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DETECTION OF FRAUDULENT
FINGERPRINTS
By Gary L. Johansen, Supervisor, Crime Lab, Salt Lake City, Utah
Police.
This paper was written as a research project while attending the Administrative
Advanced Latent Fingerprint Course at the FBI Academy in Quantico. VA. It is not
intended to be all inclusive of the vast amounts of research conducted by
persons in the fingerprint science. It is however intended to make technicians
aware of the possibilities that they may someday encounter fraudulent prints and
should know that technology is advancing to allow more and more counterfeit
checks to surface with sophisticated methods of disguising ones prints.
All latent print examiners throughout the United States are taught, or should be
taught; early in their training that latent print identification is the only
exact forensic science. As with any science, the research, documentation,
experimentation, and testimony to the validity of that science can, and has
been. skewed by people associated with the science, by fraudulent reporting or
altering results of experimentation.
Though articles are written about fraudulent, false, fake,
forged latent fingerprints, the authors appear to agree that few latent prints
are actually forged. But, several instances are confirmed where latent
fingerprints were fabricated by personnel in the law enforcement field as a
means to "solve" or further a particular case they are involved in.
George C. Bonebrake, former Supervisor of the Latent Fingerprint Section of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., in his address to the 61st
Annual Conference of the International Association of Identification, held in
Ashville, N.C., 1976. provided two distinct categories of fraudulent latent
fingerprints. The first is a forged fingerprint and the second a fabricated
fingerprint.
Forged fingerprints, according to Mr. Bonebrake,"...has the connotation of an
individual committing a crime and then planting the fingerprint of an innocent
party to implicate a second individual in the crime."
Fabricated fingerprints, by definition as interpreted from Mr. Bonebrakes's
presentation by Pat A. Wertheim, Director of Training, Forensic Identification
Training Seminars, Ltd., are "a representation of a print that never existed on
the surface from which it purportedlycame."
Both experts cited above agree that fabrications are far more evident and used
in cases submitted for comparison than are forged fingerprints. As a matter of
fact, neither expert recalls ever having seen an instance of forged
fingerprints. As Mr. Wertheim stated, "...forgery of latent print evidence is
virtually nonexistent."
Based on the above, it is highly unlikely that an individual committing a
criminal act would fabricate any latent fingerprint evidence. This only leaves
the fabrication then by dishonest police employees in order to frame someone, or
to gain notoriety for solving the "crime of the century." The reason presumed,
stems from an emotional out-burst of frustration at not being able to solve the
case by conventional means of fingerprint
identification or other evidence.
Since it is most likely that criminal types in our country continuously make
attempts to deceive the investigators or throw them off the track so the
criminal can pull off the perfect crime, the two terms defined by Mr. Bonebrake
and Mr. Wertheim are not all
encompassing. Therefore, I choose to utilize the term fraudulent latent print as
a more logical explanation of the deceitful tactics perpetrated by not only
police personnel,
but by the criminal element as well.
Webster's Dictionary defines fraudulent as the "act of fraud, which is an act,
omission of act or anything meant to deceive." By attempting to alter the
friction ridge characteristics or fingerprint pattern in such a manner as to
preclude comparison and/or identification of a given latent fingerprint left at
a crime scene is to attempt deception. We in the science are somewhat fortunate,
however, in that the criminal does not possess sufficient information about
fingerprints and the identification of those prints to completely deceive the
identification technician. Often, they, the criminals, only alter the center or
"core" of the fingerprint and not the surrounding friction ridge detail.
A recent case worked by the Salt Lake City Police Crime Lab, Salt Lake City,
Utah, revealed a distinctively different method of altering or creating a
fraudulent fingerprint. The case involved the cashing of counterfeit payroll
checks. Vietnamese arriving in
California would pick up counterfeit checks, obtain a rental vehicle rented by a
female with a New Jersey address, then disperse throughout several states in the
Western United States to cash the checks. Banks and stores that cash payroll
checks in Utah, for some time, have required the placement of an inked plain
impression fingerprint on the check,
especially if one does not have an account at that particular bank. Some of the
fingerprints obviously were placed on the checks after the introduction of
foreign substance to the center of the finger prior to inking. It was suspected
the substance utilized was superglue or another substance designed to partially
or totally fill the furrows
between the ridges and/or not allow the ink to adhere wholly to the ridges. Of
twenty-one separate checks submitted for comparison, only three identifications
were effected.
One check contained an inked plain impression fingerprint that, on first
examination, appeared to be a double tap of placing the finger on the
paper—picking it up and placing it down again, but not in exactly the same
position. This is commonly called in latent print examiner terminology "an
overlay print." A second fingerprint also contained the same characteristics as
the one described above.
This author was the primary technician assigned to the case with Crime Lab
Technician II, Karen Kido, as the verifying technician. When the initial
comparison was made, the suspect’s inked fingerprint card and the check were
given to Technician Kido for her opinion. It was a difficult print to compare,
but one thing caught our trained eyes that we questioned. Along the left side of
the print was a thin inked line, which resembled a Xerox line from a cut out
piece of paper. Initially it was thought to have been a latex type material made
from a mold of a fingerprint and slipped over the finger.
Further examination, computerized enhancement, tracing and eventual Automated
Fingerprint Identification System entry resulted in the identification of an
individual who was not the primary suspect. It was not until a concentrated
effort and the arrest of two members of this check cashing scheme in Arizona,
that we were able to determine how the suspects made the questioned print on the
check. It was manufactured by placing a thin coating of clear fingernail polish
on the index finger (the finger most commonly
used by banks for putting an inked print on the check). Once the polish begins
to dry and is still somewhat tacky, another individual places his or her finger
against the coated finger, creating a reversed print over the ridge lines of the
primary finger. Because of the tackiness some of the polish is lifted from the
primary finger, thereby allowing ridge lines of the primary finger to be
exposed. And, when inked, these appear on the transfer medium, thus causing the
appearance of the overlay print. However, the fraudulent print now appears in
both a position and color reversal.
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