A check for $2,000 was raised to $50,000 almost in the wink of an eye. "This is the easy and safer part of the business," said he. "But when a check is to be raised from a sum like $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 detection in that. In the mere alteration of a check there is little. Look here. I'll change your checks as fast as you can write them, and I bet a lot of my alterations will pass muster."
A pad was hauled out and the writer filled the sheets out with carefully written amounts. The expert was as good as his word. He altered them 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 careful banker. But many were almost perfect, and all were wonderfully deceptive and showed what could be done by a crook who had plenty of time.
"But how about the perforations?" he was asked. "How could a crook change them?"
"Nothing easier," was the reply. "The fact that checks stamped with the amount in perforated characters are considered safe aids the swindler. Really, to beat the perforations is so easy that it will make 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 that every crook knows. Now, here is a check stamped in perforated characters $300$. I take my little punch and fit into it a cutter that will punch holes of the same size as the holes in the perforations.
"Now I punch out of the edge of the check a few tiny disks. I moisten the tip of a needle and press them carefully into the holes that make the upper part of the figure 3. See, even in my haste and without glue, they fill the perforations completely and I can shake and pull the check without disturbing them."
It was true. The little plugs fitted perfectly, and even with the knowledge that they were there it was almost impossible to see where they had been inserted.
"Now," continued the expert, "I merely take my punch and carefully punch enough holes to the right of the upper part of the figure 3 to make it a 5. And there you are. If I wanted to pass this check through 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 edges of paper together. It needs only the smallest surface in order to get hold. After it is on not even the microscope could detect it readily. And no amount of pulling or shaking of the check will disturb it.
"You may suppose that a check that is stamped this way, for instance—$600$—would be hard to change into one of four figures. But it is almost equally easy. The crook simply punches out enough 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 after it. Of course, after punching the little disks out of the edge of the check it is necessary to trim that part of the paper, but that is done readily, for checks always have ample margin.
"The check-raiser does not depend on the fact that the scrutiny of checks in a large bank is bound to be hasty, but he knows that he need not fear if his work is at all well done, for the paying teller simply cannot spend much time in examining the many checks that are passed in.
"One New York City bank sends through the clearing-house daily an average of 3,100 checks, and as there are about sixty-five such banks in the clearinghouse the total number of checks handled in the few hours of business in a day is something enormous.