What is Document Fraud?

Forging, altering, or falsely presenting a document, prevented by cryptographic sealing and public verification.

Document fraud is the creation, alteration, or misuse of a document to deceive, forged signatures, altered contracts, fake invoices, or counterfeit company stamps. Reported document forgeries rose sharply in recent years as editing tools and AI made tampering easy. The defence is tamper-evidence: a cryptographic SHA-256 seal that breaks if the file changes, a public QR verification page anyone can check, serialized verifiable stamps, and a tamper-evident audit trail. PDF Verified builds all four into every signed document so alteration is immediately detectable.

Drop your document here and sign it now. PDF, Word and Excel all work: a .docx or .xlsx is laid out in your browser exactly as it was written, so there is nothing to convert first. Add a signature, a date, a company stamp or a watermark, then download it sealed. Free to start, no account, and the file is never uploaded to open it.

Common types of document fraud

Altering a PDF after signing, copy-pasting a signature, photographing and reusing a company stamp, or fabricating a whole document. Each leaves no trace on a plain PDF, but fails verification on a sealed one.

How to prevent it

Seal documents with a SHA-256 hash, publish a public verification record (QR), use serialized revocable stamps, and keep an audit trail of who signed when and from where. Re-hashing the file proves whether a single byte changed. See our fraud-prevention overview at /fraud-prevention.

What PDF Verified is, and what it is not

These checks are a screen, not a verdict. A clean result means nothing was found by the checks that were run, which is not the same as proof that a document is genuine, and a flagged result can have an innocent explanation such as a re-save or a scan. Read the findings rather than the headline, and where a decision carries real consequences, confirm the document with the party that issued it. It is a tool for examining a document, not for producing a forged or altered one.

PDF Verified is a tool for preparing, signing, stamping and checking documents. It is not a law firm, a compliance service or a forensic examiner, and nothing here is legal, financial or compliance advice. Requirements differ by country, by document type and by the party asking, so check what applies to your document before you rely on it, and take advice where the document matters. You are responsible for the documents you create, sign and send, and for having the authority to do so: signing or stamping in somebody else name, or as an organisation you do not represent, is forgery whatever tool is used. To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for how a document made with this tool is used or relied on. The full position is in our terms of service.