Is It Possible to Trace Someone’s Signature and Make an Expert Think It’s Real?

Great question. So, the real question is, what’s the difference between tracing a signature, a natural signature, a simulated signature, or a disguised signature? And I’ll answer that right now. My name is Bart Baggett. I’m a forensic handwriting expert. I own handwritingexperts.com, and we help people around the world solve million-dollar forgery problems. A professional forensic handwriting examiner can tell a traced signature from a natural signature. And it’s actually pretty simple because tracing is the process of taking a piece of paper, putting it under a light source, and then slowly tracing it like an art project. And as the pen moves very slowly, it moves very differently on the fibers in the paper than it does when it moves fast.

Think about this. When you were a kid, you would drive a bicycle, right? I guess you’d ride a bicycle. You wouldn’t drive a bicycle. And if you went across water, you had to keep going pretty fast, and if you went across mud, you had to keep going fast because otherwise you’d fall down. Same thing with grass, right? Really heavy grass, you’ve got to keep going fast. Well, grass and paper are the same. It creates resistance. So, the more slowly you move, the more it wobbles. And so, just like a bicycle wobbles when you move too slow, a pen wobbles when you trace things or when you slowly disguise things.

And so a professional expert is looking for slow pen globs. The pen turns where the ink disappears. And then what they call quivers or hesitations. And basically, there’s a quiver, or what they call a forgery tremor, which is kind of like that bicycle wheel moving sideways. And so the slower you go, the more it’s obviously disguised handwriting or simulated handwriting, which is someone looking at it and simulating it. And someone is literally tracing over a light box. So, sure, if you have a professional, they can tell the difference. If you’re thinking about doing it because you’re going to forge somebody’s writing, trust me, you will get caught. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

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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