How to Spot a Fake Pay Stub: A Landlord’s Checklist

Fake pay stubs are one of the most common tools in rental application fraud — cheap to make, easy to find, and aimed squarely at the income proof you rely on. And the cost of approving one can run into thousands. Here’s a practical checklist for spotting one, working from the easiest signs to the ones that actually matter most.

1. Look at how the document was made

Ask for the original file the way payroll produced it — not a photo, screenshot, or re-scan. A genuine stub is a clean export from a payroll system. Signs of trouble include a file created or edited in Photoshop, Canva, or Word rather than a payroll platform, and a set of stubs that weren’t all produced the same way.

2. Re-run every number

Fabricated stubs trip on arithmetic more often than you’d think:

• Gross pay should equal hours times rate.
• Net pay should equal gross minus the listed deductions.
• Year-to-date should be roughly the per-period pay times the number of pay periods so far.
• Social Security and Medicare should sit in a fixed 4.28-to-1 ratio (6.2% vs 1.45%). A forger guessing at tax lines usually gets this wrong.

3. Sanity-check the taxes against the state

Nine states have no state income tax at all — including Texas, Florida, and Washington. If a stub from a Florida employer shows state income tax withheld, something’s off.

4. Verify the employer actually exists — this is the big one

This is where most landlords stop too early, and it’s the check that catches the fakes that look perfect. A legitimate employer should be findable in the real world:

• Registered as a business with the state.
• A real commercial address — check it on a map and street view, not just that it exists.
• A phone number that independently routes to the company — never call the number printed on the stub.
• Some online footprint — website, listings, reviews.

If the company on the stub isn’t in any registry, has no commercial address, and leaves no trace online, the polished document doesn’t matter. Read more on why a perfect-looking stub can still be fake.

5. Keep it consistent and fair

Whatever verification steps you use, apply the same ones to every applicant and document your process. Consistency isn’t just good practice — it supports fair-housing compliance. ProofSweep reports describe documents and business records only; the screening decision is always yours.

Want the whole checklist run for you? Upload a pay stub to ProofSweep and get a professional report — the document forensics, the math, and the real-world employer checks — within 24 hours.