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Ink Security
by Greg Clark
It is Saturday morning and nobody else is awake yet.
This
is probably as good a time as you're going to get to balance the
checkbook.
One more cup of coffee and you will be able to face the bank statement
that
came in yesterday's mail.
As you leaf through the pile of canceled checks, you suddenly stop short. Quickly you work your way through surprise, disbelief and then panic. The check register says you wrote check number 456 to Pacific Gas and Electric for $21.76. The check in your hand is made out to someone you never heard of and it's for $2,721.89!
What happened? You've been ripped off. Check washing is the latest in big-time scams being pulled off by small-time crooks. From New York to Miami to LA, the story is the same. An unknowing person places a personal check in the return payment envelope provided by a company and then puts it in a residential mailbox for pickup. Someone, perhaps a neighborhood kid working on commission, scans the mailboxes looking for the telltale envelopes. And the results just showed up in your hand.
There are several elements to this tragedy. The first is placing checks in an unlocked mailbox where they may be easily stolen. (Although mailing them in an official curbside drop box may not be safe, either. Crooks in LA have been known to unbolt and steal the entire drop box.) The second is using a return payment envelope which flags the fact there's a check inside. The third-and probably the most critical-is using the wrong kind of ink.
People involved in check washing or other scams entailing altered documents know that the vast majority of people use ballpoint pens, which use inks made of a coloring agent and an oily base. These inks are soluble in a number of easily obtained solvents. With careful use of a cotton swab and the right solvent, a motivated person can lift any words they desire and replace them with their own. To better understand what these rip-off artists are doing-and more importantly, what we can do to stop them-requires an understanding of pens, ink and chemistry.
My first calls went to Sgt. Jay Crawford, a detective with the Oakland Police Department and to Marti Blake of the altered documents lab at the San Francisco Police Department. We spent quite some time discussing the techniques and chemicals used by check washers here in northern California. I promised not to turn this article into a how-to manual for aspiring criminals, so I will not go into detail about the techniques used. Let's just say that the solvents in question are available over the counter at stores in your neighborhood.
My next call went to Connie Lee, technical director for Formulabs in San Diego. Formulabs, one of the largest producers of ballpoint pen inks in the world, makes ink for many of the big-name pen companies. In a conversation with Lee and Dr. Ben Sabian, group leader for Formulabs' writing inks division, I learned that ballpoint pen inks use glycol esters as the base and either pigments or dyes as the coloring agent. It's the glycol esters that can be dissolved with volatile organic solvents and removed from the paper. If the ink is dye-based, the dyes will also be removed. If the coloring agent is a true pigment such as carbon, it more difficult to remove. It turns all colors of ballpoint ink are dye-based and fairly easy to remove from checks and other documents-except black, which gets its color from carbon pigment.
And then there's fountain pen ink. As you may know, fountain pen ink is water and dye based, and is thus not waterproof. The tests for water resistance I conducted for my book Fountain Pen Inks.- A Sampler revealed that while not waterproof, some fountain pen inks are very difficult to remove once dried.
Roller ball pens are sort of a cross between a ballpoint and a fountain pen and use water-based ink. The advantage of the roller ball is that it combines the nice smooth writing of a ballpoint with the vivid wet ink line of a fountain pen. One disadvantage the roller ball inherited from its fountain pen ancestry is the ink’s lack of water resistance. What holds true for fountain pen ink is generally true for roller balls.
A roller ball that writes with gel ink is a relatively new technology, invented in 1985 by the Sakura Corporation in Japan. The company's pens are marketed under the name Gelly Roll. I called the West Coast representative for Sakura, Peter Ouyang, and spoke to him at length about the inks technology. Like fountain pen and roller ball ink, gel ink is water based. The Gelly Roll's ink is water soluble, however, only as long as certain key components remain in the ink. After contact with air, these key components rapidly evaporate and allow a chemical change, making the dried ink waterproof These are true pigment-based inks and thus are fade- and bleach-resistant to a very high degree and are considered archival quality. Unfortunately, gel inks can't be used in fountain pens due to the danger of the ink drying in the nib/feed assembly and becoming a permanent part of the pen.
With a better understanding of how these pens work, and an insight into their weaknesses, I decided to start some tests of my own. Since check washing has become such a pervasive problem, I decided to carry out my tests on real checks provided by my bank. I collected an assortment of pens and inks for testing, including a broad assortment of Gelly Rolls provided by Ouyang. For fountain pen ink, I drew on my large stock of 200 bottles. For ballpoint and roller ball ink, I went to my local office supply store and bought several pens ranging from Bic, Cross and Parker ballpoints to several disposable roller ball and off-brand gel pens.
Testing commenced in my crime lab (otherwise known as my garage workshop), and I tried to follow the guidelines the police detectives gave me. The blue ink ballpoints-my Cross, a Bic stick pen and several no-names-proved the easiest to erase. All traces of the blue ink were removed in five to ten minutes.
The black ink in the Parker, a Bic and two no-name ballpoint pens proved much more durable. About 50 percent of the ink was removed with some obvious blurring of the line margins. This blurring is good, since it makes it obvious that someone was tampering with the check.
The Sakura gel inks were bulletproof Nothing touched them. After soaking in solvent soup and air drying, you couldn’t tell anything had ever happened! The off-brand gel pens proved to be just about as durable in all organic solvents.
To test fountain pen inks, I selected a range of brands and colors that had tested from highly durable to not-sodurable when I studied water resistance. How would they fare when subjected to solvents? Surprisingly, the fountain pen inks came through largely unfazed. Omas violet, green and brown, Namiki blue, Sheaffer blue and green and Aurora black-all were dunked into the solvent mixture. The Omas green and brown, the Sheaffer green and blue and the Aurora black were untouched by the assault. The Omas violet was only slightly faded and the Namiki blue lost about half of its density but was clearly visible. ln fact, the Namiki blue bled enough into the check that it would have alerted anyone to the fact that someone had tampered with it.
The roller ball pens with their water- based inks tested basically the same as the fountain pens. The organic solvents had little effect on them.
I could have said, "Issue closed!" here. I tested the actual methods used by the local crooks and the water-based inks came out clear winners. But I know it is possible to remove water-based inks from paper-the easiest way is to use good old chlorine bleach, which will destroy the dyes used as coloring agents. So I tried it on the checks.
As it turned out, chlorine bleach has the same limitations on paper as it does in the laundry. It is great for taking stains out of white fabrics-use it on colored fabrics, and it will remove dyes along with stains. The same thing happened on my checks. The bleach did a great job of removing the fountain pen ink, but it also removed all traces of the checks decorative background printing. I was unable to find a concentration of bleach that would remove the ink without damaging the background.
There you have it. To be safe, just follow some common sense rules. If you are a ballpoint pen lover, switch to black ink when security is important. Among water-based inks, remember that gels are the most impervious. But when you're writing checks to pay the montes bills, do@t hesitate to to use your favorite fountain pen. Just fill it with ink in one of the more durable colors and enjoy!
Greg Clark is a chiropractor, pen collector, pastpresident of the Pan Pacific Pen Club and one of the organizers of the San Francisco Bay Area International Pen Show. He has authored a self-published book, Fountain Pen Inks: A Sampler, and two previous ink-related articles for PWI, "Slaying the Ink Myths-What Happens When You Put Ink to the Acid Test, Volume 10, No. 2 and "Reflections on Blue Fingers," Volume II, No. 2. He can be reached at gregc@inksampler. com
As you leaf through the pile of canceled checks, you suddenly stop short. Quickly you work your way through surprise, disbelief and then panic. The check register says you wrote check number 456 to Pacific Gas and Electric for $21.76. The check in your hand is made out to someone you never heard of and it's for $2,721.89!
What happened? You've been ripped off. Check washing is the latest in big-time scams being pulled off by small-time crooks. From New York to Miami to LA, the story is the same. An unknowing person places a personal check in the return payment envelope provided by a company and then puts it in a residential mailbox for pickup. Someone, perhaps a neighborhood kid working on commission, scans the mailboxes looking for the telltale envelopes. And the results just showed up in your hand.
There are several elements to this tragedy. The first is placing checks in an unlocked mailbox where they may be easily stolen. (Although mailing them in an official curbside drop box may not be safe, either. Crooks in LA have been known to unbolt and steal the entire drop box.) The second is using a return payment envelope which flags the fact there's a check inside. The third-and probably the most critical-is using the wrong kind of ink.
People involved in check washing or other scams entailing altered documents know that the vast majority of people use ballpoint pens, which use inks made of a coloring agent and an oily base. These inks are soluble in a number of easily obtained solvents. With careful use of a cotton swab and the right solvent, a motivated person can lift any words they desire and replace them with their own. To better understand what these rip-off artists are doing-and more importantly, what we can do to stop them-requires an understanding of pens, ink and chemistry.
My first calls went to Sgt. Jay Crawford, a detective with the Oakland Police Department and to Marti Blake of the altered documents lab at the San Francisco Police Department. We spent quite some time discussing the techniques and chemicals used by check washers here in northern California. I promised not to turn this article into a how-to manual for aspiring criminals, so I will not go into detail about the techniques used. Let's just say that the solvents in question are available over the counter at stores in your neighborhood.
My next call went to Connie Lee, technical director for Formulabs in San Diego. Formulabs, one of the largest producers of ballpoint pen inks in the world, makes ink for many of the big-name pen companies. In a conversation with Lee and Dr. Ben Sabian, group leader for Formulabs' writing inks division, I learned that ballpoint pen inks use glycol esters as the base and either pigments or dyes as the coloring agent. It's the glycol esters that can be dissolved with volatile organic solvents and removed from the paper. If the ink is dye-based, the dyes will also be removed. If the coloring agent is a true pigment such as carbon, it more difficult to remove. It turns all colors of ballpoint ink are dye-based and fairly easy to remove from checks and other documents-except black, which gets its color from carbon pigment.
And then there's fountain pen ink. As you may know, fountain pen ink is water and dye based, and is thus not waterproof. The tests for water resistance I conducted for my book Fountain Pen Inks.- A Sampler revealed that while not waterproof, some fountain pen inks are very difficult to remove once dried.
Roller ball pens are sort of a cross between a ballpoint and a fountain pen and use water-based ink. The advantage of the roller ball is that it combines the nice smooth writing of a ballpoint with the vivid wet ink line of a fountain pen. One disadvantage the roller ball inherited from its fountain pen ancestry is the ink’s lack of water resistance. What holds true for fountain pen ink is generally true for roller balls.
A roller ball that writes with gel ink is a relatively new technology, invented in 1985 by the Sakura Corporation in Japan. The company's pens are marketed under the name Gelly Roll. I called the West Coast representative for Sakura, Peter Ouyang, and spoke to him at length about the inks technology. Like fountain pen and roller ball ink, gel ink is water based. The Gelly Roll's ink is water soluble, however, only as long as certain key components remain in the ink. After contact with air, these key components rapidly evaporate and allow a chemical change, making the dried ink waterproof These are true pigment-based inks and thus are fade- and bleach-resistant to a very high degree and are considered archival quality. Unfortunately, gel inks can't be used in fountain pens due to the danger of the ink drying in the nib/feed assembly and becoming a permanent part of the pen.
With a better understanding of how these pens work, and an insight into their weaknesses, I decided to start some tests of my own. Since check washing has become such a pervasive problem, I decided to carry out my tests on real checks provided by my bank. I collected an assortment of pens and inks for testing, including a broad assortment of Gelly Rolls provided by Ouyang. For fountain pen ink, I drew on my large stock of 200 bottles. For ballpoint and roller ball ink, I went to my local office supply store and bought several pens ranging from Bic, Cross and Parker ballpoints to several disposable roller ball and off-brand gel pens.
Testing commenced in my crime lab (otherwise known as my garage workshop), and I tried to follow the guidelines the police detectives gave me. The blue ink ballpoints-my Cross, a Bic stick pen and several no-names-proved the easiest to erase. All traces of the blue ink were removed in five to ten minutes.
The black ink in the Parker, a Bic and two no-name ballpoint pens proved much more durable. About 50 percent of the ink was removed with some obvious blurring of the line margins. This blurring is good, since it makes it obvious that someone was tampering with the check.
The Sakura gel inks were bulletproof Nothing touched them. After soaking in solvent soup and air drying, you couldn’t tell anything had ever happened! The off-brand gel pens proved to be just about as durable in all organic solvents.
To test fountain pen inks, I selected a range of brands and colors that had tested from highly durable to not-sodurable when I studied water resistance. How would they fare when subjected to solvents? Surprisingly, the fountain pen inks came through largely unfazed. Omas violet, green and brown, Namiki blue, Sheaffer blue and green and Aurora black-all were dunked into the solvent mixture. The Omas green and brown, the Sheaffer green and blue and the Aurora black were untouched by the assault. The Omas violet was only slightly faded and the Namiki blue lost about half of its density but was clearly visible. ln fact, the Namiki blue bled enough into the check that it would have alerted anyone to the fact that someone had tampered with it.
The roller ball pens with their water- based inks tested basically the same as the fountain pens. The organic solvents had little effect on them.
I could have said, "Issue closed!" here. I tested the actual methods used by the local crooks and the water-based inks came out clear winners. But I know it is possible to remove water-based inks from paper-the easiest way is to use good old chlorine bleach, which will destroy the dyes used as coloring agents. So I tried it on the checks.
As it turned out, chlorine bleach has the same limitations on paper as it does in the laundry. It is great for taking stains out of white fabrics-use it on colored fabrics, and it will remove dyes along with stains. The same thing happened on my checks. The bleach did a great job of removing the fountain pen ink, but it also removed all traces of the checks decorative background printing. I was unable to find a concentration of bleach that would remove the ink without damaging the background.
There you have it. To be safe, just follow some common sense rules. If you are a ballpoint pen lover, switch to black ink when security is important. Among water-based inks, remember that gels are the most impervious. But when you're writing checks to pay the montes bills, do@t hesitate to to use your favorite fountain pen. Just fill it with ink in one of the more durable colors and enjoy!
Greg Clark is a chiropractor, pen collector, pastpresident of the Pan Pacific Pen Club and one of the organizers of the San Francisco Bay Area International Pen Show. He has authored a self-published book, Fountain Pen Inks: A Sampler, and two previous ink-related articles for PWI, "Slaying the Ink Myths-What Happens When You Put Ink to the Acid Test, Volume 10, No. 2 and "Reflections on Blue Fingers," Volume II, No. 2. He can be reached at gregc@inksampler. com