to hide the origin of items used in the commission of a crime, such as removing the number from a firearm used in a murder.the perpetration of fraud, such as portraying an item to be of a different value when making an insurance claim.The reasons for the removal are varied, and include: Serial numbers are regularly removed from items in order to hide their true identity. However, should a characteristic be less clear or contain fewer features, such as a very tiny hole, more than one characteristic would be needed for identification. If a characteristic such as this were of the same size, shape, position and orientation on both a crime scene impression and a shoe sole of the same design, it could be sufficient alone to permit a positive identification.
An example would be a feature generally shaped like an ‘X’ with one stem of the ‘X’ longer than the other, and terminating in a slight curve. In some cases, they are encoded to carry information about the product, such as date of manufacture, model type, etc.identify a shoe, providing the characteristic was sufficiently clear and detailed, and reflected sufficient significant features in common with the scene impression. In most instances, they are simply a sequential number, which describes how many units in a particular production sequence have been produced. They are used to distinguish items from others of a similar appearance. Serial numbers are present on many everyday objects.
