Fake Super Statement Detection — Catch Edited AU Statements
A super statement balance can be edited in five minutes — and most reviewers will not notice. Property managers ask for super statements as backup income proof. Lenders use them as asset evidence. Visa applicants attach them as savings demonstrations. The fund-issued PDF is treated as authoritative, but the AustralianSuper, AwareSuper, HostPlus, REST, or Cbus original can be opened in any PDF editor, the balance bumped, and re-exported. The visual is unchanged. The file structure is not.
HTPBE? analyzes the structural layer of the PDF file — the layer that records every edit, even invisible ones. We don’t inspect holograms, phone photos, or ID biometrics. If your fraud problem is a digitally altered or fabricated super statement, we’re the most specific tool for it.
When HTPBE? returns INCONCLUSIVE on a super statement, that’s itself a fraud signal in this context — real fund-portal exports always carry the fund’s institutional producer signature, never a desktop tool.
The problem
Modern document fraud is invisible to visual review
A growing class of document fraud opens a genuine PDF, edits a balance, a date, or a beneficiary, and re-saves it. Visually nothing changes — the document passes pixel-level review, layout review, and KYC.
Structural PDF analysis reads the layers rendering engines never expose: revision history, object structure, signature coverage maps. That is where edits leave fingerprints they cannot wipe.
Common tampering patterns
- Modified balances or totals after export
- Swapped IBAN or beneficiary on invoices
- Post-signature edits on contracts
- Backdated issue and modification dates
- Fabricated documents from consumer PDF tools
What this looks like
How fake and tampered super statements actually look
Three real fraud mechanics we catch at the structural PDF layer.
Balance edited after fund download
Authentic super statement from the fund portal opens in any PDF editor. Balance bumped from $42,000 to $142,000. Exported as PDF. Producer field changes from the fund’s document engine to whichever editor was used. Visual page renders identically; structural metadata flips.
Statement fabricated in Word from a template
A template lifted from a fund’s public sample, populated with the user’s name and a desired balance, exported. Producer is Microsoft Word; the structured fund metadata authentic statements carry is missing entirely.
Real statement with edited contribution history
Genuine fund statement with the contribution history rewritten to show consistent employer payments where there were gaps. Incremental update markers in the xref chain expose the post-issuance edit.
The scale
Why your existing checks miss this
AUSfund APIs check the fund. They do not check the file.
And applicants who edited the statement rarely consent to fund-side fraud detection.
Funds operate their own portals; aggregators (Basiq, Frollo, Illion) handle Open Banking-style asset fraud detection — but only when the applicant agrees to connect. Applicants who edited the file rarely do. AUSfund and ATO super lookups are not accessible to private property managers or lenders. HTPBE? catches the super statement the applicant uploaded, regardless of whether fund-side or aggregator access is available — standalone, no fund API, no ATO lookup.
What HTPBE? checks
Detection capabilities
Deterministic structural signals. No probabilistic scores, no model training.
Producer signature on the statement
Authentic super statements come from fund document systems — recognisable producer signatures specific to AustralianSuper, AwareSuper, HostPlus, REST, Cbus, Australian Retirement Trust, UniSuper, and other major funds. When the producer is Microsoft Excel, Word, LibreOffice, Chrome Headless, or a generic PDF library, the document was edited or fabricated on a desktop.
Incremental update trail
A clean fund export has one cross-reference table. Re-saves through Excel or PDF editors append a second xref — visible structural evidence of post-export editing.
Balance and contribution arithmetic
Line arithmetic across the statement (opening balance → contributions → returns → fees → closing balance) is checked row by row. Edited closing balances break the chain unless every dependent field is also adjusted.
Modification timestamp gap
A real statement issued in July has CreationDate ≈ ModDate in July. A six-month gap on a "freshly issued" statement is a high-confidence flag for post-export editing.
Font subset divergence across pages
Multi-session edits or page reassembly leave font subset prefix shifts. Single-session legitimate fund exports have consistent subsets across all pages.
Image-stream artefacts in fabricated headers
Fabricated statements often paste fund logos lifted from the fund’s site. The pasted image stream carries different compression characteristics than authentic embedded headers — a structural fingerprint.
Share with engineering
Wire this into your intake pipeline in under a day
Two API calls — one POST to submit the PDF, one GET to retrieve the verdict. Forward this page to your engineering team; the full API reference, quotas, and copy-paste examples in cURL, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Go, and Ruby are one click away.
Pricing
Self-serve plans, no sales call
All plans include the same forensic checks. Pick the quota that matches your monthly document volume.
manualStarter
$15/mo
30 checks/mo
Manual spot-checks and integration testing
most commonGrowth
$149/mo
350 checks/mo
Active document processing pipelines
high volumePro
$499/mo
1,500 checks/mo
High-volume automation and API integrations
Enterprise (unlimited, on-premise available) — see full pricing
API key on signup. Free test environment on every plan. No card required.
Customer Stories
Teams that stopped document fraud
Compliance, finance, and risk teams use HTPBE? to catch manipulated PDFs before they become costly mistakes.
Caught an invoice where the total had been changed by less than a thousand dollars. Without this I would have approved it without a second look.
Sarah M.
AP Manager
United States
We had three applicants in the same week with bank statements that looked completely fine. Two of them were flagged as modified. You simply cannot see this by reading the document — it is in the file structure.
Lars V.
Risk Analyst, Online Lending
Netherlands
Salary slips were coming with altered figures. We identified two problematic files before the placement was finalised.
Priya K.
HR Operations Lead
India
Since we started checking documents this way, we stopped two applications early in the process that would have been very difficult to reverse later.
Julien R.
Fraud Analyst, Fintech
France
Some applicants were sending PDFs that looked authentic but had been edited in ways not visible to the eye. We now ask for checked originals when something is flagged. Already saved us from a few bad decisions.
Marta S.
Compliance Coordinator
Spain
One invoice was caught because there was a mismatch between the document dates and structure. That particular case would have cost us significantly.
Tariq A.
Finance Manager
United Arab Emirates
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Does HTPBE? work with statements from any Australian super fund?
How is this different from Basiq or Frollo asset fraud detection?
Can it catch SMSF balance statements?
What about scanned super statements?
inconclusive — institutional metadata is gone because the scanner authored a fresh PDF. Treat inconclusive on a super statement as a prompt for manual review or a request for the original PDF download from the fund portal.What does an INCONCLUSIVE verdict mean for a super statement?
Secure your workflow
Create your account — API key on signup, free test environment on every plan.
From $15/mo. No sales call. Cancel any time.