Forgery: Garden Variety and the Real Deal Part 1

When I started to look at Paul Vallones designating petitions, it

was clear that there were different levels of forgery that were
popping up all over the place. Some of it is quite serious; other
examples are what can be described as garden variety forger-
ies, or signatures that occurred because of a lack of understand-
ing of what the rules are by the signer, the witness or both.
The most common forgeries that occur are those committed by
the spouse or relative of the purported signer. For example,
looking at Volume QN1700017 Page 16, Lines 6 and 7 wit-
nessed by Vallones Chief of Staff, Jonathan Szott you have a
husband and wife pair of signatures, Angelo and Patricia Con-
tratti, which appears to be in the same handwriting.
There are two basic ways to check whether a signature is a for-
gery beyond just having a hunch:
1) If youre able to check a buffcard the official signature
of the person in question at the Board of Elections you
can reasonably state whether the signature matches the
one on record, or;

2) Hire one of the top handwriting experts in the nation,

Donald Frangipani.
I did both.

As for Angelo and Patricia Contratti, based upon both the exam-
ination of the buffcards and my handwriting experts assess-
ment, it seems that there is a highly probable chance that the
husband signed for the wife, a type of forgery known as
suspouse in the lingo of forensic specialists. There are more VOL QN1700017
than 30 instances of this happening throughout Paul Vallones
petitions.
All things considered, this type of forgery is generally lumped into
the garden variety kind. The exception is when it happens multi-
ple times by the same petitioner, sometimes on a single petition
page. The reason its important to establish this kind of fraud is
that regular petitioners those that know and follow the rules of
petitioning, whether they are volunteers or professionals would
immediately inform a spouse or relative that they arent allowed to
do this.
In the case of Paul Vallones Chief of Staff, Jonathan Szott who, as
a former staff member for his brother Peter is a veteran of both
city government and political campaigns, should definitely know
the rules its obvious that it didnt bother him that he was com-
mitting this type of fraud, and allowed signers on other sheets to
similarly sign for their spouses.

An even more egregious example of this type of fraud is a page of

signatures witnessed by Seunghoo (Michael) Yon, Director of Spe-
cial Projects for Paul Vallone, in Volume QN1700047, Page 22.

There are three sets of suspouse forgeries on this page: Lines 1

and 2, Demetrios and Anna Klidonas; Lines 4 and 5, Millie and Jo-
seph Miceli; and Lines 16 and 17, Chris Purcell and Janice Galizia
(see buff cards on next pages). As can be seen, based upon the buff
cards alone and reinforced by an examination by the handwriting
expert it is highly probable that Demetrios signed for Anna; Mil-
lie signed for Joseph; and Chris signed for Janice (and from the un-
trained eye, its extremely obvious that Chris printed Janices name,
as it is an exact match to his own printed handwriting).

In a case like this, the witness would most likely have had their en-
tire petition invalidated. Again, Seunghoo Yon is a veteran of politi-
cal campaigns, having worked for Assemblymember Ron Kim prior
to switching to Paul Vallones office in 2014, and should know
VOL QN1700047
better than to commit this type of fraud.
BuffcardDemetrios Klidonas BuffcardAnna Klidonas
BuffcardMillie Miceli BuffcardJoseph Miceli
BuffcardChris Purcell BuffcardJanice Galizia