On March 28 I was honored to speak at the International Association of Scientists and Researchers conference on Forensic document examination which was held in New Delhi, India.

The conference which was delivered via Zoom featured speakers from #Egypt, #Turkey, #India, the #USA and other countries. My topic was “Little known secrets about altered documents.” The presentation featured examples from cases on which I have worked. The examples include methods discovered to find the winning numbers on a California lottery ticket, using alternate light sources and Photoshop to learn what was written below black scribbling on a real estate contract, using a microscope to show evidence of disguised writing, and other techniques for discovering altered documents.

People have learned to be creative in their alterations. One case involved a signature that was lifted from a PDF document then placed onto a Microsoft Word document. The person stretched the lifted signature so it would not comport with the source signature when they were overlaid onto each other. I used Photoshop to lift both signatures from their respective documents. The signatures were overlaid onto each other. One was shrunk vertically. At one point the matched perfectly. The copied signature had artifacts from the source that were visible when the colors were changed and the signatures were enlarged.

Although the conference started at 10:00 pm Pacific time, it was an excellent opportunity to learn from brilliant forensic document examiners from around the world. I left the meeting at approximately 2:00 am. Fortunately the presentations will be offered on the #IASR’s YouTube channel. Here is a link to the IASR conference schedule and speakers. If you have an opportunity, watch some of the presentations on the YouTube channel.