CHAPTER XII

SIGNATURE EXPERTS THE SAFETY OF THE MODERN BANK

A New Departure in Banks—­Examining All Signatures a Sure
Preventive Against Forgery—­The “Filling-in” Process—­How One Forger
Operated—­Marvelous Accuracy of a Paying Teller—­How He Attained
Perfection—­How Signature Clerks Work—­A Common Dodge of Forgers—­Post
Dated Checks—­A System That Prevents Forged and Raised Checks—­Not a
Forged or Raised Check Paid in Years.

[The following article has been kindly contributed by the manager of one of the largest English banks, located in London.]

One of the most trying positions in our business, is that of signature expert—­the man who has to examine daily every draft that comes in through the clearing house and vouch for its genuineness.  Our bank, one of the largest in London, employs six clerks who do nothing all day long but examine checks, and when I tell you that it is no uncommon thing for 10,000 drafts to come in during a single day you will understand that the job is not altogether the sinecure it is popularly supposed to be.

These clerks have not only to scrutinize the signatures both of drawer and drawee, but also examine the “filling-in,” the latter being just as important, perhaps more so from a monetary point of view, as the signatures.  As a matter of fact, the commonest forgery with which we have to deal is the “raising” of checks, and a forger of this nature generally chooses a check bearing a genuine signature but having very little “filling-in.”

For instance, he knows that it would not be difficult to raise a check from L3 to L3000, for all he has to do is to erase the word “pounds,” insert the word “thousand,” and then add the erased word again.  I have seen plenty of this kind of work during the time I have been examining checks.

One of the most impudent pieces of forgery, however, that I ever came across was a check raised from L5 to L500.  The forger had evidently relied on colossal impudence carrying him through, for he had simply added a couple of ciphers and then between the words “five” and “pounds” had placed an omission mark and written the word “hundred” above, adding the initials of the drawer of the check just to give the thing a look of careless genuineness.

It was so astounding a piece of cool audacity that we had bets on the check, two of my assistants declaring it to be O.K., while the other three and myself declared it to be a forgery.  Further inquiries, of course, proved that the opinion of the majority was the correct one.

It is marvelous what a vast number of signatures some paying tellers will carry in their mind’s eye, as it were, and thus be able to pass checks by the thousand without once having to refer to the signature books.  We had a paying teller here a few years ago who was little less than a wonder.  He knew perfectly the signatures of at least 5000 customers, and could detect the alteration of a stroke in any one of them in an instant.