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.