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Buying guide

How to spot a fake COA

Fabricated certificates are common in this market because they work: most buyers glance at the header, see a percentage, and stop reading. The good news is that fakes are usually lazy, and lazy leaves fingerprints.

ISO-certified laboratoryCOA per batch, ≥99%Discreet 24h dispatchResearch use only
The problem

Paper is cheap, analysis is not

An HPLC run with mass-spectrometry identity confirmation costs real money per batch. A PDF that looks like the result of one costs nothing. Whenever those two facts coexist, some sellers will choose the PDF, and in an unregulated market nothing structural stops them.

Fakes fall into two families. The first is pure invention: a template filled with plausible numbers, never near a laboratory. The second is misdirection: a genuine certificate, but for a different batch, a different compound, or a different supplier entirely, passed off as covering the vial in front of you.

The second family is more dangerous precisely because the document itself is real. Which is why the checks below start with the connection between paper and product, not with the paper.

The checks

Four tests a fake usually fails

In rising order of effort. Most fakes fall at the first two.

  1. 01

    Match batch to vial, character by character

    The lot number on the document must equal the lot number on the label. A mismatch, or a document with no lot number at all, ends the conversation regardless of how the rest looks.

    Where the number lives
  2. 02

    Look for the chromatogram

    A purity claim is produced by a separation trace. Fabricators type percentages but rarely forge plausible traces, so a bare number with no graph is the classic tell.

    Why the trace matters
  3. 03

    Verify the laboratory exists

    A named lab has an address, a website and a phone that answers. Search it. Fakes name labs that do not exist, or real labs that will confirm they never tested any such sample.

    The wider warning signs
  4. 04

    Check the mass against the compound

    Identity sections state a found molecular mass. Thirty seconds of searching tells you the expected mass of the named compound. Fabricators regularly copy a mass from the wrong molecule.

    Sequence and mass, explained
The pattern

One document, many orders

A subtler fraud than forgery: a supplier commissions one genuine analysis, then reuses that document for every order of the product line for years. Each certificate is authentic; the claim that it describes your vial is the lie.

The defence is boring and effective: ask for the certificate of the batch you would receive, before paying, and check the batch number when the parcel arrives. Two minutes, twice.

This is also why we tie every certificate to a lot number and send it on request pre-order. Not because our word should carry the weight, but because the whole point of the document is that nobody’s word has to.

Instant disqualifiers
  • No batch or lot numberA certificate that floats free of any specific production run certifies nothing.
  • Purity given as exactly 99.99%Real chromatography produces untidy numbers. Suspiciously round perfection is a template artefact.
  • No laboratory name or addressAnonymous analysis is unverifiable analysis, which defeats the document’s purpose.
  • Identity section missing entirelyPurity without identity is a percentage of an unknown. That combination is the fraud’s favourite.
Questions

About fake certificates

Questions this guide gets asked alongside.

Can I verify a COA directly with the laboratory?
Often, yes — a real lab can confirm it issued a given report number. That confirmation is the strongest single check available to a buyer, and honest suppliers do not mind you making it.
Are third-party tests better than in-house ones?
Independence removes a conflict of interest, so an external laboratory carries more evidential weight. In-house data is not worthless, but it is the supplier grading its own homework.
What if a supplier sends the COA only after purchase?
Then the document cannot inform the decision it exists to inform. Treat the sequencing itself as the answer, and buy elsewhere.
Do you mind being tested with these checks?
The opposite — this page is the checklist we would hand you. Batch number, chromatogram, named laboratory, plausible mass: ask us for all four.
Try it on us

Request a real certificate today

Pick any product, ask for the batch document, and run every check on this page against it. That is what the document is for.

For laboratory and research use only. Not for human or animal consumption. Not a medicine and not a food supplement. Sold to persons aged 18 and over.

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