# Detect tampered and deepfake Termination Letter > A termination letter is the document a dismissal gets judged on, so both sides have a reason to change it. An employee may produce one that was never issued, or alter the ground it states, to support a wrongful dismissal claim. An employer may move the effective date across a statutory service threshold, or rewrite misconduct as redundancy. By the time a tribunal sees the letter, the most reliable record left is the file it arrived in. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/termination_letter **API document class:** `termination_letter` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine termination letter contains A termination letter goes out on company letterhead, dated, numbered in the employer's own reference series, and showing where the company is registered. It identifies the employee by name, employee ID, designation and department, sets the effective date of termination, and gives the ground for it, often citing a policy clause or the dates of earlier warnings. Below that sit the notice terms or pay in lieu, the final settlement, instructions on returning company property and access, and the signatory: a name, a title carrying dismissal authority, and usually a company stamp. The stated reason is anchored by everything around it. A dismissal for misconduct refers to warnings that have their own dates and their own documents, and those documents have to exist. The effective date sets the notice paid and decides whether the employee crosses the length of service that unlocks statutory protection, so it is bounded by the joining date on one side and the final payslip on the other. The signature must belong to someone whose role actually permits a dismissal. ## How termination letter forgeries are made ### Reason substitution The stated ground is swapped, misconduct for redundancy or the reverse, because the two carry different payouts and different consequences for the employee's next job. The replacement usually occupies a differently sized block of text than the original, which distorts the spacing of the paragraph holding it. ### Effective date moved across a service threshold The termination date is shifted by days or weeks so the employee's total service falls just short of, or just past, the point at which notice entitlement or unfair dismissal protection begins. A small edit with a large financial consequence, and one the final payslip contradicts. ### A letter that was never issued The document is produced after the fact, by an employee who was never formally dismissed or by an employer reconstructing a record it failed to create at the time. There is no original underneath it, so the questions become when the file was made and whether its letterhead matches the company's letters from that period. ### Signatory without authority The letter is signed by a line manager or an administrator rather than an officer who can dismiss, or a genuine signature is copied in from another letter to supply the authority. The copied version repeats a signature that already exists elsewhere in the same bundle, stroke for stroke. ### Letterhead and stamp reconstruction Where no original exists, the header is rebuilt from public branding and a stamp is placed digitally over the signature block. A rebuilt logo carries resampling artefacts at its edges, and a placed stamp holds a density that a rubber impression pressed onto paper never has. ## What TamperCheck checks on a termination 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. ### 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. ### 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 termination 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 termination letter, and why HR teams and employment tribunals establishing the record of a dismissal. 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 termination letter in 4 steps 1. **Check the fields against each other.** Read termination date, stated reason, 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 termination letter and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can a termination letter be forged? Yes, by either party, and the two versions look different. An employee forging one typically creates a letter that was never issued, or alters the reason given in a real one, to support a claim. An employer alters dates and grounds in a letter that did exist, to improve its position. The first is a fabrication question and the second a tampering question. ### How do I prove a termination letter was altered? Obtain the original file rather than a printout and have it analysed, because an alteration leaves the edited region with compression, font rendering and noise characteristics unlike the text around it. Then set the letter against the records it must agree with: the final payslip, the settlement statement, the warning letters it cites, and the employer's own copy. TamperCheck names the region that changed and scores the document from 0 to 100. ### Do employment tribunals accept forensic document analysis? Tribunals routinely admit expert evidence on whether a document was altered and weigh it alongside witness evidence and disclosure, though what any particular tribunal accepts is a matter for it and for the rules of that jurisdiction, not something a software vendor can promise. A forensic report is most useful for deciding what to ask for in disclosure: the native file, its metadata, and the employer's own copy of the letter. ### What should I check first on a termination letter? Check the effective date against the joining date and the final payslip before anything else, because length of service decides most of what the letter is worth. Then confirm the signatory's title carries dismissal authority, and that any warnings the letter cites exist as documents with matching dates. Appearance is the last thing to look at and the easiest part for a forger to get right. ## Related document types - Experience Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/experience_letter - Relieving Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/relieving_letter - Resignation Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/resignation_letter - Reference Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/reference_letter - Cover Letter: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/cover_letter - No Objection Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/noc_letter --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing