# Detect tampered and deepfake Escrow Statement > An escrow statement shows what a neutral party is holding, what came in, and what went out. Buyers, sellers, and lenders rely on it as the third-party word that money exists. Forging one is straightforward, since the statement is a short table of transactions: raise the balance, insert a deposit, delete a release. The giveaways are that a running balance has to walk forward line by line and the inserted text is not from the same print run. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/escrow_statement **API document class:** `escrow_statement` --- ## What a genuine escrow statement contains An escrow statement identifies the escrow or file number, the parties, the property or project, and the period. It lists deposits such as earnest money, loan proceeds, and taxes or insurance funds, then disbursements to payees with dates and references, and ends with a closing balance. The escrow officer and the company appear at the head or foot, sometimes with a licence or trust account number. The ledger is closed arithmetic. Opening balance plus deposits minus disbursements is the closing balance, and each intermediate balance is the previous one adjusted by that line. Disbursements should trace to the escrow instructions or the settlement statement, so an unexplained payee or amount is a discrepancy with the wider file. The statement date should not precede the last transaction it lists. ## How escrow statement forgeries are made ### Balance inflation The closing balance is raised to show funds the buyer or borrower does not have on deposit. Without rewriting the ledger the arithmetic fails, and the edited number is set in different glyph rendering to the rows above it. ### Inserted deposits A fictitious earnest money or loan deposit is added as a new row. Row spacing, alignment, and the running balance below it expose the insertion, since every later balance has to change too. ### Concealed disbursements A release to a lender or contractor is removed so the account appears fuller. The gap shows up as a running balance that jumps, or as a missing payee against the escrow instructions. ### Fabricated statements An entire statement is produced on a title company's letterhead with a plausible escrow number. Branding copied from another document comes with its own compression footing and tends to differ from the text set beside it. ## What TamperCheck checks on an escrow statement 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. ### 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. ### Table structure integrity Inserted and deleted rows leave structural artifacts behind: inconsistent spacing, misaligned columns, and formatting the visible table no longer accounts for. ### 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. ### And many more checks The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on an escrow statement. 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 escrow statement, and why Lenders, buyers and sellers, real-estate attorneys, and title underwriters. 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 escrow statement in 4 steps 1. **Check the fields against each other.** Read escrow balance, disbursement lines, and deposit amounts 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 an escrow statement and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 in about a minute, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I check whether an escrow statement is genuine? Reconcile it, then confirm it independently. Recompute the running balance, match disbursements to the settlement statement or instructions, and check the escrow number and officer against other documents in the file. Independent confirmation with the escrow company remains the strongest step, and a forensic scan of the PDF shows whether figures were edited. ### Can an escrow statement be faked? Yes. It is a short document with no security print, so a convincing copy is easy to build. The difficulty for the forger is consistency: one fictitious deposit changes every balance after it, and the added text seldom matches the rendering of the original lines. ### What is the difference between an escrow statement and a bank statement? An escrow statement covers funds held for a specific transaction by a third party, and it typically ends at zero after closing. A bank statement covers a personal or business account with open-ended activity. The verification logic is similar, but the escrow file has instructions to reconcile against. ### Why do lenders ask for escrow statements? To confirm that a deposit, down payment, or retention amount actually exists and is committed to the deal. A statement showing money in a neutral account is stronger evidence than the borrower's own bank balance, which is exactly why it gets falsified. ## Related document types - Loan Statement: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/loan_statement - Loan Sanction Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/loan_sanction_letter - Amortization Schedule: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/amortization_schedule - Loan Payoff Statement: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/loan_payoff_statement - Loan Closure Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/loan_closure_certificate - Closing Disclosure: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/closing_disclosure --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing