Questions about documents arise in a variety of civil, criminal, and regulatory matters.  There are many different questions that may be answered by document examination what follows is a non-exhaustive list:

Source Determination

Signatures and/or handwriting - A common question is whether or not signatures and/or handwriting are from a particular writer.

Office machines - Whether or not a document was produced by a specific:  laser printer, ink-jet printer, thermal printer, dot-matrix printer, typewriter, fax machine, or other office machine.

Commercial Printing - Are commercially printed documents such as forms, letterhead, packaging, or other such documents produced from the same artwork or graphics?

Security Printing - Are security printed documents such as:  passports, driver’s licences, birth certificates, academic records, etc.  genuine?  Genuine meaning that the printing processes of the documents are within the known printing specifications of the purported document.  If not is there the potential to find the source of the document?

Materials used for documents - This includes the writer(s) and office machine(s) sources mentioned and the writing instruments, substrate, rubber stamps, dry seals, and fastening/binding devices.

Alterations/Obliterations

Documents may be altered by a variety of physical and/or electronic means, results of such alterations may show artefacts of original entries and/or inconsistencies in portions of documents.

Chronology or Document Age

Documents may be back-dated, forward-dated or simply not plausible given their purported date of creation.

Examinations may disclose findings that support or contradict the date or chronology of document preparation.

Contract for Services and Fees

A contract for services and fees will be provided upon request.

Additional Questions

Please contact us for additional information about forensic document examination how it may assist in answering questions about documents and/or materials used to produce them.

Tobin Tanaka - Forensic Document Examiner & President

Summary of Qualifications, Employment and Educational Experience

Vancouver BC based forensic document examiner with over 30 years experience in the analysis of a wide variety of matters involving: handwriting, signatures, office equipment processes related to documents, decipherment of latent impressions, detection & decipherment of obliterations, commercial & security printing processes, rubber stamps and impressions.

Documents examined have varied from:  contracts, invoices, receipts, accounting records, corporate minutes, anonymous letters, memorandums, envelopes, passports, packaging, driver’s licences, student identification, dinner napkins, among other types of documents.

Forensic document examiner (FDE) with the Government of Canada from 1993-2023.

Part-time instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) for the Questioned Document Examination course for forensic science students.

Certification from the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners (ABFDE).

Professional memberships include:
o Member - Document Section Canadian Society of Forensic Science (CSFS)
o Regular member - American Society of Questioned Document Examiners (ASQDE)
o Fellow - Questioned Document Section American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
o Member - Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences (CSoFS)
o Corresponding member - Australasian Society of Forensic Document Examiners Inc (ASFDE Inc)

Full Curriculum Vitae available upon request.

Kindly note that cases are only accepted from lawyers representing clients or government entities.

The contact information for the laboratory is listed below.  

Please do not send documents for examination unless requested.

Questioned Document Forensic Laboratory Inc

Administrative Office

720 - 999 West Broadway

Vancouver BC    V5Z 1K5    Canada

T:  +1 604 707 8470

F:  +1 604 738 4080

E:  contact@qdfl.ca 

To minimise the potential for bias, please do not disclose information not required to conduct the examinations, thank you.