# Detect tampered and deepfake Police Clearance Certificate > A police clearance certificate asserts an absence, and an absence is the easiest thing in document fraud to fabricate: the entire claim is one sentence saying no criminal record was found. Employers and visa officers accept them as scans from dozens of countries, few of which they can recognise on sight. The checkable parts are the certificate number, the period covered, the officer's rank and signature, and the department seal, and TamperCheck reads each of them against the rest of the page. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/police_clearance **API document class:** `police_clearance` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine police clearance certificate contains A police clearance certificate is a statement about what a search of police records did not find. It carries the applicant's full name, date of birth, and passport or national identity number, the addresses or jurisdictions searched, the purpose the certificate was requested for, the period the search covers, and the clearance wording itself. Around that sit the certificate or reference number, the issuing unit, whether a police station, a commissioner's office, or a national records bureau, the issuing officer's name and rank, a signature, and the department seal. The negative claim is only as good as the scope printed beside it. A certificate that searched one city says nothing about the rest of the country, and one issued three years ago says nothing about the three years since, which is why the period covered, the issue date, and any validity window have to be read together. The passport number has to belong to the passport actually presented, the stated purpose has to match the application it is filed with, and the rank named has to be one the issuing unit holds. ## How police clearance certificate forgeries are made ### Clearance statement replacement A certificate that listed convictions is edited so the record section reads clear, or a no-record sentence is pasted over a populated block. The replacement often leaves line spacing set for a longer entry, and the substituted text rarely carries the same scan noise as the lines immediately above it. ### Applicant detail substitution A genuine certificate belonging to someone with a clean record is relabelled with another person's name and passport number. The seal, the officer's block, and the certificate number are all authentic, which is what lets this version survive everything except a check against the issuing authority's own record. ### Issue date renewal An expired certificate is re-dated to fall inside the short window most employers and visa routes apply. The period covered by the search usually stays exactly as it was, so the document ends up claiming a recent issue over a search range that stopped years earlier. ### Department seal and rank block reproduction The police seal and the signing officer's rank block are reproduced as flat artwork. Genuine rubber stamps take ink unevenly, skip where the paper is not flat, and vary between impressions, while a copied seal is identical on every document it turns up on. ### Verification code transplanting A QR code or online reference is copied from a genuine certificate onto a forged one, so scanning it returns a valid record belonging to a different applicant. The code has to be scanned and the name and number it returns compared against the page in hand, not merely observed to resolve. ### Certificates built for unreachable jurisdictions Whole documents are produced for countries whose issuing authority is slow to answer or effectively unreachable, on the assumption that nobody will follow up. Built end to end from a template, they contain no internal contradictions and are separated by substrate and print analysis instead. ## What TamperCheck checks on a police clearance certificate 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. ### 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. ### 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. ### And many more checks The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a police clearance certificate. 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 police clearance certificate, and why Employers and immigration authorities screening criminal history. 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 police clearance certificate in 4 steps 1. **Scan the verification code and read what it returns.** If the certificate carries a QR code or an online reference, follow it, confirm it resolves to the issuing police authority's own site, and compare the name, certificate number, and issue date it shows against the document in your hand. A code that resolves is not the same as a code that matches. 2. **Check the scope against what you actually need.** Read the period the search covers and the jurisdictions it covers, not just the clearance sentence. A certificate covering one city, or a period that ended two years ago, makes a far narrower claim than the person presenting it usually implies. 3. **Match the applicant details to the identity document.** Compare the name, date of birth, and passport number on the certificate against the passport itself, and confirm that passport was valid on the issue date. A substituted applicant is the most common edit made to an otherwise genuine certificate. 4. **Run a forensic check on the file.** An edited clearance statement or a re-dated issue line looks entirely normal on screen. TamperCheck analyses the submitted file through one REST endpoint and returns findings tied to specific regions of the page, so an altered field is reported by name rather than as a general suspicion. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do employers verify a police clearance certificate? They go back to the issuing authority, usually through the verification reference or QR code printed on the certificate, and confirm the number, name, and issue date on record match the copy they were given. They also check that the period covered and the jurisdictions searched are relevant to the role, and that the certificate is still current, since an expired clearance says nothing about recent history. ### Can a police clearance certificate be faked? Yes, and it is among the easiest documents to fake convincingly, because the claim being made is an absence. There is no positive fact to contradict, no photograph to match, and no number to decode against the applicant: one line saying no record was found is the whole document. Forgeries are caught through the certificate number, the seal, the rank block, and the rendering of the clearance text. ### How long is a police clearance certificate valid for? Most issuing authorities and the bodies that request them treat a certificate as current for three to six months, and some visa routes reject anything older. The date of issue matters more than the date it was handed over, and re-dating an expired certificate is a frequent edit, so the issue date is read against the period covered and against the file's own metadata. ### Can TamperCheck tell if a police certificate was digitally edited? Yes, and it names the field. The analysis runs 200+ forensic checks across the page and reports findings tied to specific regions, so an altered clearance statement, a swapped passport number, or a re-dated issue line comes back as a located finding rather than a general warning. The verdict is a risk score from 0 to 100, returned within seconds at $0.50 per document. ## Related document types - Birth Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/birth_certificate - Death Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/death_certificate - Marriage Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/marriage_certificate - Divorce Decree: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/divorce_decree - Domestic Partnership Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/domestic_partnership_certificate - Certificate of No Impediment (CNI): https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/certificate_of_no_impediment --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing