Mood:
caffeinatedTopic: big media
The new editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph is beating the divisive drum for all his cheap backside is worth with today's front page howler.
Only he seems to be completely ignorant of the forensic document analysis expertise regularly used in fraud cases in Sydney's legal profession. These experts, and not magistrates, provide expert evidence on authentic signatures - with spectrophotometer equipment, pen lift inspection, and all kinds of scary scientific methods - and they are objective.
And the signatures have to be the original document for expert analysis to be useful. The signature they "revealed" is a photocopy and not an original. Copies just don't cut it for legal signature analysis.
There wouldn't be a magistrate in Sydney who would offer a contrary opinion to a forensic expert with access to the original signature, and wise magistrates and judges would never claim to be conclusive either. In short the quote on the front page of the SDT today that a magistrate states the signature looks "almost identical" just doesn't cut it.
Indeed fraudsters who practise signatures that look "almost identical" are a dime a dozen in the criminal world. The whole point of fraud is to look "almost identical".
2 strikes for Mr Paul Whittaker in the area of race relations in one week?
