A fabricated offer letter unlocks personal loans, visas, and competing-offer leverage – visual review never catches it
Lenders see fake offer letters used to qualify for personal and pre-employment loans. Visa officers see them used to demonstrate intended employment. HR teams see them used as competing-offer leverage during salary negotiation. The pattern is the same: author in Microsoft Word using a real company template, set the salary high, sign the HR Manager’s name, export to PDF.
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 fabricated or tampered offer letter, we’re the most specific tool for it.
Offer letters are a mixed-origin document – large employers issue them through HRMS or DocuSign workflows; small employers and startups legitimately export from Word. When HTPBE? returns INCONCLUSIVE on an offer letter, that is a reason to escalate to manual review, not proof of fraud – it means HTPBE? cannot confirm the file as an untouched original.
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 offer letters actually look
Three real fraud mechanics we catch at the structural PDF layer.
Letter fabricated in Microsoft Word from scratch
No employer involved. The candidate downloads the company logo from LinkedIn, drops it into Word, types the offer letter with an inflated salary, signs an HR Manager’s name they invented, exports to PDF. However closely it copies the company’s letterhead, the file does not come back INTACT: with nothing indicating later editing it returns INCONCLUSIVE and should go to manual review; with evidence of editing or fabrication, MODIFIED.
Real letter with edited salary or start date
Candidate has a genuine offer but the salary doesn’t qualify them for the loan amount they want – or the start date doesn’t fit the visa timeline. They open the PDF in any editor, change the figure, re-export. HTPBE? flags the edit made after issuance.
Letter from a defunct or non-existent shell company
A ‘subsidiary’ company name nobody can check, with a signed offer letter at a high salary. HTPBE? reads the file, not the company: a letter built in Word, Excel or LibreOffice and exported directly, with nothing indicating later editing, comes back INCONCLUSIVE – not INTACT – whether or not the named company exists, and goes to manual review.
The scale
Why your existing checks miss this
BGV calls the employer. Lenders cannot.
And visual review of an offer letter PDF rarely catches a Word fabrication.
BGV platforms (AuthBridge, IDfy, OnGrid, HireRight, Sterling) call the employer to confirm an offer was made – this works for hiring contexts when the employer responds. But lenders, visa officers, and pre-onboarding HR teams often cannot make that call (no relationship with the named employer, no time, no consent path). HTPBE? catches the file the candidate uploaded – standalone, no employer relationship required, no human in the loop until the structural verdict is in.
What HTPBE? checks
Detection capabilities
Deterministic structural signals. No probabilistic scores, no model training.
Letterhead copies go to review
An offer letter typed up in Word, Excel or LibreOffice and exported directly does not come back INTACT, however closely it copies a large employer’s letterhead. With no sign of later editing it returns INCONCLUSIVE for manual review; with evidence of editing or fabrication, MODIFIED.
Signature tamper detection
Most large-employer offer letters are e-signed via DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or HelloSign. Editing a signed offer after signing, or stripping its signature, is among the things HTPBE? looks for in the file – regardless of the visual signature image.
Post-issuance edit detection
HTPBE? detects an offer letter edited after issuance – whether it was changed in a PDF editor or rebuilt in other software.
Pasted letterheads and logos
HTPBE? detects company logos and letterheads lifted from another document and pasted in – a structural fingerprint of fabrication.
Dates that disagree
HTPBE? flags a modification date that differs from the declared creation date – a high-confidence flag for post-export editing on a ‘freshly issued’ offer.
Reused templates
HTPBE? detects documents built from a reused template – a common sign of a fabricated offer letter.
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
30 credits/mo
Manual spot-checks and integration testing
most commonGrowth
350 credits/mo
Active document processing pipelines
high volumePro
1,500 credits/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 this work for offer letters from small employers and startups?
inconclusive – not intact – whether a startup wrote it or someone copying a large employer’s layout did. Treat it as a prompt for manual review, not proof of fraud. The verdict is modified when the file itself carries evidence of editing or fabrication.How is this different from BGV employment-offer fraud detection?
Can it catch a salary edit on an otherwise real offer?
modified verdict with named markers, even when the visual layout looks pixel-perfect. The reviewer can see the file was changed after issuance.What does an INCONCLUSIVE verdict mean for an offer letter?
How do I check an offer letter from a large IT-services or MNC employer – Cognizant, Accenture, Infosys, Google, DP World – for tampering?
modified when the file itself carries evidence of editing or fabrication; one typed up in Word, Excel or LibreOffice to copy the employer’s template, with nothing indicating later editing, comes back inconclusive – not intact – and goes to manual review. Fraudsters clone these specific big-employer templates precisely because the brand name lends credibility when the letter is used for a personal loan, a visa application, or competing-offer leverage. Drop the PDF into the free structural check to see the verdict in seconds, then sign up to run it at scale across an applicant pool via the API. HTPBE? reads the structural layer of the file, so a pixel-perfect letterhead earns the file nothing.Secure your workflow
Create your account – check PDFs on the web or with an API key, both ready on signup.
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