Topic: What methods are you using to determine fraudulent pay stubs and bank statements?

What methods are you using to determine fraudulent pay stubs and bank statements? Because I have an applicant right now who’s docs I personally know are false but they look very professional. Tax statements? Six months of bank statements will just give me more fake ones. Wish I could verify with the bank!

Ask for the bank statements. SNAPPT is a software that can identify edited paystubs.

Yes! We use SNAPPT for all applicants to determine if a paystub is real or has been “edited”. It’s great!

Do an employment verification. Cross reference addresses, phone numbers, on their paystubs. Also check YTD, taxes, withholdings to see if they line up. The fakes I have seen people miss those details and sometimes check numbers are not sequential.

Send a bank verification to the actual bank... have the applicant sign the verification giving permission to verify the info. Same with an employment verification YOU fax or email to the employer. Or go on the equifax/work# website and see if you can find their employment there.

Shannon Faith I didn’t know this was possible. Is there a form they use? Would love more info.

nevmind found it

Laura Renaldo sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. My sites are affordable housing so we verify all income and assets, we have a verification form for every kind of income possible lol. You have a better chance at getting legit info if it comes straight from the source, although I have seen people give me their employers fax number... only to find out the fax number given wasn't actually connected to the business. So be careful who you contact... it may just be the applicant themselves that's verifying the info!

Is there a reason you can’t do a third party verification? We do third party employment verifications on all applications.

Elizabeth Medina so do we.

Fraud is growing rapidly - tax statements, paystubs, bank statements and offer letters can easily be altered or purchased online. I recently did the demo for snappt but they only do pay stubs / bank statements the other items software cannot detect - glad to see other are using. Difficult for our industry the fraudsters are professional & growing! If you know provided is false deny the applicant. Only other option is Co hr verification not their supervisor who is listed on applic. My teams have done that many times sometimes verified sometimes not.

I don't use a software, if I suspect anything I ask for 12 months of "complete" bank statements and paystubs. If they are fake I usually never hear back! I have also started asking for tenant ledgers from their current management.

Jose Maciel what if you have a private owner who doesn’t provide receipts or ledger?

Andrea Juliet Razevich I always casual ask in conversation how do the pay the rent, I find that if they are lieing I'll trip them up. For example I had a family apply a couple months ago the wifes story was the owner was selling in a conversation I asked how she pays she said Zelle, I said oh perfect and you do a search for the rental amount on you banks website and print the history for me... Turns out they were renting a room from the dad in a hoise he was renting and although they pay the dad with zelle it was no where close to the amount she said they were paying in rent. I didn't end up renting to them not because of their situation but because they lied... My ad's specifically say we'll work with "almost"anyone so long as they are honest and can afford the rent.I've also been know to hunt down the "Real" home owner and question them, I've had countless people put down their friends name and number. When I start asking about the house and how long they've owned the house (Casual noisy owner chit-chat that 99.9% of private owners would know about the house if it was theirs). I had on ladies friend correct me when I pronounced the applications name wrong, lol. No, private owner would do that!

Jose Maciel gotcha. Here in Portland,Oregon, you can’t really go digging like that. It’s very tenant friendly here. You can’t deny for no rental history or subleasing.

Andrea Juliet Razevich it's very pro-tenant here in California too, but a lot of information is public record.

Employment verification for sure. If that’s false it’ll prove the bank statements are too

We use Snappt. It works great. We also use Checkpoint for ID checks.

Can you contact employer?? Not use number on paystub, but Google the company?? Unless he's saying self employed.

Rachel Lynette Payton the company he works for is also a fraud I think he started a google listing for it but no website etc. just a supervisor.

Laura Renaldo wow, dedicated. If only he'd put that much effort into an actual job....

see If the name of the company is registered as a business in your state.

Leah Shiver Dissolved Involuntary Dissolution on Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Laura Renaldo you can ask for bank statements

I have one of these.

Rachel Lynette Payton call the police and report this!

Vero.

Contact Snappt

Would love to use Snappt but this happened so rarely, I can’t really justify the cost

Laura Renaldo it only has to be bad fraud once to justify the cost ten-fold.

If it’s a PDF, you can go to the advanced settings to see where the PDF originated and when it was made.
 

Oh this is a great idea will totally use in the future! This guy though probably covered his tracks he has 11 felony fraud convictions. We cannot deny based on that though without first going through normal qualification process in Illinois.

Laura Renaldo you guys don’t deny based on criminal record

Lee Ann Not exactly, we can't look at criminal until they have been approved on all other aspects then we can look at criminal. New law last year.

Laura Renaldo awwwww man that sucks.

Laura Renaldo same in Oregon now.

Do an employment verification with the company

I use verifications which are sent to the bank or employer. Then they return information to me. I will ask for average daily for the last six months if they can get me a print out from the bank I will reimburse them when they bring the receipt. For employment once you’ve submitted the notice you can call them to request the information. I look at taxes vs debt vs bank statements to see if numbers make sense. But I just get nerdy and I have to verify income but rarely will use income taxes. What is the point of the fake information? Is it because maybe they don’t make enough or have other sources of income?

call HR

If you think the company is fraudulent, look up their business license and their state incorporation. It will also tell you the person who filed for it and when. It should have an office address listed as well. Good luck!

Getting them from the bank

We use Snappt

Go on the Secretary of State and search for the business listing and call the number listed there. If there’s not a business listing for the company it’s not a legally operating company

Snappt

We just did an employment reference on one who showed 80 hours per week on one set of stubs with a second job working 20-30 hours per week and needless to say the employment reference for the 80 hour weeks came back they had no employee by that name

If you use yardi, they have income verification product that sync with your online application. Launched it just recently due to overwhelming amount of fraud and fake paystubs and bank statements. There are literally sites providing templates for both so people can defraud someone

Snappt

Snappt

If their stubs are ADP, paylocity, paychex,UKG, or Ripple. These all have apps, you can ask the applicant to login and verify the information.

I did bank statements for past 3 months and/or current tax return

We used SNAPPT for the software , however prior we would use a verification and bank statements

We do an employment verification directly with the company if we are able to reach them.

I just wanted to update everyone. So his credit came back at 710. No bankruptcies came back and no criminal. We are guessing he either has a fraudulent soc # or has started another alias and been so effective using it that his past info is not following him. His new name is "Tony Thomas" but his legal name is "Roscoe Alvin Thomas JR" (not supplied to me my PI found his real name) I also did a call to his "company" which was a google voice number. The female who answered could not answer basic questions about accounting services. I opened a ticket with our criminal vendor to investigate further on why his criminal has not come up accurately and denied based on credit score which is the only factor we can use in Chicago. Fascinating situation!

Snappt

Snappt! We have caught 28 this year across 2000 units with average rent of $2K. Minimum 4 months to evict. Worth every penny!

All of these suggestions are great but remember you have to do the same for all applications. If not you’re putting yourself at risk for discrimination claim.

Second update I had Bank of America research the account number on the paystub and it does not exist. Was very easy to do.

Call their employer to prove their pay statements. We have. It's funny when you don't hear back from the applicant when you inform them you have to call their employer to prove their income.

If you its fraud its an illegal rent , correct?

Jesus, you have way too much time on your hands lol. It’s never that serious.

My exact thought while reading this "it's so fascinating"

it's fascinating that people are trying any means necessary to avoid homelessness?? Find something to do

Well if renters didn’t require such an outrageous thing such as three times rent as a person’s income, it would’ve be such a big problem.

Does snappt can access to the company payroll system ?

Bit late but I came across this thread when on a Landlord/Property Management subreddit. A few things:

1. Snappt is an excellent option but if you’d like to save money there are many ways to vet potential tenants that just require a bit of effort. And it costs virtually nothing!

2. The individuals that find it “fascinating” that there are human beings in such dire circumstances that they’d risk jail time to keep a roof over the heads of their families… might I suggest a different occupation.

3. Something I’ve done with my tenants in the last couple years is offer them weekly and bi-weekly rental agreements- something they’d typically only find with motels/vacation rentals. Many tenants live paycheck to paycheck and giving them the option to pay in small increments has seen our rate of eviction decline significantly.

My mother always said, before you judge harshly close your eyes and imagine you’re the one being judged. There may come a time when many of us may lose the luxuries we have been afforded. We would pray for compassion and pray for understanding. So going forward, try to see through the eyes of those potential tenants. You could change their lives for the better.

God Bless!