Fake Employment Verification Letters: How to Verify Income Claims
Letters on invented letterhead and "HR contacts" who are friends. How to check an employment or income verification letter — and how to verify it independently.
An employment verification letter is easy to create: a logo, a letterhead, a signature and a phone number. The phone number is the trick — it often reaches an accomplice who will happily "confirm" the job, the title and the salary.
Landlords, lenders, car dealers and immigration consultants see these letters every day. Here is how to check one, and how to verify employment without relying on the letter itself.
How fake letters are made
- Invented employers — a company name, a website built in an afternoon and a "HR department" that is really a friend's phone.
- Real employers, fake letters — a genuine company's logo on a letter it never issued, with a mobile number as the contact.
- Edited genuine letters — a real letter with a higher salary or a different start date.
- Letter mills — services that sell "verifiable" employment letters and answer the phone as your employer.
What to check in the letter
- Contact details you can verify independently — never rely on the number or email printed on the letter.
- Company existence — state business registration, a real office address, a website with history, reviews and a footprint beyond a single page.
- Consistency — job title, start date and salary should match pay stubs and bank deposits.
- Signatory — a real person with a plausible role; check that the name and title appear elsewhere (company site, professional networks).
- Formatting — inconsistent fonts or alignment around salary and dates suggests editing.
- Email domain — a letter "from HR" sent from a free webmail address, or from a domain registered last month, deserves a question.
- File properties — letters "from HR" created in a design app or edited PDFs leave traces.
Verify independently
Find the employer's main phone number yourself — from its website, a directory or registration records — and ask HR to confirm, with the applicant's consent. Many large employers don't confirm by phone at all and instead use third-party employment-verification services (The Work Number is a common one in the US); ask which service they use. For lenders, income can also be cross-checked against tax transcripts obtained with the applicant's authorization.
Use the letter as one input
Combine it with pay stubs and bank deposits; inconsistencies between documents are more telling than any single document. A real job leaves a trail — payroll deposits, tax withholding, a W-2 — that a letter mill can't easily fake.
When something doesn't add up
Ask for clarification and give the applicant a fair chance: new jobs, contract work and small employers can look unusual for honest reasons. Apply the same verification steps to everyone and record what you did.
Automated help
ThisVerify checks letters for edited fields and editing software, and flags inconsistencies with the other documents in the file — so you know which ones need a call.