more unscrupulous people are engaging in forgery, which he calls “a very lucrative crime with very few consequences.”
“Forgery in this country continues to increase, particularly in the last few years. Twenty years ago, I was lucky to get one forgery case every two months — now I get three or four cases a month,” said Lehew.
Forgers use four basic methods to mimic a victim’s signature — tracing, simulating, practicing and cutting and pasting.
“One easy way to spot a forgery is by looking for two signatures that are congruent. If you find two signatures that are exactly the same, one of them is a forgery — 100 out of 100 times,” Lehew said. “In instances of cutting and pasting, I use an engineering grid. I don’t care how good you are, you cannot get the false signature to line up on the paper perfectly.”
Lehew said producing a good forgery isn’t easy, as each method presents its own challenges.
“If you take the time to trace somebody’s handwriting, you are going to go real slow, which causes the hand to tremor a little bit. If you practice it enough times that you can sit down and do it, you’re going to lose accuracy,” he said. “Accuracy and fluidity are the two keys. If I trace a signature I lose the fluidity, but if I practice it enough I lose the accuracy.”
According to Lehew, the fact that many notaries have because lackadaisical in their practices has greatly benefited forgers in America.
“You’ve got notaries that aren’t too particular on what they notarize. Many are very lax about keeping their log book. The first question I ask when I get something notarized is I ask them where their log book is. I may need for them to prove that they notarized it somewhere down the road,” Lehew said. If there is a document that is notarized on a will, I immediately write a letter to the notary, under the Texas Open Records Act, requesting a copy of that page in the log book. In times past, a notary seal was pretty valid, but nowadays a lot of them don’t maintain a log book, despite being required to in Texas.”
A personal favorite among his past forgery experiences was a case in which Lehew proved to a judge that the document was a forgery based on only one letter.
“This old boy, who couldn’t read or write, got his buddy to write his will down and witness it. The buddy wrote out the whole thing, and since he couldn’t write, he made his X. Eventually the man bought some land in West Texas and found out it had oil on it,” Lehew said. “The will was going to give everything to this guy’s ne’er-do-well brother, so the buddy gets to thinking that if he rewrote the will, all he would have to do is make the X.”
When the man died and the friend received the land, the deceased’s brother hired a lawyer. Lehew was charged with determining if the X was a fake.
“They sent me the will, and after looking at it I could tell that that booger was different. So I blew it up, showed it to the judge and he said to me, ‘Well I’ll be darned, that’s a forgery of the X isn’t it?’ That’s how capricious people are about forgery,” he said.
Lehew urges people who believe they are victims of forgery to seek legal assistance.
“The best thing you can do is to get a lawyer and make sure you get your money in civil court, which you are going to have to pay for. If a document doesn’t make sense to you, you are probably on the right track. Don’t just ignore the feeling — you should probably check into it,” Lehew said. “The public needs to be aware that there is a lot of this going on right now, and it generally doesn’t get prosecuted from a criminal standpoint. I cover the whole United States and all over Texas, but it is going on right here just as much as it is any other place.”
Don Lehew can be reached at 1-800-887-3788. Initial consultations are always free of charge.
