Auditors open the file you kept — not the file you meant to keep
Sponsorship obligations rest on the evidence in your records: worker payslips, contracts, qualification letters, eligibility proof. When any of those PDFs were altered before filing, downgrade, suspension, or loss of sponsorship privileges becomes far more likely. Read every PDF before it is filed.
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. Case-management portals and regulator submissions remain primary; HTPBE? catches tampering on the supporting PDF evidence you retain.
When HTPBE? returns INCONCLUSIVE on sponsorship evidence, that’s itself a fraud signal in this context — real payslips, certificates, and portal letters almost always come from institutional systems, not from 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 sponsorship-evidence PDFs actually look
Three real fraud mechanics we catch at the structural PDF layer.
Sponsored worker payslips backdated to fill a gap
Periods where pay fell below the sponsored role threshold — or where payslips are missing — get patched with backdated PDFs. Payroll-system producer signatures, incremental update markers, and modification timestamps reveal the edits.
Qualification certificate fabricated
A claimed degree or licence is mocked up in Word with a logo from the institution’s website. Producer shows a consumer editor; structural markers of an issuing campus or registry are absent.
Work-eligibility supporting documents edited before retention
Portal letters and supporting PDFs are edited so the retained file matches what reviewers expect. The live check may be valid — the archived PDF is not. Annotation-layer changes and incremental updates expose post-issuance editing.
The scale
Why your existing checks miss this
Submission systems record what you reported. They do not inspect every PDF byte.
On review, regulators open retained evidence — that folder is what must hold up.
Employer portals capture what you filed with authorities. Live eligibility and identity checks cover the session. A desk review still opens your archived PDFs — and if those files were altered before archiving, earlier checks do not fix the record. HTPBE? runs at intake on every PDF that lands in the evidence pack — no case-system API or regulator lookup required.
What HTPBE? checks
Detection capabilities
Deterministic structural signals. No probabilistic scores, no model training.
Producer signature on the evidence PDF
Authentic payslips come from payroll engines; certificates from issuers; portal letters from government stacks. When the producer is Microsoft Word, Excel, LibreOffice, or a generic PDF library, the file was built or edited on a desktop.
Incremental update trail
Edits to dates, salary figures, conditions, or signatures leave incremental updates in the xref chain. Legitimate single-session exports have one xref; tampered files have two or more.
Modification date vs. claimed evidence period
When a payslip dated June 2023 has a ModDate months later, the file was touched after the period it claims — a strong flag for backdated evidence.
Image-stream artefacts
Pasted logos and signatures show JPEG/PNG compression mismatches. That structural fingerprint often marks fabrication.
Annotation and form-field tampering
Annotation and form-field layers are tracked separately. Edited expiry dates or conditions on eligibility PDFs leave traces.
Font subset divergence across pages
Multi-session edits or page reassembly shift font subset prefixes. Single-session legitimate exports stay consistent.
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
Will regulators treat HTPBE?’s verdict as dispositive?
intact / modified / inconclusive) with named structural markers — useful as an internal audit trail. How much weight a given authority gives that output is a separate legal question; most teams use HTPBE? upstream so tampered PDFs never enter the evidence pack.Does this replace our IDV vendor or online eligibility checks?
Can it be wired into our HR or compliance platform?
What happens when a PDF returns inconclusive?
inconclusive means institutional integrity signals are weak — common for pure scans or consumer-authored exports. For sponsorship evidence, that alone often warrants manual review or a request for the original issuer export.What does INCONCLUSIVE mean for sponsorship evidence?
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