r and Watermarks Not Always a Safeguard-Perforating Machines and Check Raisers-How Check Perforations Are Overcome-How an Ordinary Check Is Raised-How an Expert Alters Checks-How Perforations Are Fill

ul-A Professional Crook Is a

of execution is concerned. After many years of arduous work and after great expenditures of money the banks have to admit sorrowfully that if a man wants to raise a check he can do

bitterly pursues defaulters for the sake of justice, but it has still another object in its deadly trailing of forgers and check tampereus. That is because the whole banking structure hangs on signed paper. When it can be altered with impunity, away goes the financial system of to-day. Hence the unrelenting hunting-down of f

d States that the banks fear to give even a hint as to the sums of which they or their dep

ation would show immediately. The chemicals used in its composition would make the ink run if acids were used to change t

it was used. But it, too, became an easy

t for which it was drawn, the machine perforating the paper as it stamped it. Certainly it does seem that when the paper is cut right out of the check, l

forgers and check-raisers, said that it was "too easy" to raise checks, and that a good many more men than try it now would do it were

sum you want," said the sl

heck called for $500, and the work was done so well even in that short time that the writer would have been tempted

ck-raiser simply knows how well certain characters lend themselves to changes that cannot be detected. The capital

e $10 to, say, $10,000, and the drawer has written it so that there is no room between the word 'ten' and 'dollars,' chemicals must be used. There is always more danger of detecti

em almost as fast as they were written. Some, to be sure, were crude and would have betrayed the fact of alteration to the eye of any caref

tions?" he was asked. "How

ke you smile. All the outfit that is needed is a common little punch with assorted small cutting tubes and a bottle of an invisible glue that every crook can make or that he can buy in certain places th

m carefully into the holes that make the upper part of the figure 3. See, even in my haste and without

even with the knowledge that they were there it was

the bank I would only have to complete the job by smearing a drop of the invisible glue over the back where I have plugged the original holes. This glue is wonderfully tenacious and will actually hold the ed

ough disks from the edge to fill up the last dollar mark completely, and after he has plugged it and the glue is dry he punches a cipher into the place and then punches a dollar mark afte

bound to be hasty, but he knows that he need not fear if his work is at all well done, for th

hecks, and as there are about sixty-five such banks in the clearinghouse the total n

ponsible for the passing of one of the most peculiar checks that ever came under the notice of the detectives of A

on top of the other, he cut them through neatly with the scissors. Then he pasted that portion bearing the word 'seventy' on the one check to that part bearing the word 'thousand' on the other. So the composite check read to pay to the holder 'seventy thousand' dollars. As the cutting was made through bot

oodland (Cal.), and, although it was written on chemical 'safety' paper and perforated in tw

t that a forgery is always discovered and the forger generally caught. That is because the forged check remains in existence and must be p

ttaching to his peculiar business is that the same place that he thinks of flying to is the place that suggests itsel

world. Then, of South America, he probably only thinks of Venezuela, or closer home-of Guatemala or Panama. So the South

. We guess at his calibre and whether he wants more money, and know where he probably will go to get it, fo

cca of adventurers, South Africa, for him. In fact, our first business is to learn what kind of a man he is, then shut our eyes and guess which one of a