Forgery

Forgery. Legal forgery is the false making, counterfeiting, altering, or uttering any instrument, or writing with a fraudulent intent, whereby another may be defrauded. The offence is complete by the making the forged instrument with a fraudulent intent, though it be not published or uttered, and the publishing or uttering of the instrument, knowing it to be forged, is punished in the same manner as the making or counterfeiting. It is not now necessary to constitute forgery that the name of any person should be counterfeited, though this is the most common way in which the crime is committed. Anyone is guilty of forgery who antedates a deed for the purpose of defrauding other parties, though he sign his own name to the instrument, and it is forgery if a man, being instructed to make the will of another, inserts provisions on his own authority. The offence consists in the fraud and deceit. Under the Statute 24 and 25 Vict, c, 98, and numerous other statutes, offences analogous to forgery at common law are made felonies, and are punishable as forgeries; but that punishment is not death as formerly, but penal servitude for life, or for any term not less than five years, or imprisonment with or without hard labour, and with or without solitary confinement, for any term not exceeding two years. The Forged Transfers Act, 1891, enables, but does not oblige, companies and local authorities to make compensation "by a cash payment out of their funds, for any loss arising from a transfer" of their shares, stocks, or securities, "in pursuance of a forged transfer, or of a transfer under a forged power of attorney."