Supported document type
Detect tampered and deepfake Appointment Letter
An appointment letter is retrospective where an offer letter is prospective: it confirms that a job actually began, and it is issued by the employer's HR function on or around the joining date. Background screeners and consulates ask for it because it fixes two facts an offer cannot, the date employment started and the position actually held. Those two fields are exactly the ones that get edited. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks across the letter.
API slug: appointment_letter
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What a genuine appointment letter contains
An appointment letter carries the company letterhead, a reference number, and a date of issue, and it names the appointee, their employee code, the designation and grade they have been appointed to, the department and reporting manager, the place of posting, and the date of joining. Terms follow by reference rather than in full: probation length and confirmation conditions, notice period, and the applicable service rules, with a salary annexure attached as a separate schedule. It closes with an HR signatory, their designation, and the company seal.
Its fields are checked against the employment they describe. The joining date cannot fall after the issue date, and it has to agree with the first payslip and the first salary credit in the appointee's account. The employee code follows the employer's own series and reappears on every payslip. Grade and designation have to correspond, and the salary annexure has to reconcile with what payroll actually paid. The seal and the HR signatory have to belong to the entity on the letterhead rather than to a group company or a staffing agency.
How appointment letter forgeries are made
Joining date back-dating
The date of joining is moved earlier to manufacture continuous service, usually to cover an employment gap a background screener would otherwise question. The invented start date has to survive comparison with the earliest payslip and the earliest salary credit, and it seldom does.
Designation and grade upgrade
The appointed position is raised a level or two so the applicant's history reads more senior than it was. Grade and designation are paired in most employers' structures, so an upgraded title beside an unchanged grade code is a contradiction the letter carries on its face.
Salary annexure swap
The annexure is a separate schedule, which makes it the easiest part of the letter to replace without touching the signed page. A swapped annexure often differs from the body in typeface metrics, margins, or the way the page was rendered into the file.
Company seal reproduction
The round seal is scanned from a genuine document and pasted onto the letter. A pressed seal varies in ink coverage and crosses the underlying text unevenly, while a pasted impression is uniform, sharply bounded, and identical on every letter produced from the same source.
Letters naming employers that never appointed anyone
A letter is produced in the name of a genuine company, with a plausible employee code and an HR signatory drawn from a professional network profile. Nothing in the file is inconsistent, so these are assessed on letterhead fidelity, seal behaviour, and direct confirmation from the employer.
Recycled letters with the appointee changed
One genuine appointment letter serves several applicants, with the name, employee code, and dates replaced each time. The edited fields sit in an otherwise untouched page, and the reference number is frequently left as it was, so one reference appears on letters for different people.
What TamperCheck checks on an appointment letter
TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks across three layers and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with plain-English findings tied to specific regions of the document. These three carry the most weight on this document class.
Letterhead, logo, and issuer plausibility
Issuer branding is checked for resolution and compression consistency against the body text it sits on. A logo lifted from a website carries the signature of its source, not of the document.
Date and validity consistency
Issue, expiry, and period dates are checked against one another and against the file's own creation metadata, which catches backdating and validity extension.
Field-level forensics
Every text region is analysed in its own right rather than as part of one whole-page image. This catches the smoothed and feathered edits that whole-image Error Level Analysis misses entirely.
And many more checks
The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on an appointment letter. Every upload runs the full suite of 200+ checks regardless of document class, spanning file structure and metadata, pixel-level forensics, font and text rendering, optical and print characteristics, provenance signals, AI-generation signatures, and many more checks.
Who verifies an appointment letter, and why
Background screeners, lenders, and immigration authorities confirming employment. In each case the document is being used to unlock money, access, or a legal status, which is exactly what makes it worth forging.
How to verify an appointment letter in 4 steps
Check the fields against each other
Read salary, designation, and joining date together rather than one at a time. Forgers typically change one value and leave the rest of the document describing the original.
Inspect the file metadata
Open the document properties and look at the producer, creation date, and modification date. A document produced by a consumer PDF editor, or created long after the date printed on its face, is worth a closer look.
Ask for a second document
Request a corroborating document from the same issuer or an adjacent period. Forgery effort concentrates on one file, so inconsistencies surface as soon as there are two to compare.
Run a forensic check
Manual review catches obvious edits but not field-level pixel manipulation or synthetic generation. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks on an appointment letter and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document.
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify an appointment letter is genuine?
Confirm the joining date against the earliest payslip and the first salary credit on the bank statement, then check that the employee code on the letter is the one printed on those payslips. Contact the employer's HR on a number obtained independently of the letter. Finally, look at the seal, since a genuine impression varies in ink density and a pasted one does not.
How do banks check appointment letters for loans?
Banks use the letter to establish tenure and position, then test both against documents produced by payroll rather than by HR. The joining date should predate the earliest payslip, the designation should match the salary being claimed, and the salary annexure should reconcile with actual credits. Many banks also verify employment directly with the employer before disbursing.
What is the difference between an offer letter and an appointment letter?
An offer letter proposes a job before it starts, while an appointment letter confirms one that has begun. The offer is prospective and conditional, issued by recruitment or the hiring manager, and it can be declined. The appointment letter is issued by HR on or after joining, carries an employee code and a company seal, and is what background screeners treat as proof of service.
Can a back-dated joining date be detected?
Yes, usually through corroboration rather than the file alone. A back-dated joining date leaves the letter claiming service that no payslip, salary credit, or social security contribution supports. Where the date was edited on an otherwise genuine letter, forensic analysis also shows that region rendering differently from the text immediately surrounding it.
TamperCheck analyses appointment letter uploads with a hybrid forensic and AI pipeline tuned for this document class. Upload endpoints accept PDF and common image formats; class is inferred automatically. See the API & MCP documentation for authentication, async jobs, and webhooks.