The dealer behind the wave of new documents was Mark Hofmann, whose forgeries were sophisticated enough to fool professional document examiners for years, using period-appropriate paper, ink formulated to mimic period ageing, and content carefully calibrated to seem historically plausible rather than obviously sensational. The Salamander Letter, purchased by the church in 1984 through an intermediary, Steven Christensen, was among his most consequential fabrications specifically because its content, describing Joseph Smith being led to the golden plates by a white salamander rather than an angel, complicated the church's traditional founding account in a way many members and leaders found troubling regardless of the letter's authenticity.
Hofmann's fraud was a financial scheme as much as a historical one, and it collapsed catastrophically in October 1985 when, facing exposure as his forged document sales grew increasingly overextended, he planted pipe bombs that killed Christensen and another man, and was injured by a third bomb apparently intended for himself. The ensuing investigation uncovered his forgery techniques in detail, including anachronistic ink chemistry detectable under close forensic examination, and he pleaded guilty to the murders and to document fraud in 1987. The church retains the Salamander Letter in its archives today explicitly as a forged document and a historical artifact of the Hofmann affair, not as evidence for any claim about Joseph Smith's actual experience.