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Deputation letter fraud: which fields get edited and how it is caught
A deputation letter is the basis on which an intra-company transfer visa is granted, and the field with the strongest pull on it is the assignment period, because the dates written there set the length of stay an officer approves. The letter also has to show that the employee stays on the sending company's rolls, that a named host entity has asked for them, and that they come back at the end. Each of those is a sentence somebody can rewrite.
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Where the edits land
Date
assignment dates
Cheapest to change, easiest to leave out of sequence.
Person or party
host company name
Borrows a real issuer's credibility for someone else.
Field
purpose of assignment
Edited on an otherwise genuine page.
Seal or signature
company seal
Lifted from a genuine document and composited on.
Forgery methods seen on a deputation letter
Assignment period extended
End dates are pushed out, or the total duration restated, so the visa granted runs longer than the posting the employer authorised. This is the highest-value edit on the document, and it usually leaves the start date, the end date and the duration sentence disagreeing with one another by days.
Host entity substituted
The receiving company is replaced with one in a country offering a longer or easier permission, or with a group name that sounds related but is not. A substituted name is often the wrong length for the space it occupies, and the address block beneath it does not always get updated to match.
Purpose rewritten to fit a visa category
Training becomes project delivery, or the reverse, because the category an officer assesses the application under depends on what the employee will actually be doing abroad. A rewritten purpose paragraph runs at slightly different spacing than the text it displaced, and it tends to contradict the host's own invitation.
Salary responsibility clause altered
The line stating who pays is changed so the employee appears to remain on the sending company's payroll throughout, which is what most transfer categories require. The claim is then contradicted by payslips that stop partway, or by a host-country contract sitting in the same application.
A deputation between two companies that barely exist
Sender and host are both shells, or the relationship between them is asserted and never documented, and the letter is manufactured along with them. There is no original to detect an edit against, so the analysis looks at letterhead production, seal placement, and whether the same template turns up under other company names.
Seal and signature reproduced
A company seal and an authorised signature are copied off a genuine internal letter and placed onto the deputation letter. A copied seal has edges too clean for a rubber stamp, and a signature matching another document exactly did not come out of a pen twice.
Inside the forensic analysis of a deputation letter
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.
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.
Arithmetic reconciliation
Stated totals are recomputed from their components, and running or cumulative figures are checked for continuity across periods. A single edited value breaks the chain even when the page still looks right.
And many more checks
The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a deputation 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.
What looks wrong on a deputation letter
Assignment dates that break the chronology
Lay the assignment dates against every other date on the document and against when the file says it was created. Backdated and extended dates tend to land in an order no real issuing system would have produced.
A host company name that is set in a slightly different hand
Zoom in on the host company name and compare weight, spacing and edge sharpness with the lines above and below it. A substituted value is rarely typeset exactly like the original, even when the typeface name matches.
Dates and tenure that do not line up
Check joining and leaving dates against the designation history and any other document in the file. Fabricated tenures rarely survive being read next to a second source.
Prose that reads like a template
Genuine company letters follow a house style. Odd phrasing, inconsistent date formats or a mix of spellings can mean the letter was assembled from a generic template.
A signature that is identical to another document
If two letters carry pixel-identical signatures, one of them was copied. Real signatures vary slightly every time.
A practical checklist for a deputation letter
1. Check the fields against each other
Read assignment dates, host company name, and purpose of assignment together rather than one at a time. Forgers typically change one value and leave the rest of the document describing the original.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Run a forensic check
Manual review catches obvious edits but not field-level pixel manipulation or synthetic generation. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks on a deputation letter and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, on published per-document pricing.
What to expect on a genuine deputation letter before you test it
A deputation or secondment letter is issued by the sending company on its letterhead, with a reference number and a date. It names the employee, their designation and employee ID, then the host entity: legal name, address, country, and its relationship to the sender as a subsidiary, branch or group company. It states the purpose of the assignment in concrete terms, the start and end dates with the total duration, who bears salary and living expenses during the posting, and a guarantee that employment continues and the employee returns. An authorised signatory and the company seal close it.
Duration is the constraint everything else is measured against. Start and end dates have to add up to the total the letter states, and that total has to fit the visa category applied for, since each category caps the stay it permits. Where the sending company keeps paying the salary, payslips have to run through the assignment period unbroken. The host entity has to be a real, related company, and the purpose written here has to match the invitation letter the host provides.
What gets missed when a deputation letter is checked by eye
Letters look plain by design
A letter on a letterhead with a signature has little to inspect, so the evidence is in the file, not on the page.
Background checks arrive late
By the time a background vendor reports, an offer has often gone out. Screening a deputation letter at intake moves the question earlier.
Confirmation goes to the number on the letter
The contact route printed on a deputation letter is the one a forger controls. Independent contact details are what make confirmation worth anything.
Deputation letter fraud: your questions answered
How do consulates verify a deputation letter?
Consulates verify it by cross-reading it against the host entity's invitation letter, the corporate relationship between the two companies, and the applicant's payslips, then by contacting the sending company's HR through details they establish themselves. Assignment dates, purpose and salary responsibility have to match across all of those, and a mismatch between the letter and the invitation usually triggers a request for further evidence.
Can an overseas assignment letter be faked?
Yes, and the usual fake is not an invented letter but a genuine one with the assignment period extended, since those dates decide how long the visa runs. Letters are also produced by companies with no real operation at either end of the transfer. Because the corporate relationship is asserted on the letter rather than proven by it, the document carries more weight than it can support.
What does a deputation letter need to say for a visa?
It needs to state the host entity and its relationship to the employer, the concrete purpose of the assignment, exact start and end dates with the total duration, who pays the employee during the posting, and an explicit commitment that employment continues and the employee returns. Missing any one of those invites a refusal, most often the return commitment, which is what the officer is really weighing.
What is the difference between a deputation letter and an NOC?
A deputation letter assigns someone to work somewhere specific for a stated period, while a no objection certificate simply records that an organisation does not object to something the person wants to do. One creates an obligation on two companies, the other removes a barrier. An intra-company transfer application needs the first, and some consulates ask for the second alongside it.
Where does a forensic review of a deputation letter start?
On a deputation letter, the review prioritises the host company and destination country, the purpose of the assignment, and who pays salary and expenses during it. The rest of a deputation letter is covered by the general pixel, font and metadata layers.
What inconsistency most often exposes a forged copy of a deputation letter?
Compare the assignment start and end dates with the total duration stated. A forger who changes one rarely updates the other, and on a deputation letter that gap is among the first things measured.
Can a deputation letter be forged without changing its text?
Yes. A forger can transplant a genuine letterhead or signature onto a new body, or change only assignment dates. The words on a deputation letter can be untouched while the elements that make it look official have been moved.
What do forged versions of a deputation letter usually leave out?
A genuine deputation letter tends to carry a reference number, a dated signatory with a designation and a route to confirm. Fabricated ones omit these or invent them, and host company name rarely matches the company's other correspondence.
How quickly can a deputation letter be checked?
Within seconds of upload. The result names any altered field, such as assignment dates, and gives a risk score from 0 to 100 so you can route a deputation letter automatically.
Check a document
Upload a PDF or a photo of deputation letter. TamperCheck returns a risk score from 0 to 100 and marks the region that was edited, usually within seconds.
For developers, the API class is deputation_letter. See the API and MCP documentation.