BUSINESSES

The world of business is filled with opportunities and excitement. While the climb to success may be a slow and relatively painstaking affair, fraud can destroy all you have built overnight. The result: damages which take months and sometimes years to put right. What is lost is more than the physical aspects of business assets and cash. It also includes intangibles such as loss of trust in the company perceived by the general public and a destroyed reputation which may be irrecoverable.

Questioned documents in businesses include contracts, agreements, invoices, receipts, cheques, and even memos. Your business may want to give out shopping vouchers which are not to be duplicated. What if one has been presented at your store for redemption and you suspect that it is a counterfeit? The same goes for shopping and gift certificates.

Where contracts are concerned, the issue of authenticity of signatures brings into question the validity of the contract itself. Fraud can also enter into the business
realm through alteration of the pages of the contract or the page contents. Either
way, the contract will not be honored and becomes useless.

Areas which a handwriting expert can assist businesses in preventing fraud include:

•  Examination of contracts to ensure validity and check for substituted pages

•  Examination of business documents to ascertain authenticity

•  Examination of signatures on business documents

•  Examination of shopping vouchers and gift certificates to determine authenticity