Durward Matheny
Forensic Document Examination Services
Incompetent, Corrupt, or Both
Incompetent?
Durward Metheny was asked to review a number of documents to determine if three signatures on a bank account opening form and a land lease had been forged. He determined that it was highly improbable that the signatures were actually signed by the actual person who was in fact my mother. I am providing a link to the report below. Emily Will, who also is also a document and handwriting expert, took a look at the same documents and in her opinion thought that the sample documents were not in good enough condition to reach a finding either way. I have a link to her report also below.
The claim by the attorney who hired Durward Matheny was that I had someone forge my mother’s signature so I could then use the account to transfer money my mother had in another bank account into the joint account with my mother.
While it would make some sense that someone might want to do that, it does not make sense that someone would open that joint account with $24,000 of the other person’s money. You might could open an account with enough money to make sure you did not incur bank charges, and then transfer some money shortly before the other person’s death. But this account was opened with $24,000 and it was over 4 years before my mother’s death. The account had a credit card attached to it which was in use the next month after the account was opened and the chargers were all in the area where my mother lived and not in the area where I lived. And my mother wrote checks on the acccount before I ever wrote a check on that account. There also was a check register showing the $24,000 deposit in my mother’s handwriting.
As for the lease, one of the other parties to the lease remembers watching my mother sign the lease. It also makes no sense that I would have a lease forged when in a small town the chances that she would encounter the other parties and learn about the forged lease woud be exceptionally high.
Here are pictures of the check register where the $24,000 is written by my mother with the date 5/11/07. Most of the entries in the checkbook are hers. I did make a few which are obviously different and printed rather than written.
Here is the bank statement for that the opening period of time which opens the question as to how I added the $24,000 when I was not yet on a bank account at Capital Bank.
Here is the next month’s statement. Notice that there is a credit card attached to the statement and almost all of the charges are in the eastern area of the state where my mother lived and not in Raleigh where I lived.
The first checks written on the account were in November 2007. They were both written by my mother.
In April 2008, I wrote my first check on the account to pay my mother’s insurance bill. There was one other check written by me, but the rest are written by my mother.
It is obvious that Durward Matheny was wrong about the signatures being written by anyone but my mother. The question is whether he got it wrong because he was incompetent or corrupt.
Corrupt?
Let’s look at the facts. My mother had a bank account with Capital Bank. Most banks would not let anyone open a joint account with getting the signature of the other party. But the account was opened with $24,000. Since I was not on any other accounts at Capital at that time there would have been no way for me to have opened the account without her. My mother also never revoked my power of attorney which would have been the logical thing to do if she knew that I was stealing from her. has some documents that he would really like to show have forged signatures. If he is thinking at all, he is looking at a situation where I would have forged her signature to open an account which most banks would not take a signature without the person being there plus how could I have taken the money out of another account that I was not on, and also make sure my mother must not have realized that the account was opened before her death over four years later. Furthermore my mother opened a joint account with the lawyer’s client, her granddaughter, about a year later with a $24,000 deposit which is the maximum amount you could open a joint account without having to declare a gift tax. The attorney does not even bother to call the other people who signed the land lease to see if they actually saw Mother sign the lease. The thought that anyone would forge a land lease in a town with 300 people it is virtually a certainty that Mother will have contact with them within a few months at most and thank her for signing the lease.
I cannot believe the attorney could possibly be stupid enough to believe those things happened. Assuming he did not believe the signatures were really forged, then he needed to get someone to say the signatures were forged so it would seem that he must have some idea that Durward Matheny would give him the result that he wanted instead of the truth.
In my opinion, it is far more likely that Durward Matheny is more likely corrupt than imcompetent, but being both imcompetent and corrupt cannot be ruled out.