Only a Forensic Examiner can determine the Validity of an "Original" Note

Message of the day to homeowners and their lawyers: “stop admitting things that you assume are true. By admitting those facts you are hanging your client or yourself. Even the client is apt to say “Yes that is my signature on the note” when it has been described by opposing counsel as the original.   In most cases the document might look like an original but it isn’t.

The proper response is “From what I have learned from expert analysis, I doubt it. I do not remember the appearance of the original note. I don’t know if what you are handing to me is the original and therefore I don’t know if that is my actual signature or if it is a reproduction of my signature using mechanical devices to recreate my signature.”

So if the homeowner is asked if that looks like his signature the proper answer would be “I’m not an expert who could tell you if that signature is my original signature. I don’t know. My signature has changed over time. I don’t know if that is similar to the signature I used as of the date of the document.” Notice- you don’t say “On the date it was signed” because you are admitting that it was signed and thus tacitly admitting that the instrument (note, mortgage) was signed on the date shown on the instrument thus making it the original.

In an era where the custom and practice was to lose or destroy most of the original notes, it is highly unlikely in any foreclosure action that what is presented as “evidence” is anything more than a well-crafted fabrication. A document examiner can take it a step further with testimony that the document appears to be a fabrication and the signature does not conform to known examples of the homeowner’s signature even though there are similarities to the naked eye.

A forensic document examiner can potentially help point the lawyer or homeowner in the right direction since they use magnification equipment and analytic software to detect jpeg stretching, noise and other scientific methods to detect fraud.   What we can do is tell you if we observed any visual irregularities that should be followed up by a forensic document examiner. On the scale of credibility from 1-9 that is used by examiners, they almost always find that the document scores an 8 or 9, meaning that the document and the signature are fabricated and forged.

An examiner that comes highly recommended to us is James Kelley at Mortgage Fraud Examiners.