Figure 5 – TROY Group Laser Indelible Solution White Paper Datasheet User Manual

Page 4

October, 2011

TROY Group, Inc. • 3 Bryan Drive • Wheeling, WV 26003 USA

Phone (304) 232-0899 • Toll Free (800) 633-2266 • Fax (304) 232-0996 • www.troygroup.com • [email protected]

USING TROY LASER INDELIBLE TO REDUCE FRAUD
One of the advantages of the TROY Laser Indelible Solution is that sensitive regions of a
document can be targeted for the Laser Indelible security. This is achieved by coating certain
areas of a form, while leaving other areas uncoated. Any printing on the regions that are
coated will form a red indelible image underneath. Any printing on uncoated areas will have a
normal black toner appearance.

For example, check fraud is a common problem costing banks and businesses billions of
dollars each year. Criminals often attempt fraud on high value business checks, bank checks
and payroll checks. They try to counterfeit a check by copying an original, stealing an original
and altering it, or creating a check with an official looking appearance. A common method of
fraud on business and official checks is toner removal from the face of a check. Criminals use
a sharp knife to scrape the toner or chemicals to dissolve the toner. They then print a new
character in place of the one that is removed. Using this technique, the payee name on a
check can be changed or the amount of the check can be increased. Even on high quality
check stock, with coatings designed to enhance toner adherence to the paper, a fraudster
can carefully remove the toner.

Chemically reactive papers are used as a countermeasure to help reveal chemical alteration;
however, they do not reveal alteration by scraping the toner removal using a knife. In
addition, chemically reactive papers typically exhibit very faint blue or red dots in the area
exposed to the types of solvents that are able to dissolve toner (e.g. toluene and acetone*).
These faint dots can be easily overlooked by a first-line document inspector (e.g. a bank
teller) if the document has a printed background. In contrast, TROY Security Toner releases
a very visible red stain (see Figure 5.0) when exposed to these same solvents.

Figure 5