Markham Forgery Lawyer

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A forgery file follows the life of a document. Someone makes it, someone passes it, someone spots it, and the Criminal Code criminalizes every stage separately. That is how one lease application, one cheque or one edited PDF can produce two or three distinct counts carrying ten and fourteen year maximums before anyone loses a dollar. This page follows that life cycle from creation to courtroom, the way a Markham forgery prosecution actually unfolds, and shows where the defences live at each stage.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Serving Markham and York Region from our Thornhill office. Updated July 2026.

Stage one, creation: what makes a document false

Start with the definitions, because they decide more forgery cases than the dramatic evidence does. Under s. 321 of the Criminal Code, a document is anything on which matter is recorded that can be read or understood by a person, a computer system or another device, and the definition expressly includes a credit card. A false document is, broadly, one that lies about its own origin: made to look like it was created by someone who did not make it, or authorized by someone who gave no authority, or altered so it no longer says what it originally said.

Forgery itself, s. 366, is making a false document, knowing it is false, with intent that it be used or acted on as genuine to the prejudice of anyone, or that someone be induced to act on it. Altering a genuine document in a material way, changing a date, an amount, a signature line, counts as making a false document under s. 366(2). What the section punishes is the lie about authorship and authority, not bad content. A letter full of false statements, honestly signed by its real author, is not a forgery. A perfectly accurate letter signed with a name that is not yours can be.

Stage two, circulation: uttering and trafficking in forged documents

The document leaves the desk and the second offence begins. Section 368 targets everyone who deals with a forged document knowing or believing it to be forged: using it or acting on it as if it were genuine, causing or attempting to cause someone else to rely on it, transferring, selling or offering it, or simply possessing it with intent that it be used as genuine. Lawyers call the classic form uttering. The maximum on indictment is ten years, the same as forgery itself, and s. 368(2) adds that it does not matter where or by whom the document was forged.

Notice how far the section stretches on either side of the obvious case. Upstream, possession with intent is enough, so a folder of fabricated pay stubs that never got submitted can still ground a count. Downstream, the trafficking branch reaches people who moved documents along knowing, or being reckless about, what they were. The saving grace runs the other way: every branch requires the Crown to prove you knew or believed the document was forged. The tenant who submits an employment letter a broker prepared, the bookkeeper who processes an invoice that arrived by email, the buyer who presents ownership papers that came with the car: if they did not know, there is no offence. Files are won and lost on that element more than any other.

Making and passing are routinely charged together on one information, one count under s. 366 and another under s. 368, sometimes against the same person, sometimes split across several. Part of defending these files is refusing to let the Crown blur the two: proof that a document is false is not proof of who falsified it, and proof of possession is not proof of intent to deceive.

The tools: s. 368.1 and the 14 year surprise

Here is the count that shocks people at the first bail hearing. Possessing the instruments of forgery is punished more severely than forgery itself. Section 368.1 makes it an offence, without lawful authority or excuse, to make, repair, buy, sell, import, export or possess any instrument, device, apparatus, material or thing that you know has been used for forgery, or know is adapted or intended for that use. The maximum on indictment is fourteen years.

The Supreme Court of Canada has read the word adapted in this family of offences to mean suitable for, not specially modified. A printer, a scanner, template files, blank security paper, embossing gear: ordinary equipment qualifies if it is suitable for the work, which is why the mental element carries the whole section. The Crown must prove you knew the thing had been used for forgery or was meant for it. A garage full of printing equipment is a business; the same garage plus templates for Ontario licences is a prosecution. The line between those two garages is knowledge and purpose, and it is the defence's job to hold the Crown to proving it.

Above even that sits s. 369, a straight indictable offence carrying fourteen years for dealing, again without lawful authority or excuse, in exchequer bill paper, revenue paper or the public seals of Canada, a province, a public body or a court. Seal and security-paper cases are rare, but when a seal image turns up in a scanned document the count appears, and its no-summary-election structure changes the procedural picture immediately.

The documents Markham forgery files are actually about

Forget banknotes in a basement. The documents that generate York Region forgery files are the paperwork of ordinary life in a commuter region, and each type brings its own evidentiary texture.

• Employment and income letters. Job letters and pay stubs supporting a lease, a mortgage or a car loan. These files rise and fall on who prepared the package: applicants, brokers and agents all touch the same PDF, and authorship is genuinely contested.
• Academic records. Transcripts, diplomas and admission letters, often surfacing when an employer or institution verifies years later.
• Leases and mortgage packages. Signatures on guarantees and consents that a co-signer says they never gave. Family financing arrangements produce many of these, and authorization is the battleground.
• Cheques and corporate paper. Altered payees and amounts, signed cheques from closed accounts, backdated resolutions and invoices inside business disputes.
• Government identity and status documents. Licences, permits and cards, where the forgery counts overlap with the separate identity documents offence in s. 56.1, which carries its own built-in exceptions for consent, ordinary business, genealogy and the administration of justice. Our Markham identity theft lawyer page covers that terrain.

And one more, easy to miss: because s. 321 defines document to include a credit card, a counterfeit card is legally a forged document. Card files and document files are neighbours in the Code, which is why the same seizure often produces both; see our Markham credit card fraud lawyer page for that stack.

Stage three, detection: how forgery is proven, and how experts push back

A forgery prosecution has to prove three different things: that the document is false, that you are the one who made it or passed it, and that you knew. The Crown's toolkit is predictable. Comparison with genuine exemplars from the complainant. Metadata and revision history from files and email chains. Records from seized devices showing edits or templates. CCTV and continuity evidence where a document was presented in person, an area where YRP maintains a dedicated Forensic Video Analysis and Forensic Imaging Unit within its Investigative Services. And witness evidence about who signed what, when.

The defence side of this stage is where forgery files get interesting. Questioned-document examination is a specialist field, and the defence can retain its own examiners to test the Crown's conclusions. Handwriting comparison has real limits, especially with short signatures, photocopies and small sample sets, and honest experts say so. Authorship is not authorization: a document signed with the genuine permission of the person named is not a false document at all, however messy the family or business context that produced it. Printer, paper and ink questions can date a document differently than the allegation needs. And the original matters. Where the Crown holds only a scan or a photocopy, examination options narrow, chain of custody comes into play, and the confidence of every conclusion drops. We press on all of it, because a file that looks damning as a PDF exhibit often looks very different once the paper trail is forced into the open.

Forgery against fraud: the missing-deprivation line

Clients ask why they face both a forgery count and a fraud count over one document. The answer is that the two offences punish different wrongs, and the difference is the deprivation. Forgery is complete without anyone losing anything: the false document, made or passed with the required knowledge and intent, is the whole crime. Fraud under s. 380 requires more, a deprivation, which the Supreme Court in R. v. Théroux confirmed includes actual loss and money merely put at risk. Use a forged income letter to obtain a mortgage and the Crown will say both crimes happened: the document offence when the letter was made and passed, the fraud when the lender's money went out the door on false pretences.

For defence purposes the pairing cuts in useful ways. The counts have different elements, so doubt lands differently: a lender who never relied on the letter weakens the fraud count but not the forgery count, while doubt about who created the document strikes at forgery first. Value matters only on the fraud side, where the $5,000 line splits fraud over $5,000 from fraud under $5,000 and changes election, exposure and exits. And resolutions tend to travel together: answer the dishonesty story at the heart of the file and both counts usually resolve with it. The wider map lives on our Markham fraud defence lawyer page.

Stage four, the courtroom: how a forgery file runs at Newmarket

Every criminal file from Markham, forgery included, is heard at the Newmarket courthouse at 50 Eagle Street West, the single criminal courthouse for York Region. Bail happens in the same building, because none of the document offences is reserved for Superior Court bail, and most people charged with forgery are released quickly, on conditions aimed at the paperwork: no contact with complainants, and often restrictions on acting in the transactions or roles the allegation grew out of. Markham itself is policed from 5 District at 8700 McCowan Road, with document and device work handled by the regional units, including Cybercrime and Digital Forensics.

Procedure then follows the maxima. Forgery and uttering carry ten years, below the fourteen year threshold s. 535 sets for preliminary inquiries, so those counts proceed without one, at the Ontario Court of Justice or the Superior Court on election. The fourteen year offences, forgery instruments under s. 368.1 and the seals offence under s. 369, can attract a preliminary inquiry when prosecuted by indictment. Routine case-management appearances usually run virtually, counsel can cover most of them, and the real work happens between dates: disclosure of the document trail, the expert question, and a Crown pre-trial where the file's weaknesses get put on the table.

Where forgery defences come from

Almost every successful forgery defence grows from one of six roots.

• No knowledge the document was false. The complete answer for everyone downstream of the maker: tenants, employees, buyers and family members who handled paper they believed.
• No intent it be used as genuine. Drafts, mock-ups and documents prepared for review or illustration are not forgeries without the intent to deceive.
• Authorization. A signature applied with the genuine permission of the person named is not a false document, and workplace signing practices, delegated authority and family arrangements supply that permission more often than complainants admit.
• Authorship doubt. Shared printers, shared accounts, shared offices. Proving a document false is not proving who falsified it.
• Lawful authority or excuse. Built into the instruments and seals offences, alongside the s. 366(5) good-faith government-request exception.
• Charter challenges. Document files ride on seized devices and records, and searches that overrun their authority take their fruits with them.

Which root carries the file depends on disclosure, and in document cases disclosure rewards insistence: the metadata, the originals and the full email chains routinely say more than the synopsis.

The penalty map

One table, the whole document cluster. Every offence below is hybrid, so the Crown can proceed summarily or by indictment, except s. 369, which is indictable only.

Offence	What it punishes	Maximum on indictment
Forgery, ss. 366 and 367	Making a false document with intent it be acted on as genuine	10 years
Uttering, s. 368	Using, trafficking in or possessing a forged document, knowing or believing it forged	10 years
Forgery instruments, s. 368.1	Making, dealing in or possessing devices and materials known to be used, suitable or intended for forgery	14 years
Seals and security paper, s. 369	Exchequer bill paper, revenue paper, public seals of Canada, a province, a public body or a court	14 years, indictable only
Identity documents, s. 56.1	Possessing or dealing in another person's government identity documents without lawful excuse	5 years
Fraud, s. 380	Where the document was used to obtain money or value	14 years over $5,000; 2 years under

Collateral consequences follow the maxima. The ten and fourteen year offences are serious criminality under immigration law for permanent residents and foreign nationals regardless of the sentence imposed, which makes count selection in any resolution a decision about status, not just sentence. And a document-dishonesty conviction is its own lasting penalty in employment that touches money, records or trust, which in this region is most employment.

When the file started at home or at work

Ask where Markham forgery files come from and the honest answer is: relationships that ended badly. A partnership dissolves and last year's corporate resolutions suddenly look different to the partner who lost. A marriage breaks down and a spousal guarantee on a line of credit becomes a signature nobody remembers giving. An estate divides and a will or a transfer gets questioned by the child who received less. An employee leaves on bad terms and the invoices they processed for years get re-read as a scheme.

That origin story matters to the defence in three ways. First, motive runs both directions. A complainant with money riding on a civil dispute has reasons to remember authorization differently, and cross-examination on that interest is legitimate and often decisive. Second, the civil and criminal boundaries blur. Signing practices that were sloppy, delegated or assumed for years are the texture of family and small-business life, and sloppy is not criminal; the Crown must still prove a false document, knowledge and intent to deceive. Third, anything said or filed in the parallel dispute can surface in the criminal file, so the civil litigation and the criminal defence have to be run in coordination, not in sequence. We routinely work alongside civil counsel on exactly that problem.

None of this makes a document allegation less serious. It makes it more defensible, provided the context arrives before positions harden, through counsel, on paper, rather than as an emotional explanation across an interview table.

What to do, and not do, once documents are questioned

Document files reward discipline in the first days, before anyone is even charged. The rules are short.

• Do not explain. Not to the police, not to the complainant, not to the employer's investigator. Forgery is a knowledge-and-intent offence, and improvised explanations become the Crown's favourite exhibit.
• Do not produce documents voluntarily. Requests for your files, your drafts or your devices should go through counsel. Compliance decisions are strategic, and they are permanent.
• Do not delete anything. The version history you erase may be the version history that would have cleared you, and deletion after police contact reads as guilt and can ground new allegations.
• Preserve and map. Keep every draft, email and message about the transaction, and write down who had access to the accounts, printers, templates and files involved. In a shared-office or family-computer case, that access map is the defence.
• Get the expert question moving early. Originals degrade, get returned or disappear into evidence lockers. Counsel can press for preservation and examination of the actual paper before the file calcifies around a photocopy.

Then let the process work. Most people charged with document offences in York Region are released quickly, the court dates are administrative for months, and the outcome is decided by what gets built in between. Early, quiet preparation is the entire game.

If a document count sticks: what sentencing actually looks like

The maxima in the penalty map are ceilings, not predictions, and none of the document offences carries a mandatory minimum. That leaves the full range open, and in practice the range is wide. At one end, a first allegation involving a single document, no loss and a sympathetic context can end in an absolute or conditional discharge, where guilt is found but no conviction registers, an outcome that exists precisely for people whose careers and status cannot absorb a record. Suspended sentences and probation occupy the middle. Jail is real at the other end, reserved in the main for scale, sophistication, repetition and breach of trust: the bookkeeper who papered over years of transfers sits differently than the tenant with one inflated job letter.

Three things reliably move the number. Trust is the heaviest: a forgery committed inside a position of responsibility aggravates the sentence, and judges say so expressly. Loss is second: where a fraud count rides along, restitution to the people actually out of pocket often shapes the whole resolution, and repayment handled early and through counsel is worth more than repayment volunteered in panic. Context is third: age, record, health, immigration status and the story of how the document came to exist all matter, and they only help if they are put before the court properly. Sentencing in document cases is argued, not administered, and preparing for it starts long before anyone concedes it will be needed.

Why Markham clients bring document files to Kazandji Law

Forgery prosecutions are won with patience: in the metadata, in the exemplars, in the gap between a false document and a proven author. Fadi Matthew Kazandji, our founding partner, works these files personally from first disclosure to final submission at 50 Eagle Street West. Markham clients are served from our Thornhill office at 7191 Yonge Street, Suite 310, the closest of our four offices, with downtown Toronto at 180 John Street, Unit 320, North York and Oakville behind it.

The neighbouring pages on this site complete the picture: the Markham theft defence lawyer page for property counts that travel with document files, our Toronto forgery lawyers page for the same offences charged downtown, and for the provincial statutory picture, the Ontario forgery lawyers page and the Ontario fraud defence lawyers hub.

Forgery charges in Markham: your questions answered

This page is general legal information about forgery, uttering and related document offences in Canada, not legal advice about your situation. Criminal Code provisions described are current to July 2026. Every file turns on its own facts; speak with a lawyer before making decisions. Kazandji Law defends forgery, fraud and identity charges in Markham, across York Region and throughout the Greater Toronto Area. Call 647-588-3234 for a free consultation.