It's been this way ever since the merchant class became literate, and documents took on the quality of expressing legal rights and obligations.
False documents represent a threat to social stability and order.
They undermine confidence in the authenticity of documents. Forgery and fraud offenses refer to a variety of criminal behaviors designed to cheat a person, a business, or government agency out of their money, goods, or services. Another aspect of fraudulent behavior is it's similarity to white-collar crime. In many ways, forgery and fraud offenses are the hybrid of all hybrid crimes. Although most crimes against business are distinguished by the means used to carry them out, forgery is a specific intent crime while fraud is a general intent crime.