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Work-eligibility compliance

Right-to-Work Document Fraud Detection

Built for fraud ops at lending, insurance & compliance teams

Your audit trail is whatever PDFs you kept. If a supporting file was altered before it reached your folder, you may still have followed the online check – but the evidence you retain is not what the issuer produced. Employers everywhere face stiff sanctions when eligibility checks fail under review. Read the file before it gets filed.

~3 sec
per document
63 checks
forensic layers
1,500+
docs / month on Growth
Plans
subscriptions or one-off packs – see pricing
Scope

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. Official online eligibility checks and identity-verification vendor sessions remain the primary identity step. HTPBE? catches tampering on the supporting PDF evidence you keep on file.

When HTPBE? returns INCONCLUSIVE on a work-eligibility supporting document, 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 UK employer file

What a right-to-work file actually contains

A UK employer proves it ran a right-to-work check by keeping evidence: the result of the online check made with the worker’s share code, or copies of original documents seen in a manual check, each with the date of the check. That evidence is usually kept for the length of employment plus two years. In practice it is a folder of PDFs – saved check results, scans of passports and permits, status letters, and the contract and payslips that sit beside them.

A share code is only a short alphanumeric code. It is not a document, and a PDF a candidate sends you in its place is not the check. The check is the live lookup you run yourself. What HTPBE? reads is the file you retain afterwards, and any PDF a candidate or agency hands you along the way – the version that gets opened, forwarded, re-saved and sometimes edited before it reaches the folder.

HTPBE? reports whether the structure of each PDF shows it was changed after it was created. A modified verdict means the file you hold is not the file the issuer produced. It does not say whether the person has the right to work, and it does not identify anyone. That stays with the official check.

Where edits tend to enter the file

  • A status letter or saved check result opened in an editor before it is forwarded
  • A scanned permit or passport page re-exported with an altered date or condition
  • An agency pack assembled from several sources into one PDF
  • A payslip or employer letter backdated to cover a period of work

What this looks like

How fake and tampered work-eligibility PDFs actually look

Three real fraud mechanics we catch at the structural PDF layer.

01

Portal confirmation letter fabricated or edited

Someone obtains a genuine confirmation from an official portal for one status, then opens the resulting letter in a word processor and edits conditions or expiry – or fabricates an entire letter that mimics the portal layout. An edited letter that carries evidence of editing comes back MODIFIED; one built from scratch in Word, Excel or LibreOffice, with nothing indicating later editing, comes back INCONCLUSIVE – not INTACT – and should go to manual review.

02

Permit or ID-page scan with edited expiry or conditions

A scanned residence permit, visa, or passport ID-page PDF is opened in an editor and the expiry date or conditions are changed. HTPBE? flags the edit.

03

Supporting employment evidence backdated

Payslips, contracts, or training records are backdated so the file matches the period the worker was supposedly eligible. HTPBE? flags edits made after the document was created.

The scale

High stakes
employer sanctions and clawback risk when eligibility reviews fail
~3 sec
per supporting document via API
Audit-ready
every verdict produces an audit trail of structural markers

Why your existing checks miss this

The live check covers the session. It does not cover the file you keep.

Reviews look at retained evidence – the PDF folder, not the live screen.

Identity-verification vendors and official portals handle the live proofing step. The evidence pack you retain for an audit or internal review is what reviewers open – not the live session. If a supporting PDF in that pack was altered between issuance and retention, upstream checks do not rescue the file. HTPBE? inspects every supporting PDF at intake – standalone, no portal API, no vendor session required.

Results in under 3 seconds30 to 1,500+ documents/month

What HTPBE? checks

Detection capabilities

Deterministic structural signals. No probabilistic scores, no model training.

Lookalike letters aren’t passed

A supporting PDF exported directly from Word, Excel or LibreOffice, with nothing indicating later editing, comes back INCONCLUSIVE – not INTACT – however closely it copies a portal or vendor layout; MODIFIED when the file itself carries evidence of editing or fabrication.

Post-issuance edit detection

Editing a confirmation letter or permit PDF after issuance – in a PDF editor or in other software – leaves structural evidence behind. HTPBE? flags it as MODIFIED.

Annotation and form-field tampering

HTPBE? flags annotations burned into the page after the document was created, and form-field values that disagree with what the page shows.

Dates that disagree

When the dates recorded inside a supposedly fresh export disagree with each other, HTPBE? flags it – a strong sign of editing after export.

Edited regions on scans

HTPBE? flags scanned permits or passport pages where part of the page was covered over to substitute content, or where an embedded image shows signs of having been edited and re-saved.

Font inconsistencies across pages

HTPBE? flags font handling that is inconsistent across the pages of the same supporting document – a sign of later edits or of pages assembled from different sources.

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.

Full API reference for engineering

Pricing

Self-serve plans, no sales call

All plans include the same forensic checks. Pick the quota that matches your monthly document volume.

manual

Starter

30 credits/mo

Manual spot-checks and integration testing

most common

Growth

350 credits/mo

Active document processing pipelines

high volume

Pro

1,500 credits/mo

High-volume automation and API integrations

Enterprise (unlimited, on-premise available) — see full pricing

Secure your workflowView API docs

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 replace the official online eligibility check or our IDV vendor?

No. Those steps remain primary for live proofing. HTPBE? inspects the supporting PDFs you retain – portal letters, vendor results, payroll evidence – so none were tampered between issuance and filing. Use both.

Will it catch a confirmation letter that was never issued by the real portal?

A letter typed up in Word, Excel or LibreOffice and exported directly, with nothing indicating later editing, comes back inconclusive – not intact – however closely it copies the portal’s layout, and should go to manual review. The verdict is modified when the file itself carries evidence of editing or fabrication.

What about scanned passport or permit PDFs?

Pure scans often return inconclusive – the scanner authored a fresh PDF, so HTPBE? cannot confirm it as an untouched original. Edited regions (expiry, conditions) can leave image-stream mismatches that HTPBE? flags. Combine with live verification or manual review for raster content.

Is this suitable for employer sponsorship evidence packs?

Yes. Sponsors must retain payslips, contracts, qualification letters, and eligibility proof. HTPBE? returns structured markers per PDF for an audit trail. Compliance teams run it before documents are filed.

What does INCONCLUSIVE mean for a work-eligibility supporting document?

INCONCLUSIVE means HTPBE? cannot confirm the file as an untouched original. A letter built in general-purpose office software to look like a portal export typically lands here. In this context, INCONCLUSIVE is often worth escalating: it is not proof of fraud, and it is not a pass – re-run the official check and escalate the case before onboarding.

Does a PDF of a candidate’s share-code result count as a right-to-work check?

No. A share code has to be used by the employer in the online service, and the result of that live check is the evidence. A PDF forwarded by the candidate or an agency is only a document to be read, and a document can be edited. HTPBE? tells you whether that PDF was changed after it was created; it does not replace running the check yourself.

What does a MODIFIED verdict on a right-to-work PDF tell me?

It tells you the file’s structure shows changes made after the original was produced, together with the markers that support that. It does not tell you why the file was changed, who changed it, or whether the person is allowed to work. Re-run the official check, ask for the original from its source, and keep the HTPBE? result with the case notes.

Can a scanned copy of a passport or permit come back INTACT?

No. A scan or a photograph carries no issuer baseline to compare with, so the best a scanned document can return is INCONCLUSIVE. Treat that as a prompt to look at the original or run the live check, not as a pass. If the scan was edited after it was made, HTPBE? can still report the modification.

Which other PDFs in a UK hiring file should be checked alongside it?

The documents that support the right-to-work evidence: employment letters, payslips and P45s. Each has its own page with the producers and patterns that matter for that document.

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