24. CHAPTER XXIV.
CHEMICO-LEGAL INK (CONTINUED).
FAMOUS CASE OF CRITTEN V. CHEMICAL NATIONAL BANK—STORY OF THE CASE
INCLUDED IN THE OPINION OF THE COURT OF APPEALS AS WRITTEN BY JUSTICE
EDGAR M. CULLEN—THE PINKERTON CASE OF "BECKER"—STORY OF HOW HE SECURED
$20,000 THROUGH THE ALTERATION OF A $12 CHECK—BECKER'S COMMENTS ABOUT
HIMSELF—A CRITICISM OF BECKER AND HIS WORK—NAMES OF SOME CASES IN
WHICH CHEMICAL EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED TO COURTS AND JURIES.
THE books contain no clearer or more forcible exposition of
"Chemico-legal" ink, in its relationship to facts adduced from
illustrated scientific testimony, than is to be found in the final
opinion written by that eminent jurist Hon. Edgar M. Cullen on behalf of
the majority of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, in the
case of De Frees Critten v. The Chemical National Bank. It was the
author's privilege to be the expert employed in the lower court about
whose testimony Judge Cullen remarks (N. Y. Rep., 171, p. 223) "The
alteration of the checks by Davis was established beyond contradiction,"
and again, p. 227, "The skill of the criminal has kept pace with the
advance in honest arts and a forgery may be made so skillfully as to
deceive not only the bank but the drawer of the check as to the
genuineness of his own signature."
The main facts are included in the portion of the opinion cited:
"The plaintiffs kept a large and active account with the
defendant, and this action is to recover an alleged balance of a deposit
due to them from the bank. The plaintiffs had in their employ a clerk
named Davis. It was the duty of Davis to fill up the checks which it
might be necessary for the plaintiffs to give in the course of business,
to make corresponding entries in the stubs of the check book and present
the checks so prepared to Mr. Critten, one of the plaintiffs, for
signature, together with the bills in payment of which they were drawn.
After signing a check Critten would place it and the bill in an envelope
addressed to the proper party, seal the envelope and put it in the
mailing drawer. During the period from September, 1897, to October,
1899, in twenty-four separate instances Davis abstracted one of the
envelopes from the mailing drawer, opened it, obliterated by acids the
name of the payee and the amount specified in the check, then made the
check payable to cash and raised its amount, in the majority of cases,
by the sum of $100. He would draw the money on the check so altered from
the defendant bank, pay the bill for which the check was drawn in cash
and appropriate the excess. On one occasion Davis did not collect the
altered check from the defendant, but deposited it to his own credit in
another bank. When a check was presented to Critten for signature the
number of dollars for which it was drawn would be cut in the check by a
punching instrument. When Davis altered a check he would punch a new
figure in front of those already appearing in the check. The checks so
altered by Davis were charged to the account of the plaintiff s, which
was balanced every two months and the vouchers returned to them from the
bank. To Davis himself the plaintiffs, as a rule, intrusted the
verification of the bank balance. This work having in the absence of
Davis been committed to another
person, the forgeries were discovered and Davis was arrested and
punished. It is the amount of these forged checks, over and above the
sums for which they were originally drawn, that this action is brought
to recover. The defendant pleaded payment and charged negligence on
plaintiff's part, both in the manner in which the checks were drawn and
in the failure to discover the forgeries when the pass book was balanced
and the vouchers surrendered. On the trial the alteration of the checks
by Davis was established beyond contradiction and the substantial issue
litigated was that of the plaintiff's negligence. The referee rendered a
short decision in favor of the plaintiffs in which he states as the
ground of his decision that the plaintiffs were not negligent either in
signing the checks as drawn by Davis or in failing to discover the
forgeries at an earlier date than that at which they were made known to
them.
"The relation existing between a bank and a depositor being
that of debtor and creditor, the bank can justify a payment on the
depositor's account only upon the actual direction of the depositor.
`The question arising on such paper (checks) between drawee and drawer,
however, always relate to what the one has authorized the other to do.
They are not questions of negligence or of liability to parties upon
commercial paper, but are those of authority solely. The question of
negligence cannot arise unless the depositor has in drawing his cheek
left blanks unfilled, or by some affirmative act of negligence has
facilitated the commission of a fraud by those into whose hands the
check may come.' (
Crawford v. West Side Bank, 100 N. Y. 50.)
Therefore, when the fraudulent alteration of the checks was proved, the
liability of the bank for their amount was made out and it was incumbent
upon the defendant to establish affirmatively negligence on the
plaintiff's part to relieve it from the consequences of its fault or
misfortune in paying forged orders. Now, while the drawer of a check may
be liable where he
draws the instrument ill such ill incomplete state as to facilitate or
invite fraudulent alterations, it is not the law that he is bound so to
prepare the cheek that nobody else call successfully tamper with it.
(
Societê Générale v.
Metropolitan
Bank, 27 L. T. [N. S.] 849;
Belknap v.
National Bank of
North America, 100 Mass. 380) In the present case the fraudulent
alteration of the checks was not merely in the perforation of the
additional figure, but in the obliteration of the written name of the
payee and the substitution therefor of the word `Cash.' Against this
latter change of the instrument the plaintiffs could not have been
expected to guard, and without that alteration it would have no way
profited the criminal to raise the amount. . . ."
A Pinkerton case of international repute, best known as the
"Becker" case, included the successful "raising" of a check by chemical
means from $12 to $22,000. The criminal author of this stupendous fraud
was Charles Becker, "king of forgers," who as an all round imitator of
any writing and manipulator of monetary instruments then stood at the
head of his "profession." Arrested and taken to San Francisco he was
brought to trial. Two of his "pals" turned state's evidence, and Becker
was sentenced to a life term. Through an error on the part of the trial
judge he secured a new trial on an appeal to the Supreme Court. The jury
disagreed on a second trial, but on the third trial he was convicted.
Becker pleaded for mercy, and as he was an old man and showed signs of
physical break-down, the court was lenient with him. Seven years was his
sentence.
After his incarceration in San Quetin prison, he described in one
sentence how he had risen to the head of the craft of forgers. "A world
of patience, a heap
of time, and good inks,—that is the secret of my success in the
profession."
On completing his sentence, his reply to the question, "What was
the underlying motive which induced you to forge?" was one word,
"Vanity!"
The detailed facts which follow are from the "American Banker:"
"On December 2, 1895, a smooth-speaking man, under the name of
A. H. Dean, hired an office in the Chronicle building at San Francisco,
under the guise of a merchant broker, paid a month's rent in advance,
and on December 4 he went to the Bank of Nevada and opened an account
with $2,500 cash, saying that his account would run from $2,000 to
$30,000, and that he would want no accommodation. He manipulated the
account so as to invite confidence, and on December 17 he deposited a
check or draft of the Bank of Woodland, Cal., upon its correspondent,
the Crocker-Woolworth Bank of San Francisco. The amount was paid to the
credit of Dean, the check was sent through the clearing-house, and was
paid by the Crocker-Woolworth Bank. The next day, the check having been
cleared, Dean called and drew out $20,000, taking the cash in four bags
of gold, the teller not having paper money convenient. He had a vehicle
at the door, with his office boy inside as driver, and away he went. At
the end of the month, when the Crocker-Woolworth Bank made returns to
the Woodland Bank, it included the draft for $22,000. Here the fraud
was discovered, and here the lesson to bankers of advising drafts
received a new illustration. The Bank of Woodland had drawn no such
draft, and the only one it had drawn which was not accounted for was one
for twelve dollars, issued in favor of A. H. Holmes to an innocent-looking
man, who, on December 9, called to ask how he could send twelve
dollars to a distant friend, and whether it was better to send a money
order or an express order. When he was told he
could send it by bank draft, he seemed to have learned something new;
supposed that he could not get a bank draft, and he took it, paying the
fee. Here came back that innocent twelve-dollar draft, raised to
$22,000, and on its way had cost somebody $20,000 in gold.
"The almost absolute perfection with which the draft had been
forged had nearly defied the detection of even the microscope. In the
body of the original $12 draft had been the words, `Twelve........
Dollars.' The forger, by the use of some chemical preparation, had
erased the final letters `lve' from the word `twelve,' and had
substituted the letters `nty-two,' so that in place of the `twelve,' is
it appeared in the genuine draft, there was the word `twenty-two' in the
forged paper.
"In the space between the word `twenty-two' and the word
`dollars' the forger inserted the word `thousand,' so that in place of
the draft reading `twelve dollars,' as at first, it read `twenty-two
thousand dollars,' as changed.
"In the original $12 draft, the figures `1' and `2' and the
character `$' had been punched so that the combination read `$12.' The
forger had filled in these perforations with paper in such away that the
part filled in looked exactly like the field of the paper. After having
filled in the perforations, he had perforated the paper with the
combination, `$22,000.'
"The dates, too, had been erased by the chemical process, and
in their stead were dates which would make it appear that the paper bad
been presented for payment within a reasonable length of time after it
had been issued. The dates in the original draft, if left on the forged
draft, would have been liable to arouse suspicion at the bank, for they
would have shown that the holder had departed from custom in carrying,
such a valuable paper more than a few days.
"That was the extent of the forgeries which had been made in
the paper, the manner in
which they had been made betrayed the hand of an expert forger. The
interjected hand-writing was so nearly like that in the original paper
that it took a great while to decide whether or not it was a
forgery.
"In the places where letters had been erased by the use of
chemicals the coloring of the paper had been restored, so that it was
well-nigh impossible to detect a variance of the hue. It was the work of
an artist, with pen, ink, chemicals, camel's hair brush, water colors,
paper pulp and a perforating machine. Moreover the crime was eighteen
days old, and the forger might be in Japan or on his way to Europe. The
Protective Committee of the American Bankers' Association held a hurried
consultation as soon as the news of the forgery reached New York, and
orders were given to get this forger, regardless of expense—he was too
dangerous a man to be at large. It was easier said than done; but the
skill of the Pinkertons was aroused and the wires were made hot getting
an accurate description of Dean from all who had seen him. Suspected
bank criminals were shadowed night and day to see if they connected with
any one answering the description, but patient, hard labor for nearly
two months did not seem to promise much."
Not satisfied with their success in San Francisco these same bank
workers began a series of operations in Minneapolis and St. Paul,
Minnesota. This information by chance reached the Pinkertons who laid a
trap and captured two of the gang. Shortly afterward Becker on
information furnished by them was also arrested, taken to California and
after three separate trials as before stated, sent to San Quetin.
This triumph of the forger's art, I examined in the city of San
Francisco and although it was not, the first time I had been brought
into contact with the work of Becker, was compelled to admit that this
particular
specimen was almost perfect and more nearly so with a single exception
than any other which had come under my observation. Becker was a sort of
genius in the juggling of bank checks. He knew the values of ink and the
correct chemical to affect them. His paper mill was his mouth, in which
to manufacture specially prepared pulp to fill in punch holes, which
when ironed over, made it most difficult to detect even with a
magnifying glass. He was able also to imitate water marks and could
reproduce the most intricate designs. He says he has reformed.
During the last twenty years quite a number of cases have been
tried in New York City and vicinity in which the question of inks was an
all important one. The titles of a few not already referred to are
given. herewith: Lawless-Flemming, Albinger Will, Phelan-Press
Publishing Co., Ryold, Kerr-Southwick, N. Y. Dredging Co.,
Thorless-Nernst, Gekouski, Perkins, Bedell forgeries, Storey, Lyddy,
Clarke, Woods, Baker, Trefethen, Dupont-Dubos, Schooley, Humphrey,
Dietz-Allen, Carter, and Rineard-Bowers.