Their latest newsletter had the top 5 perils that could get you in legal hot water. Here's one:
<<Losing Your Seal
Letting others use your Notary seal or not properly securing your seal can be damaging. Two Notaries in different states found this out the hard way. In both cases, their signatures appeared on documents they denied notarizing. The only other alternatives weren’t much prettier. Either the Notaries failed to secure their seals, allowing someone else to use them, or they intentionally allowed others to improperly use them. One Notary settled out of court and the other’s insurance carrier settled the claim by compensating the victims.>>
OR (the NNA left out this possibility) the fraudsters just up and made their own seal. As far as I know, with the exception of CA, notaries can have a stamp made by anyone or even make it from a stamp kit off the shelf at Staples. It's nice that some stampmakers might want proof of commission before making a stamp, but a crook can easily sidestep all that. In the two cases mentioned by the NNA, notaries could say not only is that not my signature, that's also not my stamp. But maybe forensics could show it was their stamp based on comparisons with other docs that notary stamped.
Still .... what notary would hand over their stamp to some other idiot? Unless the notary was in on the scam ... . And where do these crooks come from where they know they can "borrow" a notary's seal for a day? Do they go rifling through somebody's notary bag? Or their desk? Don't you think most notaries would know their seal was MIA? Too crazy. And at least report it? Of course, most states don't give a hooey about a lost stamp or stamp forgeries judging by some of the posts here where notaries have reported that their stuff was forged. I think that was considered identity theft. The states didn't even change their notary commission number.
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