Why are "wet signatures" still a thing?

There is no business phrase more skin-crawlingly icky than...

... “wet signature.” 

[Ulp. 🤢]

But hang on, what’s the point of making someone find a printer, 

and a scanner, 

and a pen, 

and those little “sign here” stickies anyway?

Why, crime, of course!

See, once upon a time, in the ancient epoch of carbon paper and mimeographs, an ancestral payroll clerk started herself a little scam. 

She would fill out fake timecards for people who were no longer with the company and cash the checks herself. 

Each timecard had to be signed, so our Direct Deposit Desperado cut former employees' old signatures out from previous documents, pasted them to blank timecards, and photo copied them. 

And voilà. 

As any Better Call Saul fan or person who was a teenager prior to the year 2000 can tell you: ✨ A forgery that can fool even the most eagle-eyed forensic expert or school office Trunchbull. 

Except that this Al Cabone-head had photocopied signatures with ink smudges and coffee stains, which is how she got caught.

So in 1977, a judge ruled that a typed, copied, or duplicated signature isn’t proof of signatory intent, ruling that certain documents needed [ulp 🤢] wet signatures to be valid.

And then computers were invented and no one told them. 

And that’s how we get wet signatures. The end.

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