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The only way to tell that a Pokémon is 100% hacked is to find a trait that is 100% impossible. If you do not have access to the data and can only view in-game summary screens, that will limit your ability to see impossible traits. Even with access to PKHeX, there are some traits that are highly improbable but still legal. As others have said before, knowing what is an impossible trait or an improbable trait requires knowledge about the game and encounter. That kind of information could fill textbooks. An impossible trait might be easily visible, such as an impossible Poké Ball or a shiny-locked Pokémon that is shiny. Likewise, an impossible trait may require you to have the data, such as calculating the RNG correlation for SWSH Pokemon which requires hidden values such as PID and EC. Many users use common streamer OTs as a sign that a Pokémon is very likely to be hacked, even if the Pokémon is fully legal. The chance of a random wild Pokémon in SV with no fixed IVs to be shiny and 6 IV is at best 1 in (512 x 32^6) and it's very common for people to use these kind of odds as reason to find a mon suspicious. You're looking for something like this page, but there isn't a resource with every tell possible for every game. That requires the user to do the research. I believe that page is also not completely up-to-date, so some of the information on there has since changed due to new mechanics.

Gen6 contest ribbons depend on both visiting ORAS (eg can't be from XY with no Handling Trainer) as well as having OT Affection. Winning a contest in ORAS grants +20 affection to the OT Affection property, not to the current handler (game bug, never fixed). You likely are missing the affection value. It works in Gen8+ because the Affection property is no longer present in formats above Generation 7. As for the Gen3 in-game trades, unable to replicate on either Gen3 or Gen4 formats; they are created and appear legal on the latest release (23.08.23). It makes it easy for me to try replicating your errors if you upload pk* files.

The vast majority of what I knew at first was from testing and observing, as I said before. I keep a large database of Pokémon that are legitimate or most likely legitimate (from trusted users) to check whenever I have a question. Pporg has some technical documents here: https://projectpokemon.org/home/docs/ There are other sites you can look for to learn what others have made public. Smogon has some older threads for research: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/past-gen-rng-research.61090/ Even Bulbapedia has some information about the different kinds of RNG used: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generation_in_Pokémon As well as Pokemon data structures: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_data_structure_(Generation_IV) There are some databases of mostly legitimately obtained Pokémon data that you can look at. RoC's PC is well known: https://github.com/ReignOfComputer/RoCs-PC (there may be some hacks in there). I also keep one here that is public: https://github.com/Lusamine/Anubirb If you are interested in RNG correlations, you can look at RNG manipulation tools to see how the math is done. One example is Pokefinder: https://github.com/Admiral-Fish/PokeFinder Honestly, you could read through this legality forum and see answers to other questions to learn more.

If a user perfectly recreates a legitimate Pokémon, then there is no way you can tell. Most people who gen Pokémon do not perfectly recreate legitimate Pokémon. I am not going to go into this in more detail because that would be straight up telling people how to create better hacks in order to fool other people. If you are asking about clones, the only way to verify a clone is to see another copy of it, assuming the Pokémon is not a natural clone. This is like asking "Is it possible to commit a perfect crime and never be caught?" It may be easier to think of hack checking like a court case. You must look at the suspect, the circumstances of the crime, any evidence that is available, and what any witnesses can tell you. The only ways to know if a Pokémon is legitimate is for you to either catch it yourself (and know all the circumstances of capture), or observe someone else do it and then check their console/setup to ensure no cheats are active. That means for most cases of Pokémon you receive from others, you cannot be 100% sure that it is legitimate. In the same way, the suspect knows 100% whether they committed the crime or not, but the jury may not know. Everything else is going to be a level of suspicion depending on the user and the mon. Here are some examples to think about: If your best friend says "I caught a shiny Pikachu legitimately with no cheats/hacks" do you believe them? What if your best friend's Pikachu was Timid 31/0/31/31/31/31 on top of being shiny, do you still believe them? What if a random stranger on the internet told you the two above, do you believe them? What if a user with a known hacker OT/TID on the internet told you the two things above, do you still believe them?

No, this is not fully accurate. I think you are confusing legality and legitimacy. This is probably a problem with translators giving the same word in other languages, but the two words are used differently when discussing hacked Pokémon. Again, it will depend on the encounter. Some encounters are more thoroughly checked by PKHeX, others are not. When knowledge is fully known, yes it is possible to fully determine the legality of a wild-caught Pokémon. Legality checks are always improving, so something that is currently not flagged may be flagged in the future. If you rely on a program like PKHeX and want to know how good each check is, that would still require you to do research into the encounter and the program. Remember that legality is not legitimacy. PKHeX does not do legitimacy checks. It does legality checks. Legality is whether it is possible to obtain a Pokémon that has those details. A legitimate Pokémon was obtained properly through the correct methods in-game. Fully determining legality does not fully determine legitimacy. A hacked Pokémon can be legal, but a hacked Pokémon is by definition not legitimate. The only way to know that something is fully legitimate is to know the exact circumstances used to capture the Pokémon. Otherwise, without knowing how it was obtained, the best you can do is compare to what is known to be possible. As I said before, it is possible to prove something is 100% hacked if it has 100% impossible features. Otherwise, you should take into account how likely that Pokémon is. It would be wrong to say that a 6 IV wild shiny Pokémon with 1/549755813888 chance is equally likely as a random IV, nonshiny Pokémon with nothing outstanding, simply because there are no strictly illegal features. PKHeX does not rate whether one Pokémon is more likely than another; that is for the user to research and understand. Yes, it is possible for a hacker to completely copy the details of a legitimate Pokémon. But you are not likely to see people hacking Pokémon that are exactly the same as random wild Pokémon. You have to look at the Pokémon yourself, research to know what is possible to figure out the chance of it occurring, and make the decision based on that knowledge. PKHeX can tell you that the values are possible, but that does not mean a sensible human should believe that odds of 1 in billions is as reasonable as a random Pokémon. Most trade communities do not expect casual users to have full access to the Pokémon data and research, so that is why they use methods such as listing known hacker OTs and general tells that are more associated with hacked than legitimate Pokémon. For example, Mitsuki.TV is a known streamer who distributes hacks. Yes, it's possible that someone innocent might pick Mitsuki.TV as their name. But do you really think an innocent user picked the same name as a streamer, found a legitimate shiny 6 IV legendary, and then gave it to you for free?

Statistics. When you stack multiple improbabilities, the odds in the end is practically impossible. Check out Matt Parker’s breakdown on Dream’s cheated Minecraft run. There are some cut and dry cases, then there are some that requires nuance and context and tons of research, then there are those are legal and indistinguishable from the real deal but hacked in the hearts of the players. It’s going to be a lot to unpack and you’re gonna need to read it all up.

legality, not legitimacy. just because the odds aren't 0% doesn't mean it's not an immediate red flag. a 6IV shiny wild pokemon in S/V that has a mark has absurd odds, or things like having a specific Height/Weight value for multiple pokemon in the party. just because pkhex says an individual pokemon is "legal" does not mean it will always be viewed as "legal" or truly is. see the latest release, which now flags modified raids. there are a ton of things that pkhex doesn't look at in detail, as they are not currently implemented. only way to know for sure is to know everything there ever is about the intricacies of every single game, or write a program to do it for you.

SWSH Regis are not raid Pokémon or overworld Pokémon, so they do not use those spreads. They are scripted static encounters that are purely csprng, so any values you want to set are legal, including if you simply catch one and shinify it. And yes, even though Regigigas appears in a raid den, it's not a real raid den and doesn't use raid correlation. It's still a scripted static encounter.

Thanks, all fixed on latest commit: https://github.com/kwsch/PKHeX/commit/00bb8ec7de0a617b5d8b1dae8856fe16ccdfe212

I’ve been told the Pokémon you’ve uploaded is so illegal in the latest version of PKHeX, give that a check. Also, go back to what Kaphotics said as a thought experiment regarding the mon’s legality. Most hackers that doesn’t think things get their Pokémon caught on one of the points there. (You can still get caught even if you go through those points, but baby steps).