How PDF metadata analysis exposed a landlord's forged invoice

Summary

The author recounts a personal experience with a California landlord who failed to return a security deposit within the legally required 21 days. After threats of small claims court, the landlord eventually provided a refund but included a forged PDF of a fabricated invoice as justification for deductions. The author details the forensic analysis of the PDF metadata, exposing the forgery through inconsistencies in creation dates, software versions, and document structure. The article serves as both a cautionary tale about tenant rights and a technical deep-dive into PDF metadata forensics.

Key quotes

· 5 pulled

As landlords tend to do, they failed to return my security deposit within the 21 days required by law.

The PDF was created on July 30th, 2024, at 10:44:27 AM. The invoice date on the PDF is July 30th, 2024. So far so good.

The PDF claims to have been created by 'PFWorld F6-12' — a printer/scanner model. But the document wasn't scanned; it was generated natively as a PDF.

The 'invoice' was created on a Sunday at 10:44 AM. The 'payment' was supposedly made on a Sunday. The PDF was created on a Sunday. Everything happened on a Sunday.

The Author field contains 'caryn' — which is not the name of any employee at the cleaning company, but is the name of the letting agent's employee who was handling my case.

Snippet from the RSS feed

I had to rent a house for a couple of months recently, which is long enough in California that it pushes you into proper tenant protection law. As landlords tend to do, they failed to return my security deposit within the 21 days

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