Forgery and Counterfeiting Documents: The Expertise Evidence: An Exploratory Research in Oporto Criminal Court

Abstract

The current situation has been marked by the most diverse types of crime and, although little media, the fraud has been increasing the statistical data, much because of the social conjuncture that the country crosses. In this way, the courts are full of cases of falsification and counterfeiting of documents, an issue that only an expert in document analysis may be able to solve. An analysis of the data presented in the Annual Internal Security Reports [1] - since 2007 - when Law No. 59/2007 of September 4 came into force [2], which amended the article that criminalizes this offense As we know it today, confirms that, although with minor variations, crimes against life in society, a category in which the illegal counterfeit or counterfeit document is framed, remain the third most frequent crimes. At the European level, Portugal remains at the top of the list for fraudulent documents (n = 67 - data for 2012), followed by Italy and Spain. In 2009, with the introduction of a new foreign citizen's card, the measure that aimed to reduce the ease of forgery of identification documents did not break the trend that had been notorious, reaching 12.54% of cases of crimes against Life in society and, more recently, reaching 13.6%. Given the current relevance of the phenomenon under study, this article seeks to make a brief allusion to the criminalization of the phenomenon in Portugal and, later, based on an exploratory study of 50 cases analyzed in the Ombudsmen of Porto, to make a characterization of the offenders and the type of the crime in question.