Have some banks, or their legal representatives, been faking signatures on UK court documents used to repossess people’s homes and to recover other debts?

It’s a serious charge, but a new campaign group claims there has been “alleged industrial-scale forgery” of signatures. And the Bank Signature Forgery Campaign has some powerful supporters in high places. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on fair business banking – a cross-party group of MPs and peers – publicly voiced its support this month, as did the high-profile police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, Anthony Stansfeld.

Meanwhile, a signature expert told Guardian Money: “The whole thing is highly suspicious.”

If the campaign’s claims are true, it would mean a multibillion-dollar scandal that played out in the US was being repeated in the UK (see box).

Julian Watts, the man behind the campaign, says big banks and lenders are linked to documents carrying questionable signatures, and that, in some cases, people were evicted as a direct result.

He has amassed a dossier of signatures purporting to be by one person that sometimes appear to be very different. He is asking people to send in photos or photocopies of signatures on bank or company court documents so they can be examined.

The central allegation of the campaign, running on Facebook and Twitter, is that signatures on some UK court documents appear to have been forged – that is, not signed by the person whose printed name appears under the “statement of truth” (the bit that typically says something like “I believe the facts stated in this document are true”).

It is claimed that in some cases, employees at the law firms acting on behalf of the banks or the bank’s representatives, may have faked them in order to speed up the legal process. For example, it might be that the case handler whose name is on the documents was off sick or on holiday when they needed to be signed, so other members of staff simply signed that person’s name in order to keep the process moving.

Handwriting expert Adam Brand has viewed some of the documents and says they definitely appear worthy of further investigation, adding: “There certainly appears to be a case here, although further extensive work is going to be needed.”

Money asked Brand – a forensic handwriting analyst – to comment on one set we were shown. They relate to a home repossession, and all the signatures – in this case, a squiggle – were supposedly made by the same person. Yet there are arguably variations.

Brand told us that someone who had adopted a reduced signature, or squiggle, would tend to stick to that same signature. “Here we have a totally inconsistent situation. Purely from a common-sense point of view it is unreasonable.”

However, both the individual named on the documents, and the law firm that employed them, have firmly rejected any suggestions that multiple people had signed in the employee’s name.

Giving its support to the campaign, the APPG on fair business banking, co-chaired by Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake, says it “receives frequent and consistent representations from constituents with concerns over the forgery of signatures”. It adds: “This campaign will provide a vital method of gathering evidence of possible signature forgeries by UK banks in court documents.”

Some may take the view that even if this did happen, it is hardly the crime of the century, while others may feel that the campaign’s real agenda is trying to help people wriggle out of their debts on a technicality.

But Watts rejects this and says it is more than just a technicality: “While it’s fine for people to pp letters, people cannot pp the signature on court documents such as witness statements ... signed ‘statements of truth’ are a foundational aspect of the justice system.”

He says that if it was conclusively proved that signature forgery had taken place, “people may have been fraudulently evicted from their homes, or had court judgments fraudulently secured against them for other consumer debt”.

It is fair to say that faking a signature on a “statement of truth” is a very serious business: in late 2017 a UK solicitor was struck off for – among other things – directing other members of staff to fake signatures on witness statements.

The official ruling in that case stated that “the seriousness of the misconduct is at the highest level ... the dishonesty was of such gravity that public confidence in the profession would no doubt be undermined were the public to learn of what occurred.”

However, it should also be pointed out that Watts is no impartial observer: he has an axe to grind in that he and his wife have been the subject of several bank court cases. He wants MPs to review the evidence and, if necessary, pass it on to the National Crime Agency or the Serious Fraud Office.

‘Reckless and abusive’ forgery, US style

In the US, fake signatures on documents in the wake of the housing market bubble bursting in 2006-07, were among the “reckless and abusive mortgage practices” that resulted in a $25bn (£19bn) settlement between mortgage lenders and the US government and most US states in 2012.

One of these practices was known as “robo-signing”, where some staff signed someone else’s name, or signed documents they hadn’t even read, to speed up the foreclosure process.

In one article about fake signatures on American mortgage documents, Associated Press reported that “one name, ‘Linda Green,’ was signed almost two dozen different ways”.