An ingenious fraud on the Indian Post Office was discovered in 1890, through the care with which collectors frequently examine their stamps. The One Rupee, slate, of the 1882-88 issue, very cleverly imitated, was found to be frequently coming to this country on letters from Bombay, and police inquiries, made on the information of a well-known philatelist, led to the detection of the culprit; he, it seems, engraved a facsimile on box-wood, and printed his stamps, one by one, on paper as similar as possible to the genuine, but without watermark; the perforation he effected by placing the printed label between two plates of thin metal each with holes corresponding to the intended perforations, and then, by the aid of a blunt wire, punching out the small circular pieces of paper!
Other instances have been noted, but those given are the best known, and serve as good examples of frauds against Post Offices, so far as forgery of the entire stamp is concerned; but, of recent years, a new kind of fraud has come into vogue--the alteration of a genuine stamp into one of a much higher denomination, affecting British Colonies only.
The possibility of this has resulted from the desire of the authorities to print the majority of colonial stamps, available for postal or fiscal purposes, in two colours--one being distinctive of the particular value, and the other a purple or green, very susceptible to any attempt to remove an obliteration or cancellation, whether by the Post Office or by a member of the public: by the latter, in writing-ink.
The _modus operandi_ is ingenious--a stamp is selected, of which nearly the whole design is, say, in green, the name and (low) value being in some distinctive colour; the original value and name are removed by chemical means, the name and new (high) value being substituted in a colour applicable to the higher denomination--result, if the work be carefully done, a stamp which would deceive not only the ordinary official (who is seldom of real philatelic inclinations) but even, at first glance, the average collector, unless he is on the look-out for such "fakes," which, as a matter of fact, have been made for his delectation also.
As has been remarked, the number of forgeries made to deceive collectors has been immeasurably greater than of those prepared for defrauding the Revenue; and it has been endeavoured to select some of the most daring, and often successful, attempts to palm off a clever forgery as a genuine--generally rare, but sometimes quite common--postage-stamp.