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What is document fraud, and how much is a fake Document Worth?

Types of document fraud and its impact on consumers, companies and the industry.

Though a fake document is technically worth nothing, it can cost companies and individuals millions. According to the Home Office, document fraud accounts for 38% of total offences, meaning a fraud case occurs nearly every ten seconds.

While individuals may commit document fraud to change their identity or improve their work eligibility, the majority of document fraud is committed for financial gain. In the first half of 2024 alone, fraud cost the UK almost £600 million. Despite being worthless, fake documents are very profitable.

In addition, £755 million is spent by businesses in the UK preventing and detecting document fraud. This is, in part, down to the ease of image modification but also because document fraud is usually carried out by sophisticated, large-scale operations that use a range of fraudulent techniques.

In this article, we look at these forms of fraud used by criminals, how they impact the most vulnerable industries, and how businesses and individuals can protect themselves from this kind of crime.

Types of document fraud

Understanding document fraud starts with understanding the many different forms that it comes in. 

Document alteration – Tampering with the details of a document that has already been produced officially.

Example: Changing the name of the address on a check. 

Document forgery – Creating an entirely fake document. This now increasingly includes digital documents as well.

Example: Generating a fake invoice for financial gain or producing a counterfeit driving license to travel illegally.

Document image fraud – Producing an image that conveys false details.

Example: Sending an image of a car that has either been tampered with, or sending an image of a defect that was not a consequence of the incident in question.  

Synthetic identity fraud – Using a combination of authentic and fake information to produce a new identity that allows its user to access financial assets. 

Example: Creating a credit card with the user’s image but false personal details that   allow them to make one big expenditure before they disappear and disregard the card without paying the bills at the end of the month. 

Generated document fraud – Using generative AI to create falsified documents. This technique allows fraudsters to produce large volumes of similar documents with slight variations. While such forgeries are often not yet convincing to authorities, the quality is improving rapidly, raising concern about their potential effectiveness.

Example: An online service that provides underage users with fake driver’s licenses to access 18+ venues.

Fraudulently obtained genuine (FOG) – This is a term to refer to a kind of fraud where the document in question is genuine but has been obtained through fraudulent means. 

Example: A fraudster may pose as a bank over email, and ask victims to send official documentation that they can use for extortive purposes.

Industries where document fraud is prevalent

 

Insurance

Insurance providers often rely on photographic or scanned evidence when processing claims. For instance, in a vehicle damage claim, a claimant might submit a photo that has been digitally altered to exaggerate the extent of the damage. In health insurance, fraudulent invoices are sometimes submitted for services that were never provided or inflated well beyond the actual cost.
While insurers have Special Investigation Units (SIUs) dedicated to detecting and investigating fraud, only a small portion of claims receive close scrutiny. As a result, visual and document-based fraud often go undetected. It is estimated that around 10 percent of property and casualty insurance claims are fraudulent. According to Deloitte, this contributes to a staggering USD 122 billion in global annual losses.

Real Estate

Industries that rely heavily on documents are, naturally, the most vulnerable to document fraud. According to Seon, the real estate industry has some of the largest increases in document fraud. This is down to the importance of deeds and titles which are easily falsified, usually by fraudsters who impersonate asset owners and transfer deeds into their own names. 

Banking

Banks face significant exposure to fraud, often involving criminals impersonating banks to deceive customers into handing over sensitive information, enabling account takeover or unauthorized withdrawals. In 2023, UK consumers lost an estimated £1.17 billion to banking fraud and scams, according to the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2024. While banks invest heavily in antifraud systems, preventing additional billions, these costs ultimately ripple back to customers through higher fees or reduced services.

 

Industry defences against document fraud 

The fight against fraud has become infinitely more sophisticated since the advent of AI, which can generate convincing and accurate photographic and documentary evidence. For this reason, many large companies have a robust fraud detection department that employs a range of methods to identify suspicious activity. Here are some of the main ones:

OCR technology – Optical Character Recognition is the transformation of images into machine-readable data. Most of us have likely used this data when we’ve scanned a document to make it into a PDF that can be changed digitally. The benefit of changing an image into data is that we can easily compare the data from a suspected fake to a genuine document to see how similar they are. 

Signatures – All important PDF have a digital signature that allows a receiver to access information about the document’s creation. Companies will check the digital signature of many important documents to ensure details of the document’s creation and ownership align with their expectations. 

Similarity Detection – Once a document or image is submitted, companies can run internal checks to determine whether a similar file already exists in their database. There are two main methods:

  • Hash matching – This identifies whether a file is exactly the same to one previously received, using a unique digital fingerprint. It is fast and precise but limited to exact matches.
  • Similarity search – This method takes analysis further by examining a file’s layout, content, and structure to identify near matches. For example, it can flag cases where an invoice template has been reused with subtle changes, such as altered dates or names, or where the content of an image has been slightly rotated or modified.

Both approaches can be combined to detect fraud more effectively. Similarity search can also extend to online content, helping to flag files that closely resemble publicly available documents.

How to protect yourself from fraud

Not everyone has access to the best document fraud detection software in the business. Certainly, the average individual or small business does not have the time to conduct an audit. Nor do they have the capacity for an archive that will allow them to compare documents. 

For the individual, it’s about using the practices available to you, such as:

  • Being cautious about what you share, and who with. 
  • Using secure document storage (possibly encrypted or behind a password).
  • Using trusted platforms.
  • Looking out for visual inconsistencies, such as misalignment and pixelated logos. 
  • Knowing what conventional and/or unusual communication from banks and other important service providers looks like. 
  • Redacting sensitive information where necessary. 

 

Even with careful precautions, document fraud can still happen. Photocert provides advanced detection software that swiftly and accurately evaluates the authenticity of images and documents. A key priority is minimizing false positives, delivering reliable results without unnecessary alerts, so users can clearly identify what is trustworthy and better protect themselves from fraud.

Using the methods mentioned above, such as digital signature evaluation, metadata analysis and a similarity search, to name a few, our detection software will provide tamper localisations that highlight the specific parts of a document that look suspicious. That way you know what to trust and how to protect yourself from document fraud.