Thumbs Down

Each year bad-check passers fleece U.S. businesses of an estimated $4 billion--far more than bank robbers get with guns. Using stolen or bogus drivers' licenses and other faked identification, "paper hangers" have found merchants--who are naturally anxious to ring up sales and cannot easily verify such fakes--especially easy targets. And even if checkbook bilkers are later caught, convictions are hard to get because many suspects cannot be identified to the satisfaction of courts. Now two new devices on the market are enabling stores to record identification that even the cleverest forger cannot fake: his thumbprint. The systems cannot prevent the acceptance of bum checks, but they provide a powerful psychological deterrent to swindlers.

The most popular of the gadgets is Identiseal, which was brought out ten months ago by Positive Identification Systems of Fort Worth. Its procedure requires a check casher to place his thumb on a stamp pad soaked in a clear, nonsticky liquid, then press it against an oval gummed label attached to the back of the check. Instantly, a clear lavender print appears. If the bank later discovers that the check is forged, the thumbprint is forwarded to Identiseal headquarters for filing, and then to the police in the city where the check was written. P.I.S. officials claim that in Los Angeles alone, Identiseal has been instrumental in getting quick confessions from 26 forgers. Identiseal is now installed in several major West Coast chains, including Safeway, Ralph's and Lucky's markets. Company officials plan to operate offices nationwide within two years.

The other new system is called Identicator, an invention of retired Detective Division Chief Hugh McDonald of the Los Angeles' sheriff's department. It requires no special chemicals for the customer to touch. Instead, the check writer merely presses his thumb firmly on the check, which is then run through a tiny developing machine to produce, from natural skin oils, an indelible thumbprint. The device is now being test-marketed in major retail stores like J.C. Penney in California, and will go on sale nationally by year's end.

The new thumbprinters are used mostly in stores with a large number of check-out counters, where their ease of operation and low operating cost ($15 a year for the Identicator and a penny a print for Identiseal) make them cheaper than photographic ID systems.

Police are convinced that the new devices make convictions much easier. "If a forger is leaving a trail of bad checks, all using different aliases," says Redwood City, Calif., Police Chief John McDonald (no kin to Hugh), "we can easily put them together with the thumbprints and prove grand theft." That word seems to be getting around, discouraging paper hangers from even trying their craft in stores that require thumbprints. Authorities estimate that the rate of bad checks has been cut by 50% in most such outlets. The devices have proved doubly effective at some stores. Last month an Alec department store clerk in Colma, Calif., refused to accept the check of a man who balked at being fingerprinted. The customer eventually cashed his check--which bounced the next day--around the corner at Alec's competitor.

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