STAMP FORGERIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1934, Page 7

STAMP FORGERIES

By prosecuting three men charged with forging air-mail stamps, the- Newfoundland Government has drawn attention to a little-known crime. It is usually practised on collectors, by superrogues, one of whom forged not only a very rare stamp, but a certificate of the Royal Philatelic Society declaring the particular specimen to be genuine. Occasionally there turn up examples of the "Mormon stamp." This is said to have been produced by Brigham Young "for prepaying letters from one part of the' Great Salt Lake Valley to another or to or from Salt Lake City, the capital"; but no such stamp was ever issued in' Utah. There are actually forgeries of the "Mormon stamp," itself a fake. For a consignment of genuine stamps printed in London to tlxo order of Bolivia .an equal quantity of Paris-printed forgeries wero substituted. The counterfeits wero then sent to Bolivia, where they wore issued to post offices in the usual way, while the London stamps wcto sold by tho forgers on the Continent. Even in England big hauls have been matlo by counterfeiting . stamps. Tho greatest—and most mysterious—operation ' was the forgery of what is known as the "shilling green," which for two years was used by a certain post office at the rate of about & 15,000 worth a year The fraud was not discovered for i twenty-five years* . .