Can a Handwriting Expert Really Tell if a Signature Is Forged?

Hi, I’m Bart Baggett. I’m a professional forensic document examiner. And yes, you bet. In fact, that’s what they’ve been doing for a hundred years, going to court and solving big crimes. You probably remember the whole Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Well, that was partially solved because a handwriting expert from the twenties examined the handwriting on the notes and the bank counter slips, which helped determine which of the suspects. So, for 100 years, they’ve been using handwriting.

Handwriting is brain-writing.

Handwriting is unique to you.

So, whether or not you learned to write cursive beautifully in school, or you’re one of the young ones who doesn’t write perfectly, they can still identify someone by their handwriting.

Now, the caveat is that forgeries can be beneficial, especially in art and memorabilia. So in our company, we don’t handle memorabilia autographs because they’re such a common forged thing. But when you get contracts and wills handwritten with a holographic will, the level of difficulty in forging an entire page of natural handwriting is so high.

And so, as you learn—you don’t need to learn if you’re a student—you would look for things like pen lifts; you’d look for tremors. You would look for disjointed, incorrect letters. The amateur just looks for size and maybe a wrong letter. That’s really only one piece of the puzzle because a professional will do side-by-side examinations, enlarge it by 500%, look under a microscope, look for the spin pen striations, look for the ink spots, and look for anything that’s similar and different.

And then here’s the key: a real court-qualified expert in forensic hand analysis will know what differences are significant and what are not significant. And the ones that are significant, if they completely outweigh the insignificant ones, it’s a forgery. However, if there’s similarity in internal congruency, then it’s probably the same writer. And so, it’s very complex. I have yet to see a software program that can do it accurately. I’m not sure that I will in my lifetime, but there are some that get close. But the understanding of 20 to 30 years of experience looking at handwriting is pretty key. So, if you get a court-qualified expert, if they’re properly trained, if they’ve been to court, and you give them the proper amount of quality and quantity, you can absolutely tell if a signature is forged.

Bart Baggett
The Nation’s Leading Forensic Handwriting Expert
CEO of Handwriting Experts Inc.
Forensic Document Examiner • Expert Witness • Legal Consultant
“We solve million dollar forgery cases.”

Telephone: 1-800-980-9030

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