# Detect tampered and deepfake Notarised Document > Notarisation adds nothing to a document except an officer's certificate that the right person signed it, which means a document with a forged seal is worth precisely nothing. Most forged notarisations reuse something real: an impression lifted from a genuinely notarised page, a commission number borrowed from a serving notary, or an apostille copied off a legitimate legalisation. The rest are printed reproductions of an embossed seal. TamperCheck analyses whether the seal sits under the text, over it, or was added to the image. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/notarised_document **API document class:** `notarised_document` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine notarised document contains A notarised document is two things bound together. Underneath is the instrument itself. On top is the notarial certificate: an acknowledgment or jurat naming the signer, the venue by state or county, the date, and the notary's signature, printed name, commission number, and commission expiry, with the seal impressed over or beside that block. Many jurisdictions add a journal entry number. For cross-border use an apostille or consular legalisation is attached, carrying its own certificate number, issuing authority, and date, often bound with ribbon and an eyelet. Each element constrains the next in a fixed order. The notary certifies a signature, so the notarial date cannot precede the signing it acknowledges, and it must fall inside the commission period printed a line above. The venue has to lie within the jurisdiction that commissioned the notary. An apostille certifies the notary's signature rather than the document, so its date must fall on or after the notarisation and it must name that same notary. The ribbon and eyelet fix the page count physically, and the seal overlaps text that was already on the page. ## How notarised document forgeries are made ### Seal impressions lifted from a genuine notarisation A real stamp is cut out of one scanned document and placed onto another. The giveaway is layer order: an impression made on paper interacts with the ink already there, thinning where it crosses a line, while a pasted one covers that text as an unbroken block and carries the background tone of its source page. ### Embossed seals reproduced as flat print An embossed notarial seal deforms the paper, and the deformation shades under any raking light, which is why it survives scanning as a texture rather than an outline. Reproduced by printing or redrawing, it becomes ink alone with no relief behind it, and that separates it from a real impression under analysis. ### Borrowed, expired, or invented commission numbers The number is made up, taken from a notary who never saw the signer, or belongs to a commission that had already expired on the date certified. It is the most checkable field on the certificate, and an invented one usually fails the commissioning authority's own numbering format. ### Apostille copying and reuse An apostille is photographed from a legitimately legalised document and attached to something else, or its certificate number is reused across multiple files. Because an apostille certifies a specific notary's signature on a specific date, a copied one names the wrong notary or carries a date that precedes the notarisation it claims to cover. ### Content swapped beneath a genuine certificate The notarial page is entirely real and the pages underneath it are not the ones the notary saw. Where a binding ribbon and eyelet were used, this leaves either a broken binding or a page count that disagrees with the certificate, and page-level analysis shows the replacement was captured separately from the rest. ### Certificates assembled from scratch A complete notarial block, seal included, can be built in a design tool with every field internally consistent. Nothing inside it conflicts, so it defeats a reading. It fails on the substrate instead: an impression with no depth, uniform ink density across a stamp that should show roller variation, and no interaction with the paper it claims to be pressed into. ## What TamperCheck checks on a notarised document 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. ### Signature forgery analysis Signature regions are assessed for ink consistency and for how the stroke sits on the page, which distinguishes a genuine pen stroke from a pasted image of one. ### And many more checks The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a notarised document. 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 notarised document, and why Cross-border transaction parties and legal offices relying on notarisation. 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 notarised document in 4 steps 1. **Look the notary up in the commissioning register.** Read the commission number, printed name, and expiry off the certificate and search the commissioning authority's public notary register. Confirm the notary was commissioned, that the commission covered the date certified, and that the venue named falls inside the jurisdiction they were appointed in. 2. **Verify the apostille with its issuing authority.** Apostilles carry a certificate number and most issuing authorities run an online e-register that confirms whether that number was issued, to whom, and on what date. Check that the notary named on the apostille is the notary who signed the document, and that the apostille date is on or after the notarisation. 3. **Examine the physical artefacts.** Handle the original where you can. An embossed seal can be felt from both sides of the sheet, a ribbon and eyelet binding cannot be reopened without leaving damage, and a stamp pressed by hand shows uneven ink and roller variation. Flat, perfectly even versions of any of these are reproductions. 4. **Analyse the file for a pasted seal.** Where only a scan exists, the question becomes whether the seal was on the paper or added to the image. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks on a notarised document and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, with findings tied to the seal region, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I verify a notary seal is genuine? Check the commission number and expiry printed on the certificate against the commissioning authority's public notary register, and confirm the venue falls within that notary's jurisdiction. On the document itself, a genuine seal is impressed into the paper and interacts with the ink already there, thinning where it crosses printed text rather than covering it as an unbroken layer. ### Can a notarised document be forged? Yes, and it is forged more often than the underlying document, because the notarisation is the only part carrying independent authority. The common routes are a seal image copied from a real notarised page, a commission number borrowed from a serving notary, and a certificate built from scratch in a design tool. All three leave evidence in how the seal meets the page. ### What is an apostille and how do I check one? An apostille is a certificate under the Hague Convention confirming that the notary or official who signed a document held the office they claimed, so the document can be accepted abroad without further legalisation. Check it by its certificate number in the issuing authority's e-register, and confirm it names the same notary and a date on or after the notarisation. ### Does notarisation mean the contents of a document are true? No. A notary certifies identity and signing, not the accuracy of what was signed, which is why a genuinely notarised document can contain entirely false statements. It is also why swapping the pages beneath a real notarial certificate is a viable fraud: the certificate looks right because it is right, and it never spoke to the content above it. ## 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 - Declaration: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/declaration --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing