Procurement & Suppliers: When Your ERP Validates the Invalid Without Knowing It

Fake documents. Your system records them without saying a word?

What Is Happening Right Now in Your Procurement Department

It's 9 a.m. A supplier has just uploaded their ISO 14001 certificate to your procurement portal. Your ERPCentral enterprise management software (e.g., SAP) that centralizes procurement, finance, and logistics. It automatically records documents submitted by suppliers without verifying their authenticity. records it. The buyer ticks the box. The order goes out.

The certificate is a fake, generated in a few seconds by an AI. No one noticed anything.

This scenario is not fiction. It is happening today in thousands of companies — SMEs and multinationals alike — silently, at scale, with financial and criminal consequences that can be devastating.

Document Fraud in Supply Chains Has Exploded

Between 2023 and 2024, digital document fraud jumped by +244% in a single year. [Observatoire Tessi — L'IA générative industrialise la fraude documentaire 2024 (2024)]

This is no longer a trend. It's a rupture.

1. 5% of fraudulent documents are now generated or enhanced using generative AI tools [Observatoire Tessi — L'IA générative industrialise la fraude documentaire 2024 (2024)]

57% of fraud is now digital, surpassing physical manipulation for the first time [Observatoire Tessi — L'IA générative industrialise la fraude documentaire 2024 (2024)]

USD 1 trillion in annual losses worldwide [Ecabrella — The Rising Tide of Shipping Fraud 2025 (2025)]

EUR 65 billion evaporates each year in France — about 2.5% of GDP [Observatoire Tessi — L'IA générative industrialise la fraude documentaire 2024 (2024)]

91% of large companies have already faced an attempted document fraud [Observatoire Tessi — L'IA générative industrialise la fraude documentaire 2024 (2024)]

Why the Supply Chain Is Forgers' Top Target

Thousands of documents exchanged every day, with no real protection

International trade relies almost exclusively on PDF files: certificates of origin, customs declarations, ISO certificates, Bill of LadingOcean bill of lading: key international trade document that serves as a receipt of goods, a title of ownership, and a transport contract. Its financial value makes it a prime target for fraudsters..

These documents trigger payments, authorize border crossings, and certify environmental and social compliance. Yet their verification still very often relies on the human eye and first-generation OCRTechnology that automatically extracts text from an image or a PDF. It reads surface data, but cannot detect whether the image was falsified before or after digitization. tools.

That's where fraudsters strike.

The ocean bill of lading: the most forged document in international trade

The Bill of LadingOcean bill of lading (BoL): key international trade document that serves as a freight receipt, a title of ownership, and a transport contract. Its financial value makes it a prime target for fraudsters. concentrates three critical vulnerabilities in a single document:

It is a transferable title of ownership — changing its data is like forging a blank check

It triggers bank payments in documentary credit mechanisms — a fake bill of lading is therefore a direct financial fraud tool

It circulates between multiple intermediaries (carrier, freight forwarder, customs, banks) — every handoff is a potential injection point for fraud

The Hin Leong Trading case (Singapore, 2020) illustrates the scale of the risk: the company reused the same forged bills of lading to fraudulently obtain financing from several banks, for an estimated amount of USD 3.5 billion. [Frontiers in Marine Science — Blockchain in maritime: applications, effects and challenges 2025 (2025)]

Fake ISO certificates: when compliance becomes a facade

ISO certifications (9001, 14001, 45001) have become access conditions for international tenders. But there is no centralized global database accessible in real time to verify them instantly.

A malicious supplier can recreate an ISO certificate by copying an existing template, adding the logo of a recognized certifying body, and adjusting dates using a simple PDF editor or generative AI. [Oxebridge — Fake ISO Certifications : Tech CEO Indicted (2024)]

Result: your ERPCentral enterprise management software (e.g., SAP) that centralizes procurement, finance, and logistics. It automatically records documents submitted by suppliers without verifying their authenticity. archives a fake document, and the illusion of compliance is perfect… until the incident.

Why Your Current Tools Cannot Detect These Fakes

Imagine a hotel doorman who checks that the magnetic card is the right color — without ever checking whether it is registered in the system. That's exactly what your current document verification does: it reads the surface, not validity.

OCR brings fraud into your system without seeing it

An OCRTechnology that automatically extracts text from an image or a PDF. It reads surface data, but cannot detect whether the image was falsified before or after digitization. system reads and records the data from a falsified invoice with the same efficiency as a legitimate document. [SSRN — AI-Based Document Forgery Detection Using OCR and Convolutional Neural Networks (2025)] It does not detect that a text block was digitally overlaid, that typography shows micro-variations, or that a date was altered using an inpaintingAI technique that synthesizes pixels to fill or replace an area of an image, making changes visually undetectable and invisible to a standard OCR system..

Relying on OCR alone is automating the integration of fraud into your management system.

Three unavoidable limits of human verification

1. Physiological inability. The human eye cannot detect modifications made at the level of individual pixels. Generative AI tools produce textures that are visually indistinguishable from an original document. [arXiv — AIForge-Doc: A Benchmark for Detecting AI-Forged Tampering in Financial Documents 2025 (2025)]
2. Scale asymmetry. A global supply chain generates thousands of PDFs every day. Human analysis can only last a few seconds per document — which structurally leads to default validation.
3. Trust bias. Faced with a document that matches the exact visual identity of a known certifying body, the reviewer assumes authenticity based on appearance alone. [VerifyPDF Blog — Stop fake documents! How AI can help you detect the invisible threat (2024)]

The conclusion is clear: you have to fight AI with AI.

Legal and compliance framework: what matters most

The legal consequences of a forged document always depend on the facts, the sector involved, the applicable qualification, and the competent jurisdiction. In practice, the main issue for an organization is to be able to demonstrate a proportionate, traceable, and well-documented verification process, with human review whenever a decision may have a significant effect.

The controls described here should therefore be understood as risk-management, compliance, and evidence-preservation measures. Any final blocking decision, report, contractual sanction, or legal action should still be validated by the relevant legal or compliance teams.

Beyond Documents: DeepForgery Media for Your Visual and Audio Content

Fraud does not stop at PDFs. The same malicious actors now exploit deepfakesAI-generated video, audio, or image content designed to convincingly imitate real people. Used for identity theft, wire fraud, or opinion manipulation. videos, voice clonesSynthetic replication of a real person's voice generated by AI, used to bypass biometric verification systems or orchestrate wire-transfer fraud., and retouched images to bypass KYCKnow Your Customer — regulatory process for identifying and verifying customers' identity, mandatory in banking, insurance, and financial sectors. processes and orchestrate wire fraud.

DeepForgery Media certifies the authenticity of images, audio recordings, and videos — detecting face swapsDeepfake technique that swaps one person's face for another in a video, used to impersonate someone during remote biometric checks., voice synthesis, and image manipulations.

The OrchestratorDeepForgery module that automatically analyzes the incoming file type (PDF, image, audio, video) and deploys the appropriate combination of forensic models, with no human intervention or manual configuration. automatically identifies the incoming file type and deploys the right model combination — with no manual configuration.

FAQ — Questions Compliance and Procurement Leaders Ask

Can DeepForgery analyze documents in foreign languages (English, Chinese, Arabic)? Yes. The forensic engine relies on analyzing digital structures, compression fingerprints, and file metadata — signals independent of the document language. Semantic validation adapts to the document references specific to each geographical area.

What is the difference between DeepForgery and an OCR check or a document management solution (DMS)? An OCRTechnology that automatically extracts text from an image or a PDF. It reads surface data, but cannot detect whether the image was falsified before or after digitization. system extracts text — it does not detect whether that text was falsified. A DMS stores and classifies — it does not verify authenticity. DeepForgery performs a three-level forensic analysis: pixels, file structure, logical consistency. These are two radically different approaches.

How does DeepForgery integrate with SAP without disrupting existing processes? Via SAP BTPSAP cloud platform that enables extending SAP applications via services and APIs, without modifying the ERP's standard code.. When a document is uploaded into SAP, the analysis is automatically triggered in the background — invisible to the user, with no change to the ERP's standard code. Deployment is non-intrusive and reversible.

How does integration work for organizations that do not use SAP? DeepForgery is accessible via REST API, which enables integration into any supplier portal, approval workflow, or document management system, regardless of the existing infrastructure. An On-PremiseDeployment mode where the solution is installed directly on the company's servers, ensuring full confidentiality of data with no transfer outside. Recommended for environments subject to strict security requirements. mode is available for environments subject to the strictest security requirements.

What Procurement and Compliance Teams Concretely Gain

Detection embedded into existing processes — analysis happens at the exact moment the document enters the system, before any recording or payment trigger

Documented audit traceability — each analysis is time-stamped and archived, making it possible to demonstrate to the competent authorities (duty of vigilance, CSRD, customs) that incoming documents were actively checked

Blocking risky payments before execution — orders linked to documents flagged as suspicious are put on hold for human review, before any disbursement

Protection adapted to sensitive environments — On-PremiseDeployment mode where the solution is installed directly on the company's servers, ensuring full confidentiality of data with no transfer outside. Recommended for environments subject to strict security requirements. mode guarantees that your documents never leave your infrastructure

Conclusion: Document Fraud Is an Emergency. The Response Is Too.

The democratization of generative AI has removed the technical barriers to document forgery. At near-zero cost, any malicious actor can now produce a fake ISO certificate or alter an ocean bill of lading in a way that is undetectable to the human eye or to an OCR system.

At the same time, the European regulatory framework leaves no room for error. Accepting a forged document is no longer an administrative mistake — it is an offense that can lead to substantial fines and criminal prosecutions against executives.

Faced with this threat, DeepForgery integrates directly into your document verification processes — via API or in On-PremiseDeployment mode where the solution is installed directly on the company's servers, ensuring full confidentiality of data with no transfer outside. Recommended for environments subject to strict security requirements. mode — to intercept fraud attempts at the exact moment the document tries to enter the information system.

When a fake certificate is flagged before reaching your ERP, it generates no fine, no criminal sanction, and no reputational risk. It is stopped cold, with the forensic evidence needed to act.