The offence of Forgery is defined as “Making or Altering of writing or other things mentioned in Law, knowingly, with the intention that one or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act on his own or other person’s loss.”

Elements of forgery are as follow:

Actus reus: includes:

(a) physical act: making or altering

(b) Necessary circumstances for occurrence of Forgery:

1- The subject matter of forgery should be a document or a writing or other things mentioned in law.

2- Forgery is supposable in which itself is not false.

3- It should be possible to confuse ordinary persons.

4- The subject matter of forgery should be naturally false and it is not sufficient to contain only false information.

(c) Criminal result (loss): In this offence, possible loss is sufficient and sure loss is not necessary. In this offence there are three kinds of loss:

1-Material loss  2-Moral loss  3-Social(Public) loss.

Moral loss of society means weakening common reliance on documents. 

Mens rea is intent to falsification that includes intent to making or altering(common dishonesty) and intent to cause harm to another(special dishonesty).

Regarding articles 6,12 and 14 of Iran electronic commerce act, it can be concluded that the meaning of “data message” has been supposed to be the same as the meaning of “writing”. When data messages have secure conditions and also electronic signature is attached to them, they are legally equal with written documents. Also, From articles 14 and 15 of this Act  it is concluded that lawmaker is inclined to consider electronic documents as official documents. If data messages that form electronic signature have all necessary technical conditions then secure electronic signature can be replaced with handwriting signature as similar legal effects.Article 68 of this Act deals with computer forgery crime.