Document fraud forensics
How to spot a fake pay stub
A forged stub is built to fool your eyes, and it does. The signals that actually catch it live in the file data, not on the page. Here are the seven we check.
10 min read
All posts
Topic
Document fraud forensics
How forged pay stubs and bank statements actually fail, at the data level.
Document fraud forensics
PDF metadata: what the creator and producer fields tell you about a pay stub
Every real payroll provider emits a consistent PDF fingerprint. A forged stub carries the fingerprint of whatever tool made it, and that mismatch is checkable.
8 min read
Document fraud forensics
An edited PDF usually still contains the number it used to say
Annotations, hidden text layers, and incremental saves leave the original values inside the file. The rendered page hides them. A parser does not.
8 min read
Document fraud forensics
Year-to-date math is the check a forger almost never gets right
Gross pay times pay periods elapsed should equal year-to-date gross. When it does not, the number that was changed is usually the one you were shown.
8 min read
Document fraud forensics
How to verify a bank statement on a rental application
Sum the payroll deposits per statement period rather than annualizing one deposit. Then check the things a forger gets wrong: the producer field, the bank name, and the balance math.
8 min read