This article questions the large-scale practice of “inscriptions en faux” (allegations of forgery) against the Ferme générale in the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. These legal proceedings, which were established to defend against the crime of counterfeiting public documents, were hijacked from their primary purpose by a number of fraudsters in order to fight the tax administration. This paradox of the convicted offender accusing the authority of counterfeit reveals an original relationship between the royal state and the individual. The individual distances himself from the broken political system—a form of absolutism based on the rights of the defendant—using legal and illegal practices. Reopened in the second half of the seventeenth century by judicial officers fighting ministerial despotism, the case of “inscriptions en faux” served the anti-authority rhetoric based on the defense of individual liberties.