Spot the fake pay stub before you hand over the keys.
Fabricated pay stubs and invented employers take minutes to make — and can cost you months of unpaid rent. Forward the exact file your applicant sent, and get a plain-English report on what the document and the company really check out to, within 24 hours.
ELEVATED RISK — 3 indicators found
- PDF metadata analysisFLAG
- Pay math validationFLAG
- State business registryFLAG
- Phone independenceREVIEW
- Duplicate submission scanPASS
Illustrative example — not a real report.
A fake pay stub takes minutes to make.
Undoing it takes months.
Once the lease is signed and the keys change hands, the law protects the tenant — not you. You can’t just ask them to leave. You file, you wait on the court, you keep paying the mortgage — and the rent stops the whole time. By the time it’s over, one bad approval has cost you a year of these reports many times over.
3–6+ months
stuck in the eviction process
Longer where courts are backed up — and no rent comes in the entire time.
$5,000–$10,000+
to see it through
Lost rent, court and legal fees, then repairs and re-listing after they’re gone.
$19.99
to check the paperwork first
Before you ever hand over the keys. The cheapest step in the entire process.
You already ask for pay stubs. That’s exactly what fraud counts on.
The checks most landlords trust are the easiest ones to beat:
“The pay stub looks real.”
Dozens of websites generate a polished, itemized stub in under a minute for a few dollars. Looking real is the entire product.
“I called the employer.”
You called the number printed on the stub — the one the applicant chose. It can ring straight to a friend who’s ready to vouch.
“They have a real website.”
A domain and a tidy website cost about $12 and an afternoon. A nice homepage says nothing about payroll.
ProofSweep checks what a fabricator can’t easily fake: the file’s hidden history, whether the numbers actually reconcile, and independent business records and contact details you didn’t get from the applicant.
Where a fake gives itself away
Eight signs a fabricated stub or invented employer leaves behind — checked automatically on every submission.
PDF metadata forensics
Reveals when a “stub” was really built or edited in Photoshop or Word — not produced by a payroll system.
Pay-math validation
Re-runs every number. Fabricated stubs trip on gross, deductions, net, or year-to-date that don’t add up.
Duplicate-document scan
Catches a recycled file — the same “stub” submitted before under a different name.
Business existence
Confirms the employer is a real, registered company — not a name invented for the application.
Domain age & footprint
A week-old website with no online trace is a classic invented-employer sign. We check the age and the trail.
Phone & address
Checks the contact details lead to a genuine business — not a virtual mailbox or a dead line.
How it works
- 1
Fill in a short form: who the documents belong to, the claimed employer, and the claimed income.
- 2
Upload 1–3 pay stub files (the originals your applicant sent).
- 3
Receive a professional report within 24 hours.
A machine spots the signals. A person signs off on the report.
The automated checks surface what’s worth a closer look — then a trained reviewer reads every finding, weighs the innocent explanations, and writes it up in plain English before it reaches you. No black-box score. No auto-accusations.
- ✓Every finding shown with the evidence behind it
- ✓Innocent explanations noted — PEOs, staffing agencies, small-employer templates
- ✓A clear verdict and next steps you can actually act on
What’s in your report
- —A plain-English risk verdict
- —All 8 checks, each with what we found and why it matters
- —The exact pay figures we re-verified on the stub
- —Recommended next steps before you sign
- —A shareable PDF report, within 24 hours
From the founder
“I built ProofSweep because the deck is stacked against small landlords. A convincing fake takes minutes to make — catching it takes skills most owners were never meant to have: reading a file’s hidden metadata, checking state business registries, spotting math that doesn’t quite add up. And one bad approval can wipe out a year of income. So I built the tool I wanted to exist: that entire check, done properly and explained in plain English, for less than the cost of lunch — before you ever hand over the keys.”
The cheapest decision you’ll make on this applicant.
$19.99
One flat fee to know what the paperwork is really telling you — before you sign. No subscription, no account, no catch.
Check a document — $19.99 per reportOur promise: a clear, useful report — or your $19.99 back. Just email support@proofsweep.com.
Questions
- What if the applicant is completely honest?
- Then a clean report is exactly what you want: documented confidence to move forward, and proof you ran the same check you run on everyone. ProofSweep never labels a person or says anyone committed fraud — it reports what the documents and business records show, so a legitimate applicant’s paperwork simply checks out.
- Can $19.99 really tell me anything useful?
- It runs eight forensic, math, and business checks that would take you an afternoon to do by hand — if you knew where to look — and a trained reviewer reads the results before you get them. It’s inexpensive because it’s automated and focused on one job: the paperwork.
- Is this a background check or a credit report?
- No. ProofSweep checks documents and companies — never people. It reports observable characteristics of the files you upload and publicly available business records. We are not a Consumer Reporting Agency and this is not a consumer report under the FCRA.
- What do I need to order a report?
- The pay stub file(s) your applicant sent, plus the employer name and income from their application. About three minutes.
- How fast is it?
- Within 24 hours. Most arrive the same evening.
- What if I only have a screenshot or a scan?
- You can still order — we run the checks that don’t need the original file. But the strongest check (file metadata) needs the original electronic document, so forward the attachment as your applicant sent it whenever you can.