# What does a fake proof-of-funds letter look like, and how do you verify one before a deal?

A fake proof-of-funds letter looks like a real bank letter but can't be verified when you call the bank directly — the one check that catches nearly every forgery.

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A fake proof-of-funds letter looks, on the page, almost exactly like a real one — bank letterhead, an account officer's name, a stated balance — but it fails the one check that matters: calling the bank directly, at a number you look up yourself, and asking the bank to confirm the letter and the balance. A genuine letter survives that call every time. A forged one almost never does, because the bank has no record of ever issuing it.

Proof-of-funds letters exist to answer a narrow, reasonable question before a deal moves forward: does this buyer actually have the money they say they have? That question matters enough, in large private sales and OTC trades, that sellers routinely ask for one before investing time, granting exclusivity, or turning down other interested buyers — and that's exactly why the document gets forged. A convincing-looking letter is cheap to produce and costs the seller nothing to accept, right up until the deal falls through for a reason that was visible from the start, had anyone taken the few minutes to check.

## What is a proof-of-funds letter actually supposed to show?

A proof-of-funds letter is a statement, typically on a bank's letterhead and signed by an authorized account officer, confirming that a named account holds funds sufficient to cover a stated amount as of a specific date. It is not a guarantee the funds will still be there tomorrow, and it is not a wire transfer or a commitment to pay — it's a snapshot, meant to give a seller or counterparty reasonable confidence before they commit time, exclusivity, or resources to a deal.

Because it's only a snapshot, a proof-of-funds letter is inherently a weaker form of assurance than an actual payment or an escrow deposit, and it should be treated that way even when it's completely genuine. The letter tells you the buyer could pay at the moment it was issued — not that they will, and not that the balance hasn't moved since. Its real value is narrower than it's often treated as: it screens out buyers who plainly don't have the money, not buyers who have decided not to follow through, and conflating the two is how sellers end up over-trusting a document that was never meant to carry that much weight.

## What does a forged proof-of-funds letter typically look like?

Forged letters cluster around a few recognizable patterns, though none is disqualifying entirely on its own. The letterhead and logo are often lifted directly from the bank's real marketing materials, sometimes with slightly off colors, spacing, or a resolution that looks subtly compressed compared to an authentic document. The signing officer's name and title are invented, or borrowed from a real employee found on LinkedIn, but the letter supplies no way to independently confirm that person actually works there in that role.

The account number and balance are often suspiciously round, and the letter's language is frequently generic — phrases lifted from real proof-of-funds templates circulating online, with the specific bank's actual internal formatting and standard disclaimers missing. Most tellingly, the letter usually provides a direct phone number or email to "verify" it — one that routes to the scammer, not the bank's actual main line. A request to verify through a channel the letter itself supplies is the single biggest tell, because it inverts the entire point of independent verification.

<figure class="keyfacts">
<div class="keyfacts-grid">
<div><b>1 call</b><span>to the bank's publicly listed main number is usually enough to confirm or disprove a proof-of-funds letter</span></div>
<div><b>0</b><span>legitimate reasons a verification contact should be supplied by the letter itself rather than looked up independently</span></div>
<div><b>A snapshot, not a promise</b><span>even a genuine letter only confirms a balance existed on the date it was issued — not that it's still there</span></div>
</div>
<p class="fig-src">Based on standard bank verification practice for proof-of-funds documentation.</p>
</figure>

## How do you actually verify a proof-of-funds letter?

Look up the bank's main phone number independently — through its own official site or a general search, never through a number printed on the letter — and call that number. Ask to be connected to the branch or department named on the letter, and ask the bank, not the account holder, to confirm that the letter is genuine and that the named account holds funds consistent with what's stated. Most banks will confirm this in general terms (yes, this letter was issued by us, and the account holds sufficient funds as of the date shown) without disclosing confidential account details beyond that, which is a reasonable and sufficient answer for your purposes.

If the letter names a bank you don't recognize, or a bank in a jurisdiction where you can't easily verify a phone number through an independent source, treat that as a reason for more scrutiny, not less — a legitimate large account can be held almost anywhere, but an unfamiliar or hard-to-verify institution is also exactly where a forger would choose to claim one, counting on the friction of checking it to do the work the forgery itself couldn't.

## What does a realistic verification pass look like?

<figure class="fig">
<figcaption><b>Verifying a proof-of-funds letter before proceeding with a deal</b><span>Before granting exclusivity or investing further time</span></figcaption>
<ol class="steps">
<li><b>Request the letter directly, addressed to you</b>A letter addressed generically "to whom it may concern" with no reference to your specific deal is weaker evidence than one naming your transaction and dated recently.</li>
<li><b>Check the date</b>A proof-of-funds letter more than a few weeks old tells you less about current funds than a recent one — ask for a fresh letter if the one you have is stale relative to when the deal will actually close.</li>
<li><b>Look up the bank's number independently</b>Search for the bank's main line yourself; don't use any number printed on the letter itself.</li>
<li><b>Call and ask the bank to confirm the letter and the balance</b>Give the bank the letter's reference details and ask them to confirm it was issued by them and that it's accurate — not to disclose anything beyond that.</li>
<li><b>Weigh the letter as a screen, not a guarantee</b>Once verified, treat the letter as confirmation the buyer isn't fabricating their position entirely — not as a reason to skip the payment-security steps you'd otherwise take once the deal actually proceeds to settlement.</li>
</ol>
</figure>

## What are the broader red flags around a proof-of-funds request?

| Signal | What it usually means |
| --- | --- |
| The letter supplies its own "verification" contact | Routes your check back to the scammer instead of the bank |
| The bank named is unfamiliar, offshore, or hard to independently look up | Not disqualifying, but harder to verify — worth extra scrutiny |
| The letter is undated, or dated well before the current negotiation | Tells you less about the buyer's current position |
| The buyer offers the letter unprompted, very early, before any real terms are discussed | Sometimes used to build premature trust before the actual ask comes later in the deal |
| The buyer resists a direct bank-to-you verification call | Removes your only reliable way to confirm the document |
| Letterhead with visibly inconsistent fonts, spacing, or logo quality | A common sign of a document assembled from a template rather than issued by an actual bank system |

As with most fraud patterns, the individual signals are weak evidence on their own — a legitimate buyer at an unfamiliar bank is not uncommon — but resistance to independent verification is close to disqualifying by itself, since it removes the only tool that actually settles the question.

<aside class="callout">
<span class="callout-label">Before you grant exclusivity based on a letter</span>
<h4>A verified letter still isn't a payment</h4>
<p>Even a confirmed-genuine proof-of-funds letter tells you the buyer could pay as of a specific date — not that they will, and not that the balance hasn't since moved. Don't let a verified letter substitute for the payment-security steps that apply once the deal actually reaches settlement.</p>
</aside>

## Why does this scam specifically target high-value and OTC deals?

Proof-of-funds requests are far more common in deals large enough that a seller reasonably wants assurance before investing serious time — real estate, business sales, large crypto OTC trades, luxury asset purchases — which is exactly the segment where a forged letter does the most damage if it works. A scammer forging a proof-of-funds letter for a $500 transaction gains little; forging one to secure exclusivity on a $2 million property, or to get a seller to release a large OTC crypto position on the promise of an incoming wire, is a meaningfully different payoff for the same five minutes of effort spent copying a logo.

This is also why the scam frequently appears alongside other pressure tactics: a forged proof-of-funds letter is often paired with urgency ("I need an answer today, I have other properties I'm looking at") specifically to prevent the seller from taking the time to make the one phone call that would unravel it. Recognizing that pairing — a convincing document plus pressure not to check it — is itself a useful signal independent of the letter's contents.

## How does a proof-of-funds letter compare to actually proving funds in a crypto deal?

In a crypto-denominated deal, proof of funds doesn't require a letter at all, because the equivalent evidence is often directly and publicly verifiable: a buyer can show that a specific wallet address holds a balance at or above the deal amount, visible to anyone on a public block explorer, with no third party's word required. This is a structurally stronger form of proof than a bank letter, because it can't be forged in the same way — the balance either is or isn't on the address, and that's checkable by anyone, instantly, without a phone call to a bank.

The limitation is that holding funds in a wallet still doesn't guarantee the buyer will actually send them to you, any more than a bank balance guarantees a wire will follow — which is exactly the gap a properly structured payment router closes. On Shaka, the deal's terms and each party's share are agreed and signed before the client can even submit the payment, so there's no separate step where "proof of funds" has to stand in for an actual commitment; the payment itself, once submitted, settles directly rather than requiring a second act of trust after the fact.

## Is a proof-of-funds letter the same thing as a bank reference or a letter of credit?

A proof-of-funds letter, a bank reference, and a letter of credit are three different documents that get casually conflated, and the differences matter for what each one actually promises. A proof-of-funds letter confirms a balance existed on a given date — nothing more. A bank reference is a more general statement from a bank about a client's standing and history with the institution, often used in a broader due-diligence context rather than tied to a specific transaction amount. A letter of credit is categorically different from both: it's a binding commitment from the issuing bank to pay a specified amount under defined conditions, used heavily in international trade, and considerably harder to forge convincingly because it follows a standardized international format (most commonly under the ICC's Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits) that a receiving bank can verify through established banking channels rather than a phone call.

If a buyer offers a letter of credit instead of a proof-of-funds letter, that's worth treating as a meaningfully stronger form of assurance — but it still needs verification through your own bank, which can confirm a letter of credit's authenticity through the correspondent banking network rather than by calling the issuing bank directly. Don't assume the stronger-sounding document is automatically genuine just because it's less commonly forged; it's less commonly forged because it's harder to fake convincingly, not because nobody tries.

## How should a broker or agent in the middle handle a client's proof-of-funds letter?

A broker or agent sitting between a buyer and seller is often the one who receives the proof-of-funds letter first, and has a professional obligation to verify it before passing it along with any implicit endorsement — forwarding an unverified letter to a seller with a note like "buyer has sent proof of funds" can read as a vouching the broker never intended to give. The safer practice is to run the same verification call described above before forwarding anything, and to be explicit with the seller about what was and wasn't checked: "I called the bank and they confirmed this letter is genuine and the balance is accurate as of [date]" is a very different statement than simply relaying a document that arrived in an inbox.

This matters doubly for a broker working a high volume of deals, where the temptation is to treat proof-of-funds as a formality to collect and file rather than a document to actually test. The brokers who get burned by a buyer's forged letter are rarely the ones running the verification call — they're the ones who assumed a professional-looking document had already been vetted by someone else in the chain, when in most deals, nobody had, and the document simply passed from inbox to inbox gathering an unearned appearance of credibility at each step.

## What should you actually do if a letter doesn't check out?

If the bank can't confirm the letter, or the number on the letter doesn't connect to anyone at the actual institution, stop the deal at that point rather than asking the buyer for an explanation first — a legitimate buyer whose bank genuinely can't be reached by phone is rare enough that the far more likely explanation is the one the evidence points to. Document what you found (the letter itself, the number you called, the date and time, and what the bank said) in case you need to report it, and treat the entire relationship with appropriate skepticism going forward, since a buyer willing to forge this document once has given you real information about what else they might be willing to forge.

A verified letter costs you one phone call. An unverified one, acted on anyway, costs considerably more — and the deals built around forged proof-of-funds letters are rarely subtle enough to survive that one call, which is exactly why so few of the people running this scam ever expect you to make it.

The pattern holds across nearly every version of this fraud, in every asset class it touches: the document is designed to look exactly convincing enough that most people won't bother checking, and the few minutes it takes to check are also the few minutes the entire scheme can't survive once someone actually spends them.