How to authenticate a wet signature.

Take them out in bright sunshine tomorrow (yeah right) and compare them carefully for any difference of emissivity or colour hue.

After that, if you can't detect a difference, I doubt any court will either.

I`ll give that a try weather permitting :-)

What happened was the 2 copies and the original were all mistakenly stamped as authenticated copies despite 1 being an original when they should only have stamped the 2 copies.

IANAL.

Does a magnifying glass show anything? An original ink line should be pretty continuous. A printed one made up of dots, etc.

Put face down on sheet of glass. Put bit of blank paper over the signature area. Then rub gently on blank paper over where the signature is. On the "wet" original copy, the indents in the paper where it was signed in ballpoint will cause your pencil to highlight that. If the whole original is ballpoint, even easier.

It's the same principle used when doing brass rubbings.

The original ball point will have indented the paper, and possibly any sheets underneath it. This may be more visible from the rear.

Also, the colours on the copies are unlikely to exactly match the original, although the copies may well match each other.

This a macro image of the copy:

This I think is the original:

I am basing it on the `copy` is more solid colour and if correct as one poster has stated the wet ink on the original shows the fibres of the paper.

Agree, disagree?

A drop of suitable solvent on part of the signature would soon sort them out I reckon. ;-)

I doubt anyone will be able to offer any authoritative opinion without having the documents in their hands though.

Tim

I'll pass.

If you had provided photos of all 3 I would have been more optimistic as it'd then be a case of spotting the odd one out.

PS IIRC which is the original matters for some documents but not for others. (You can eg prove a copy if a will if the original can't be found.) But if the mistake was made by a solicitor then they ought to advise you w/o additional charge.

teh original will be indented

try taking a 'brass rubbing'

The top one shows the artifacts of JPEG compression at the sharp colour contrast boundaries.

Yes, you should be able to see the toner dots. Look on the white paper a short distance from the black lines of the signature and you'll almost certainly see the occasional toner dot on the copy.

Not sure about that. What TNP might mean is to use a soft pencil sharpened to provide a contact on the "cone" rather than the tip, if you see what I mean, and rub this cone *very gently indeed* over the back side of the signature location (in the way that an artist would shade in an area).

Personally, I would start by looking at the back side illuminated from a shallow angle. You might also dribble some laser printer toner on the back, well away from the signature, then tilt the page to allow some to flow down across the signature location. I think this is the technique used to reveal writing on a notepad when the top sheet is missing.

Have a look for yellow dots using visible blue lights

Includes links to websites which can help you decode the dots

Owain

One way that might well work is look at the reverse side of each piece of paper lit from the side at an oblique angle. The one which was physically signed with a biro should have a slight change in paper height where the nib has squashed the paper fibres. Unless like in classic spy movies they used a sheet of glass to lean on.

Failing that and only slightly destructive a solvent like meths or white spirit will dissolve biro ink but not affect the laser copies. A sort of variant on the old spirit duplicator printing method.

My suggestion for a way to find the original is therefore wet a small area of blank white paper with meths - let it soak in until there is no surface wetness. Then press the solvent infused paper against each signature. When you get the real one it will pick up some ink.

Try not to smudge it you need to put the paper down and lift it up again without dragging sideways.

You may want to practice carefully on a sacrificial test piece first.

If you can guess correctly which are the copies by other means you can confirm it by using this solvent test. Laser toner is thermoplastic.

Do not under any circumstances apply solvent directly to the biro signature or it may be seriously degraded.

Your are right. That is by far the easiest non-destructive test.

A 10x loupe easily sees the printer forensic yellow dots in good light. They are all but invisible under a 3x loupe without using blue light.

Are mono printers just as guilty of this?

Surely the blackness of the inks are not identical? There's all sorts of additional coloured tones used in "black" ink.

Also, isn't the ballpoint signature more reflective?

Oops, I just posted that and then read your post.