# Detect tampered and deepfake Purchase Order > A purchase order commits an organisation to spend money, which is why a forged one is sent to the supplier rather than to the buyer. A convincing PO on a large company's letterhead, with a plausible number and a delivery address the fraudster controls, gets goods shipped on credit to a firm that never ordered them. The authorising signature carries the authority here, and it is the element most often lifted from a genuine document. TamperCheck checks it against the page around it. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/purchase_order **API document class:** `purchase_order` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine purchase order contains A purchase order is an instruction, so it is written in the buyer's format rather than the seller's. It carries the buying organisation's name and registered address, a PO number from that organisation's own sequence, the issue date, and the supplier the order is placed with. The item table lists part numbers or descriptions, quantities, agreed unit prices, and line totals. Below it sit the delivery address, the required date, payment and shipping terms, and the name, title, and signature of whoever holds authority to commit the spend. Authority is what the document is actually transmitting, and authority is bounded. A signatory has an approval limit, so the order total and the name at the foot have to be consistent with each other. The PO number belongs to one sequence and one buying entity, which means it can be quoted back and matched. The delivery address is normally a site the buyer already trades from, so an order routed to a location with no relationship to the ordering entity contradicts the letterhead above it. ## How purchase order forgeries are made ### Delivery address redirection The ship-to block on an otherwise genuine order is replaced with a warehouse or freight forwarder the fraudster controls, so goods leave on credit terms and the invoice arrives at a company that never ordered them. The replaced block usually sits at a different baseline from the fields around it. ### PO number fabrication A number is invented in the buying organisation's apparent format, or a real number is reused on a second order. Suppliers rarely have visibility of the buyer's sequence, so the check has to happen on the document: a number set in a different font weight or spacing than the template that produced it. ### Quantity and unit price edits Quantities or agreed prices are raised after approval so the order covers more than what was signed off. Line totals and the order total have to be rewritten to match, and arithmetic in a table is unforgiving: one figure left stale exposes the whole edit. ### Authorising signature transplant A signatory's signature is cropped from a genuine document and pasted onto a new order, often at a slight change of scale. The lifted image carries its own edge profile and background tone, and the ink does not meet the paper texture beneath it the way a signature written on that page would. ### Buyer impersonation The order is built on the letterhead of a well-known company the supplier would extend credit to without much scrutiny, with contact details pointing at a lookalike domain. Everything on the page is fabricated, so internal cross-checks pass, and the logo's resampling history is one of the few things that does not fit. ### Template-built orders Whole orders come out of PO templates and document generators, complete with plausible terms and a rendered signature. They never had a print or scan history, so the file's production trail and the uniformity of its text layers separate them from a document that passed through a real procurement system. ## What TamperCheck checks on a purchase order 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. ### 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 purchase order. 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 purchase order, and why Procurement and finance teams preventing supply chain payment fraud. 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 purchase order in 4 steps 1. **Check the fields against each other.** Read quantities and unit prices, delivery address, and authorising signature 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 purchase order and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do companies detect fake purchase orders? Companies detect fake purchase orders by matching the order back to their own records before anything ships, and by checking the document forensically when they cannot. The PO number should exist in the buyer's sequence, the delivery address should belong to the ordering entity, and the signatory should hold authority for the order value. TamperCheck adds per-field edit traces and a risk score from 0 to 100. ### What is purchase order fraud? Purchase order fraud is the use of a forged or altered order to obtain goods on credit or to push spend past approval. The common form targets suppliers: a fake order arrives on a recognisable company's letterhead, goods ship on terms to an address the fraudster controls, and the real company disputes the invoice weeks later. The internal form alters quantities or prices after sign-off. ### How do I verify a purchase order before shipping goods? Call the buying organisation on a number you already hold, not one printed on the order, and ask them to confirm the PO number and the delivery address. Treat a first-time order shipping to a freight forwarder as the highest risk case you will see. Where the order arrives as a PDF, a forensic check names any field that was edited after the document was produced. ### Can a signature on a purchase order be checked? Yes. A signature lifted from another document and pasted onto an order leaves a visible boundary under analysis: its own compression history, an edge profile that does not match the surrounding page, and no interaction with the paper texture below it. TamperCheck examines the signature region specifically and reports the finding against that part of the document. ## Related document types - Invoice: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/invoice - Receipt: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/receipt - Proposal: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/proposal - Quotation: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/quotation - Cheque: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/cheque - Wire Transfer: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/wire_transfer --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing