# Detect tampered and deepfake Government Letter > Official correspondence gets believed because verifying it is inconvenient. A bank, an employer, or a landlord would have to find the right department and wait, so the letter is accepted as proof of whatever it asserts. That is the entire business model of the fake government letter: a tax status, a permit decision, a grant award, a debt written off, printed on a department's letterhead over a reference number that leads nowhere. TamperCheck examines the emblem, the reference block, and the signature. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/government_letter **API document class:** `government_letter` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine government letter contains A departmental letter carries the agency name with its official emblem or crest, a postal address and contact block, and a file or reference number in the department's own format. Below that sit the date of issue, the recipient's name and address as held on the department's record, and a subject line naming the matter. The body states a decision or a requirement and cites the statutory provision it is made under. It closes with a signed-off block giving the officer's name and designation, usually over a departmental stamp or an embossed seal. The reference number is the one field that ties the letter to a file, and it normally encodes a department code, a year, and a sequence, so it can be read for internal consistency and quoted back to the department that supposedly issued it. The recipient details must match what the department holds, the statutory provision cited has to be one that department administers, and the signing officer's designation has to carry authority for the decision announced above it. The stamp overlaps the signature, which fixes the order in which the two were applied. ## How government letter forgeries are made ### Emblem and letterhead reproduction The crest and letterhead are rebuilt from a published circular or a scanned original. Official emblems carry fine line work that does not survive being resized, so reproductions show thickened strokes, lost detail at small scale, and a logo that sits at a different offset from the body text than the department's real template uses. ### Reference numbers that lead nowhere A file number is invented, or an old one is reused across several letters. Departmental formats are rigid about their department code, year segment, and sequence length, so a fabricated number usually breaks the pattern, and a reused one contradicts the date printed alongside it. ### Recipient substitution on a real letter A genuine decision letter issued to one person is readdressed to another, so an approval, an entitlement, or a clearance transfers to someone it was never granted to. The replaced name and address block is the only edited region on an otherwise authentic page, and it separates from the surrounding text under analysis. ### Decision and amount edits The substance is changed inside a real letter: a refusal turned into an approval, a sum raised, an expiry extended, a condition dropped. Because the letterhead, reference, and signature are all authentic, nothing about the document looks wrong, and the evidence is confined to the paragraph that was rewritten. ### Invented signatories and designations A letter is signed by an officer who does not exist, or by a real official given a designation that would not have authority over the decision. Departments publish their senior officers and their remits, which makes the name and designation line one of the few fields on the page a recipient can check independently. ### Seal and stamp reproduction A departmental seal that is embossed into the paper leaves relief that shades under angled light, and a rubber stamp leaves uneven ink and roller variation. Both come back flat when scanned and reprinted, and a stamp pasted over a signature covers it as a block rather than interacting with the ink already there. ## What TamperCheck checks on a government 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. ### Embossed seal analysis A physically embossed seal deforms the paper it sits on. A seal that was scanned and reprinted is flat, and the two separate cleanly under analysis even when they are hard to tell apart by eye. ### Stamp authenticity and placement Stamps are assessed for whether the ink was impressed onto the page or printed as part of it, and for whether the impression was placed digitally after the fact. ### 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 a government 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 a government letter, and why Banks, employers, and agencies acting on official state correspondence. 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 a government letter in 4 steps 1. **Check the fields against each other.** Read reference number, recipient details, and department letterhead 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 government letter and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### How can you tell if a government letter is fake? Check the reference number and the signing officer first, since those are the two fields a fabricated letter almost never gets right and that a recipient can test independently. Look for a reference that breaks the department's format, an officer or designation that does not appear in the department's published structure, an emblem that has lost detail at fine line widths, and a flat stamp with no impression behind it. ### How do I verify official correspondence? Contact the department through a number or address you find yourself, never the contact details printed on the letter, and quote the reference number to ask whether that letter was issued to that recipient on that date. Where an immediate answer is needed, a forensic check returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, with findings tied to the letterhead, the stamp, and the signature. ### Why do fake government letters work so often? They work because the recipient of the letter is not the party being deceived. The letter is produced to a bank, an employer, or a landlord as proof of status, and that third party has no relationship with the department, no reference to check against, and no quick route to an answer. Accepting the letter is easier than verifying it, and the fraud depends on that. ### Can an edited government letter be detected if only a scan is available? Yes. A scan preserves the evidence that matters, because a paragraph or a name block rewritten in a PDF carries a different rendering and compression history from the text around it. Analysis compares each region of the letter against its neighbours and names the part of the page that was changed, whether that is the recipient block, the decision paragraph, or the signature. ## Related document types - Contract: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/contract - Affidavit: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/affidavit - Court Order: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/court_order - Legal Notice: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/legal_notice - Power of Attorney: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/power_of_attorney - Notarised Document: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/notarised_document --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing