A fake pay stub takes a few minutes to make. Online generators will produce one for a few dollars, company logo and tax withholdings included, and a bank statement is not much harder to doctor in a PDF editor.
Starting October 1, 2026, handing either one to a Florida landlord can land you in prison for up to five years.
House Bill 1293 turns rental application fraud into a third-degree felony, and it passed the Florida Legislature without a single vote against it. It applies statewide, which means every building in Miami-Dade, from Brickell high-rises to Coconut Grove garden apartments. If you are hunting for an apartment this fall, or deciding who gets the keys to one, here is what changed.
The New Crime, in Plain English
HB 1293 adds a new section to the Florida Statutes, 817.537, called fraudulent entry of a residential dwelling unit. It cleared the House 110-0 and the Senate 34-0, and Governor DeSantis signed it on June 12, 2026, as Chapter 2026-143, Laws of Florida.
You commit the crime if you get into and take possession of a rental home or apartment by knowingly and willfully doing any of the following:
Making a materially false written statement about your identity on a rental application
Presenting forged, fictitious, or counterfeit documents to the landlord
Impersonating another person on a rental application to sign a lease or move in
It Is Not Just Bank Statements
The statute names four examples outright: a driver license, an identification card, a bank statement, or a paystub. But the phrase right before that list is the one to pay attention to: "including, but not limited to."
Those four are examples, not a boundary. The law reaches forged or counterfeit documents presented to a landlord in general, so a doctored bank statement is covered, and so is a pay stub from an employer that does not exist or an ID that belongs to someone else.
What It Can Cost You
A third-degree felony in Florida carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
Before this law, the closest existing statute for lying to obtain property was a first-degree misdemeanor. That is a big jump. And a felony record follows you into every future rental application, job background check, and professional license, which in practice can hurt as much as the sentence.
What It Does Not Cover
The law is narrower than some of the headlines suggest.
Intent is required. The statute applies only to knowing and willful conduct. An outdated pay stub sent by mistake, a typo in an address, or a salary that changed after you applied is not what this law is aimed at.
It is about getting in. The offense is tied to entering and taking possession of a unit through fraud. A renter who qualified honestly and later falls behind on rent, or ends up in an ordinary dispute with a landlord, is not committing this crime. Those situations still run through Florida's existing landlord and tenant law.
It is not retroactive. Florida's Constitution bars applying a new criminal penalty to anything that happened before October 1, 2026.
Landlords Just Got a Faster Exit
The second half of the bill amends section 83.56, the part of Florida law that governs ending a lease early.
Fraudulent entry is now noncurable noncompliance. A landlord who discovers a tenant got the unit with forged documents can terminate the lease with a seven-day notice to vacate, with no obligation to give the tenant a chance to fix it. That option exists whether or not criminal charges have been filed.
What has not changed: if the occupant refuses to leave after seven days, the landlord still has to go through the court eviction process. Changing the locks, removing belongings, or cutting off utilities is still illegal self-help in Florida, fraud or no fraud.
How Florida Got Here
Rental fraud has gotten easier to commit and harder to catch. Editing software and template sites can turn out a convincing document in minutes, and in markets like Miami, where many buildings ask for annual income around 40 times the monthly rent, the pressure to pad the numbers is real.
HB 1293 also closes a gap left by Florida's 2024 squatter law, which lets property owners ask the sheriff to remove people who occupy a home without permission. That law covered people who never had a lease. The new one covers people who got a lease under false pretenses, a situation that used to leave landlords with slow civil remedies and little criminal consequence.
Short on Income? Do This Instead
Expect more scrutiny either way. Landlords now have a clear legal reason to check documents at the source, so it is increasingly common to be asked to connect your bank account through a secure verification service, to have your employer contacted directly, or to show your ID in person.
If your income falls short of a building's requirements, there are legitimate ways to close the gap:
Use a guarantor or co-signer who meets the building's income requirement
Work with an institutional lease guarantor, a company that acts as your guarantor for a fee, which many Miami buildings accept
Offer a larger security deposit or prepaid rent, where the landlord and local rules allow it
Ask about alternative proof of income, such as an offer letter, tax returns, or proof of savings if you are self-employed or just relocated
Look at units that fit the budget, since the lease you can comfortably afford is also the one least likely to become a problem later
None of those require touching a document, and all of them are routine in the Miami market.
For Landlords: Make It Stick
A few habits make the new law work for you:
Verify at the source. Call employers using a number you look up yourself, not the one printed on the pay stub, and use bank-connected verification tools where you can.
Keep the originals. Save every document an applicant submits, along with how and when it arrived. If you ever serve the seven-day notice or report fraud to police, that record is your evidence.
Screen every applicant the same way. Consistency protects you from fair housing claims and makes it easier to show a document was actually false.
Talk to a Florida landlord and tenant attorney before serving a fraud-based termination notice, since the notice has to be right to hold up.
Fraud Runs Both Ways
Fake documents are only half of Miami's rental fraud problem. Renters get burned too, by listings for units that are not actually available, prices that were never real, or "landlords" who collect a deposit on an apartment they do not own.
That is the gap CitySeek was built to close. A cleaner rental market works better for everyone, and it starts with honest information on both sides of the application.
This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. For guidance on a specific situation, consult a licensed Florida attorney.