Questioned Documents

QD services cover the following examination types:

•       The comparison of Handwriting.
•       The comparison of Signatures.
•       The examination and comparison of indented impressions of handwriting.
•       The non-destructive comparison of inks.
•       The examination of altered documents.
•       The examination of obliterated or crossed-out entries.
•       The examination of erased or faded entries.
•       The non-destructive examination and comparison of paper.
•       The association and reconstruction of torn, cut and shredded documents.
•       The examination and comparison of printing and copying machines and their outputs.

The above examination types may be used individually or together to solve a wide variety of investigatory problems.   The QD team has provided expert evidence in many high-profile cases over the years.

QD tasks may present in a variety of ways.  Some examples are:

• Prove that a particular person wrote a piece of handwritten hate mail.
• Prove that a particular person wrote handwritten Organised Crime Group plans.
• Prove that a signature on a Will is a simulation of the genuine signature style.
• Find and decipher indented impressions of writing on a ransom note and link these to handwriting seized from a suspect.
• Prove that a printed contract was produced using a specific laser printer.
• Demonstrate that a page in a printed contract was replaced with a different printed page.
• Demonstrate that a typewritten provenance document purporting to be from the 1970s was actually created recently.

  

Recent research by EFS has allowed us to establish a method to link plain A4 paper to the individual ream that it came from and to identify the original manufactured sequence of production of the pages in a ream.  Under the right circumstances this method can provide powerful evidence to:

• Identify substituted pages in a document even when the paper is of identical manufacture.
• Identify that apparently different documents were printed onto paper from the same ream in consecutive manufactured sequence (for example to create a range of false back dated documents.
• Link paper to a specific paper source such as the paper drawer of a printer.