A relieving letter is the easiest document to forge — and the one HR trusts most
Onboarding teams use it to confirm the candidate left the previous employer cleanly. The candidate knows it. So when an exit was messy or a notice period was skipped, a quick edit in Word can rewrite history. Visual review passes. Structural analysis does 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 fabricated or tampered relieving letter, we’re the most specific tool for it.
When HTPBE? returns INCONCLUSIVE on a relieving letter, that’s the expected baseline (these documents legitimately come from desktop tools at many employers); combine with other markers before flagging.
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 relieving letters actually look
Three real fraud mechanics we catch at the structural PDF layer.
Reason for separation rewritten
Candidate was terminated for cause but writes the letter as a voluntary resignation. Original document opened in Adobe Acrobat or an online editor; one paragraph replaced; re-export. Incremental update markers in the xref chain expose the edit.
Last working day backdated to skip the notice-period gap
There is a six-month gap between the real last working day and the next employer’s start date — the candidate was either out of work or working somewhere they can’t mention. The date on the relieving letter gets pushed forward. The visual page still looks signed and stamped; the modification timestamp tells a different story.
Letter authored from scratch when no real one exists
No relieving letter was issued — the candidate left badly or the previous employer refuses to issue one. The candidate writes one in Word, lifts the company logo from LinkedIn, signs HR Manager’s name, exports. Producer field shows Microsoft Word; image-stream metadata exposes the lifted logo.
The scale
Why your existing checks miss this
BGV calls the employer. The employer does not always answer.
When BGV cannot complete, the candidate fills the gap with a letter. Read the file.
BGV platforms (AuthBridge, IDfy, OnGrid, Springworks) call the previous employer to confirm separation. Indian BGV employer-response rates routinely run 70–85% — meaning 15–30% of cases get filled with the candidate’s submitted documents alone. HTPBE? catches the file the candidate sent, regardless of whether the previous employer responds. Use both: BGV when reachable, HTPBE? always.
What HTPBE? checks
Detection capabilities
Deterministic structural signals. No probabilistic scores, no model training.
Producer signature on the letter
Authentic relieving letters come from the previous employer’s HRMS, payroll, or document-management system — recognisable producer signatures. When the producer is Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs, or Chrome Headless, the letter was authored on a desktop.
Incremental update trail
Date edits, paragraph replacements, and signature swaps all leave incremental updates in the PDF’s xref chain. Authentic single-session exports have one xref; tampered files have two or more.
Letterhead and logo image consistency
Real corporate letterheads ship as part of the document template. Lifted-and-pasted logos appear as redundant image streams with mismatched compression — a structural fingerprint of fabrication.
Digital signature presence and chain validity
Many large employers digitally sign relieving letters. Authentic letters carry a valid signature chain; tampered letters either lack signatures or have invalidated chains.
Modification date vs. claimed last working day
The PDF’s ModDate is the moment the document was last touched. When ModDate is months after the claimed last working day, the file was edited after issuance — a high-confidence flag for backdated separations.
Font subset divergence across pages
Multi-session edits or page reassembly leave font subset prefix shifts. Single-session legitimate exports have consistent subsets across all pages.
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
How is this different from BGV employer fraud detection?
Can it catch backdated relieving letters?
modified with the incremental-update flag and modification timestamp gap.What if the previous employer used Microsoft Word for the original letter?
inconclusive, prompting manual employer fraud detection rather than an automatic reject.Does the API need a reference original to compare against?
What does an INCONCLUSIVE verdict mean for a relieving letter?
Secure your workflow
Create your account — API key on signup, free test environment on every plan.
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