What is return fraud?

For physical retail, return fraud usually means a returned item. In e-commerce it increasingly means a returned photo: many sellers of lower-value goods refund or replace on the strength of a customer's damage picture alone, without asking for the item back. That photo becomes the only evidence — and the only thing a fraudster has to fake.

Because the financial decision hinges on an image, the integrity of that image is what protects the seller. The goal is not to accuse loyal customers, but to tell an authentic photo apart from a manipulated or recycled one before a refund goes out.

Return fraud covers several distinct patterns. Wardrobing means using an item and returning it as unused. Empty-box or partial-return fraud claims a parcel arrived empty or incomplete. Photo-based claims rely on edited, staged or reused images of supposed damage. Increasingly, claims include fully AI-generated images of products that were never damaged at all.

Each pattern leaves different traces, which is why a layered forensic check is more reliable than any single test.

Claimscan analyses the return photo across several independent forensic layers — image metadata, content provenance, pixel-level consistency, reverse-image reuse and AI-generation signals — and returns a manipulation-likelihood report. It is a decision aid: the verdict is deliberately soft (LIKELY_AUTHENTIC, SUSPICIOUS, LIKELY_MANIPULATED, LIKELY_AI_GENERATED), and a human always makes the final call.