A degree certificate held by a woman who claimed to be a qualified doctor, had “the appearance of being altered”, an expert in analysing documents told a jury.

Zholia Alemi, formerly of Scaw Road in High Harrington, Workington, worked as a psychiatrist after claiming to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, a trial at Manchester Crown Court has heard.

She is accused of 20 offences, including forgery and fraud, which she denies.

On Thursday, the court heard evidence from Oliver Thorne, a forensic document examiner, who analysed four documents, including a letter of verification from the University of Auckland.

Mr Thorne said: “In short, the body of the document, from ‘to whom it may concern’, down to ‘yours sincerely’, is type written, with a fabric written typewriter.”

But he said the date and faculty registrar had been produced using dry transfer lettering, which are strips of plastic with lettering in.

He said: “It’s a time consuming process. It’s very difficult to get the spacing that you get from a laser printer or an ink jet printer. It’s likely to have some level of irregularity.”

Mr Thorne said the irregularity of the date on the letter was what set it out as a feature of dry transfer lettering.

When questioned about the authenticity of the paper, Mr Thorne replied: “I don’t have any genuine headed paper from the University of Auckland from 1995. I can’t tell you if that’s consistent with genuine headed paper from the university.”

Mr Thorne said the signature on the letter had features of one that had been copied, rather than a fluently written signature.

He told the court: “The signature is blue, ballpoint ink, made up of lots of strokes, rather than being fluently written.

“Looking at the ‘s’, you can see the end of a stroke and the start of another.

“It’s not what I would expect to find in a fluently written signature, which is normally written quickly and carefully.”

Mr Thorne also examined three degree certificates that were found at the defendant’s home.

He said they were “pictorially quite similar” but the detail was different. Two of the certificates were copies and the other was an ‘original’ document.

Mr Thorne said the original certificate had been damaged.

He told the court: “The obvious difference is the ‘bachelor of medicine’ and ‘bachelor of surgery’ appears on the photocopy but is no longer apparent on the original.

“There is some disturbance of the paper fibers.

“The dry transfer lettering has gone and it’s damaged in that area. It has an appearance of alteration.”

Mr Thorne said he believed that the original certificate had been damaged by the removal of ‘bachelor of medicine’ and ‘bachelor of surgery’.

During cross-examination, barrister Frances Fitzgibbon questioned Mr Thorne about the risk of falling into unconscious bias.

Mr Thorne said he was aware of the risk and had received training.

Mr Fitzgibbon said that Mr Thorne had been briefed about the case before examining the documents and asked if he could exclude the possibility of unconscious bias.

Mr Thorne replied: “I don’t believe I have. I go out of my way to find reasonable explanations for things.”

The trial continues.

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