Altered certificates and forged inspection reports are a persistent risk wherever goods change hands. We explain the common patterns and how a free verification check protects buyers, banks and insurers.
A container arrives with a full set of documents: a certificate of conformity, an inspection report, a test certificate for the materials. Each carries a familiar logo and a signature. The trouble is that a competent forger can produce all of them in an afternoon, and the people relying on those documents rarely have a way to tell the difference.
We see three common patterns. The first is the altered genuine document, where a real report is edited to change a date, a quantity, a grade or a result. The second is the recycled document, where a report for one consignment is presented for another. The third is the outright fabrication, sometimes using a laboratory or inspection company that does not exist, sometimes borrowing the name of one that does.
The consequences fall on whoever relies on the document: a buyer who receives goods that were never inspected, a bank that finances a shipment against a report that describes something else, an insurer that covers a cargo whose condition was never assessed, and ultimately a consumer who ends up with a product that was never tested.
The defence is simple and inexpensive: verify the document with the organisation that supposedly issued it. Reputable testing, inspection and certification bodies keep records of everything they issue and will confirm whether a given document is genuine. The check should be made with the issuing body directly, using contact details from its own website rather than any printed on the document itself.
Our document verification service is free and open to anyone. Upload the document, tell us where you received it, and our team will compare it with our records and confirm whether it was issued by us and whether it has been altered. Every request receives a reference number that can be tracked online until an answer is given, and certificates we have issued can be looked up directly by their number.
We also encourage organisations to build verification into their procedures. A purchasing policy that requires certificates to be verified before payment is released, or a trade finance process that confirms inspection reports before documents are accepted, removes the opportunity that fraud depends on.
Trust in a supply chain is built on documents that mean what they say. Verification is how that trust is maintained.
