GREATEST DANGER TO BANKS

Raising checks has become the greatest danger to the banks. There is no comparison between raising checks with a genuine signature and forging the signature itself, so far as ease of execution is concerned. After many years of arduous work and after great expenditures of money the banks have to admit sorrowfully that if a man wants to raise a check he can do it; and the detection, while, of course, inevitable when the paid check returns to the depositor, is not immediate enough to prevent the swindler from getting away with the money.

That is why the most implacable enemy of the men who dare raise or falsify a check is the American Bankers’ Association. This great concern in reality is a protective association, and it relentlessly hunts down all forgers first, last, and all the time. It never lets up, absolutely never, no matter time, money, or trouble. It bitterly pursues defaulters for the sake of justice, but it has still another object in its deadly trailing of forgers and check tampereus. That is because the whole banking structure hangs on signed paper. When it can be altered with impunity, away goes the financial system of to-day. Hence the unrelenting hunting-down of forgers who trifle with men’s names. On the books of more than one large detective agency of the country are cases more than ten years old. The forgers never have been found, but the hunt still goes on. Reports of the chase come in regularly and the books will not be closed until the hunt stops at prison doors or beside a grave.

Yet with all this remorseless hunting, check-raising flourishes so well all over the United States that the banks fear to give even a hint as to the sums of which they or their depositors are robbed each year. The magnitude of the amount would frighten too many persons.

For a time it was thought that the use of chemically prepared paper would prove a safeguard, because any erasure or alteration would show immediately. The chemicals used in its composition would make the ink run if acids were used to change the figures. But among the check-raisers there were chemists just as clever as the chemists who devised the prepared paper.

Then paper with watermarks woven through it was used. But it, too, became an easy mark for the chemists who had gone wrong.

Finally, and until recently, the banking world thought that it had struck the absolute safeguard by using a machine to stamp on the check the exact amount for which it was drawn, the machine perforating the paper as it stamped it. Certainly it does seem that when the paper is cut right out of the check, leaving nothing but holes, no change is humanly possible. But the completeness of this supposed safeguard has offered a tempting field for the check-raiser.

A special detective in the employ of the American Bankers’ Association, who has spent half the years of his mature life in running down forgers and check-raisers, said that it was “too easy” to raise checks, and that a good many more men than try it now would do it were it not for the well-known relentlessness of the association in running down offenders against any single one of its constituent members.

“Write me a check for any sum you want,” said the sleuth, “and I’ll show you.”

A check for $200 was written and passed over to him. In less than two minutes, without an erasure of any kind, the check called for $500, and the work was done so well even in that short time that the writer would have been tempted to believe that he had made an error and really drawn the check for that amount had he not been sure to the contrary.

“That kind of raising is easy,” said the expert. “You see it demands no interlining or extending of words. The check-raiser simply knows how well certain characters lend themselves to changes that cannot be detected. The capital T in almost every man’s handwriting can be changed to a capital F without any trouble by even an unskilled crook.”

A check for $2,000 was raised to $50,000 almost in the wink of an eye. “This is the easy and safer part of the business,” said he. “But when a check is to be raised from a sum like $10 to, say, $10,000, and the drawer has written it so that there is no room between the word ‘ten’ and ‘dollars,’ chemicals must be used. There is always more danger of detection in that. In the mere alteration of a check there is little. Look here. I’ll change your checks as fast as you can write them, and I bet a lot of my alterations will pass muster.”

A pad was hauled out and the writer filled the sheets out with carefully written amounts. The expert was as good as his word. He altered them almost as fast as they were written. Some, to be sure, were crude and would have betrayed the fact of alteration to the eye of any careful banker. But many were almost perfect, and all were wonderfully deceptive and showed what could be done by a crook who had plenty of time.

“But how about the perforations?” he was asked. “How could a crook change them?”

“Nothing easier,” was the reply. “The fact that checks stamped with the amount in perforated characters are considered safe aids the swindler. Really, to beat the perforations is so easy that it will make you smile. All the outfit that is needed is a common little punch with assorted small cutting tubes and a bottle of an invisible glue that every crook can make or that he can buy in certain places that every crook knows. Now, here is a check stamped in perforated characters $300$. I take my little punch and fit into it a cutter that will punch holes of the same size as the holes in the perforations.

“Now I punch out of the edge of the check a few tiny disks. I moisten the tip of a needle and press them carefully into the holes that make the upper part of the figure 3. See, even in my haste and without glue, they fill the perforations completely and I can shake and pull the check without disturbing them.”

It was true. The little plugs fitted perfectly, and even with the knowledge that they were there it was almost impossible to see where they had been inserted.

“Now,” continued the expert, “I merely take my punch and carefully punch enough holes to the right of the upper part of the figure 3 to make it a 5. And there you are. If I wanted to pass this check through the bank I would only have to complete the job by smearing a drop of the invisible glue over the back where I have plugged the original holes. This glue is wonderfully tenacious and will actually hold the edges of paper together. It needs only the smallest surface in order to get hold. After it is on not even the microscope could detect it readily. And no amount of pulling or shaking of the check will disturb it.

“You may suppose that a check that is stamped this way, for instance $600$ would be hard to change into one of four figures. But it is almost equally easy. The crook simply punches out enough disks from the edge to fill up the last dollar mark completely, and after he has plugged it and the glue is dry he punches a cipher into the place and then punches a dollar mark after it. Of course, after punching the little disks out of the edge of the check it is necessary to trim that part of the paper, but that is done readily, for checks always have ample margin.

“The check-raiser does not depend on the fact that the scrutiny of checks in a large bank is bound to be hasty, but he knows that he need not fear if his work is at all well done, for the paying teller simply cannot spend much time in examining the many checks that are passed in.

“One New York City bank sends through the clearing-house daily an average of 3,100 checks, and as there are about sixty-five such banks in the clearinghouse the total number of checks handled in the few hours of business in a day is something enormous.

“It is this haste which, by the way, is absolutely necessary in order to keep the books posted to date that is responsible for the passing of one of the most peculiar checks that ever came under the notice of the detectives of America. In this case the check was neither falsified nor was the signature forged, but it was bogus just the same.

“It was a check made up of the parts of two checks, and all the implements necessary for falsification were a pair of scissors and that invisible glue. The clever swindler had got hold of two genuine checks from the same bank. One was for $1,000 and the other for $70. Placing these two checks together, one on top of the other, he cut them through neatly with the scissors. Then he pasted that portion bearing the word ‘seventy’ on the one check to that part bearing the word ‘thousand’ on the other. So the composite check read to pay to the holder ‘seventy thousand’ dollars. As the cutting was made through both checks in exactly the same place, the edges fitted perfectly. They were glued together and the check readily passed the bank cashier. The man was caught and made restitution without publicity, but the case gave bankers a shock. Other somewhat similar cases are known, but none involving such a large amount.

“A famous case was the celebrated Seaver fraud. He bought a draft for $12 from the Bank of Woodland (Cal.), and, although it was written on chemical ‘safety’ paper and perforated in two places with a check punch, he raised it to $12,000, and it was passed successfully and paid.

“But however successful they may be for a time, it is the fatal hoodoo of this ‘most gentlemanly’ way of making a living without earning it that a forgery is always discovered and the forger generally caught. That is because the forged check remains in existence and must be paid by some one, and sooner or later there will be an outcry. The best the raiser can hope for is to escape before the crime is discovered.

“Once the false check is passed and he has the money, his first idea is as to where he shall hide. Another fatality attaching to his peculiar business is that the same place that he thinks of flying to is the place that suggests itself to the mind of the thief-chaser. In other words, knowing their man, the man-hunters can guess well where to find him.

“If a forger wants to bury himself, he thinks of South America, because it is easy to get there, and apparently out of the world. Then, of South America, he probably only thinks of Venezuela, or closer home of Guatemala or Panama. So the South American hunt is simplicity itself, as there are not so many large ports that strange Americans can pass through unnoticed.

“If a forger wants to continue in his crooked business he thinks of London, Paris, Berlin, and maybe Vienna. We guess at his calibre and whether he wants more money, and know where he probably will go to get it, for the professional crook has an international acquaintance, and he only goes among friends. So we follow him.

“If a forger is an adventurous spirit and committed the crime on impulse, and we could learn absolutely nothing more about him, we would look in that Mecca of adventurers, South Africa, for him. In fact, our first business is to learn what kind of a man he is, then shut our eyes and guess which one of a few places he will fly to. The guess often is so good that our men await him when the steamer lands there. If not, we don’t forget the sailing vessels.”