During the translation process of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris took some characters copied from the Golden Plates to a Professor Charles Anthon, an scholar of ancient languages, and asked for his comment on them.  According to Harris, Anthon declared them to be Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyrian, and Arabic (although the Book of Mormon itself claims the characters it was written in are reformed Egyptian--no mention whatsoever of the latter three languages), and that they were true characters.  According to Anthon, however, the characters seemed like regular Roman, Hebrew, and Greek letters scrawled haphazardly on the page after being altered in some way.  The actual transcript has not been found, so Hofmann decided to forge it and sell it to the leadership.  (Note:  Those familiar with the account in the Pearl of Great Price will remember that Anthon allegedly tore up his authentication notice, not the transcript itself.)  The President of the Church at the time was Spencer W. Kimball and he bought it hook, line, and sinker.  The Anthon Transcript was Hofmann's first major "discovery" and the one which vaulted him into the Mormon limelight.