Document Forgery Lawyer

Forgery is rarely prosecuted alone: it surfaces inside another case — a fraud, an employment file, an insurance claim — when someone disputes a document's authenticity and the court orders a handwriting or document examination. For a private individual, Art. 392.1 CP carries 6 months to 3 years' imprisonment and a 6-to-12-month fine for committing, in a public, official or commercial document, any of the forgeries in the first three subsections of Art. 390.1 CP: altering an essential element, simulating the document, or attributing participation to people who took none. Where the author is an authority or public official acting in that capacity, Art. 390.1 CP raises the penalty to 3 to 6 years, a 6-to-24-month fine and special disqualification for 2 to 6 years.

• Do not sign or amend anything further on that document. Any later annotation contaminates the expert examination and reads as an attempt to cure the forgery. The document must stay exactly as it is from the moment you learn of the complaint.
• Locate the originals and any intermediate versions. Drafts, covering emails, versions signed by other people and the copy held by the other side. The chain of versions is what separates a clerical error from a deliberate alteration.
• Do not give evidence on authorship before seeing the expert report. Attribution of a signature is decided with handwriting samples and undisputed exemplars. Committing to an account of who signed before the report is available closes off options the examination may open.
• Check whether the document was really public, official or commercial. A private individual's forgery in a private document requires harm to a third party and has a different framework. How the document is classified decides the sentence before any discussion about the signature.

Document forgery is one of the most complex offences in the Spanish Criminal Code because it intersects with almost every economic, administrative or procedural activity. Forgery crimes protect "public faith": society's collective trust that documents reflect reality. When that trust is broken —by altering a signature, manipulating an invoice, fabricating a certificate or presenting as genuine a document that is not— the State reacts with penalties ranging from fines up to six years' imprisonment. Supreme Court case-law is clear: not every inaccuracy is a crime; only the deliberate mutation of truth, with intent to deceive and capacity to affect legal traffic.

The Criminal Code distinguishes four categories of document: public, official, commercial and private. For the first three —public documents (notarial deeds, judgments, administrative resolutions), official documents (ID, passport, medical prescriptions, academic records) and commercial documents (invoices, delivery notes, cheques, promissory notes, balance sheets)— the applicable article depends on who falsifies, not on the type of document: Art. 390 CP if a public authority or official does so (3-6 years), and Art. 392 CP if a private individual does so (6 months-3 years). Ideological falsehood (departing from the truth in the narration of facts) can only be committed by an authority or official: a private individual who departs from the truth in one of these documents commits no offence on that basis (atypicality). Private documents (Art. 395 CP, which requires harm to a third party) are signed between private parties without a public officer's intervention: contracts, receipts, correspondence, emails.

The methods of commission are listed in Art. 390.1 CP: altering essential elements of a document; simulating a document so it appears genuine; suggesting the intervention of persons who did not take part; or lying when narrating facts. To these is added the use of a false document (Arts. 393 and 396), which punishes whoever knowingly presents a false document, even if they did not forge it. Penalties are graduated: forgery by authority or public official in a public or official document carries 3 to 6 years' prison, 6 to 24 months' fine and 2 to 6 years' absolute disqualification. Forgery by a private individual in a public, official or commercial document carries 6 months to 3 years' prison and fine. Forgery in private documents, when made with intent to harm a third party, carries 6 months to 2 years' prison.

Technical defense in document forgery rests on four recurring axes. First, forgery suitability: the altered document must have real capacity to deceive; so-called "innocuous" or "crude" forgeries —imitations so gross that no one would believe them genuine— are not punishable under settled case-law. Second, intent: the subject must know and will the alteration of truth; mistake of authenticity excludes criminality, and here handwriting, computer or document-scanning expert evidence is decisive. Third, material unlawfulness: not every lie written on paper is forgery; it must affect essential elements and endanger public faith. Fourth, concurrence of offences: forgery rarely appears alone; it is usually instrumental to fraud, punishable insolvency or tax crime, and the qualification of the concurrence (instrumental or real) determines the final sentence.

In forensic practice we see a steady rise in digital forgery cases: PDF editing with graphic software, scanned signatures pasted into contracts, screenshot manipulation, alteration of email metadata and, more recently, document deepfakes. Organic Law 1/2025 on Justice Service Efficiency and case-law on electronic evidence have consolidated criteria on digital chain of custody, hash, time-stamping and computer expert reports —all essential to articulate both prosecution and defence. At Alonso Sala, our criminal lawyers specialised in document forgery intervene from the investigation phase to challenge expert opinions, raise evidentiary nullities and build solid exculpatory narratives. We treat each file with the diligence demanded by a criminal offence carrying imprisonment and serious collateral consequences: loss of professional licenses, administrative disqualification, removal from the commercial register and lasting reputational damage.