As AI steadily evolves I have witnessed an increase in fake documents being used for tenancy applications. Let me explain some of the documents I have debunked and how I did it.
Fake drivers licenses – These documents are done with great precision and quite professional looking. One client has asked that I physically confirm the driver’s license. Although I completely understood what he was asking of me, it would not make a difference. The drivers licenses are done very well and look just like yours or mine. They are not always just edited through AI but are being printed as a physical card.
How did I debunk it? I used a third party service that could not find any confirmation of that license being attached to the address given.
Fake employment – These documents were quite jarring. The paystub and employment letter looked very legit using the logo and proper tax deductions. A supervisor contact was given. When called he was quite professional and knew very much about the information that had been given.
So how did I debunk it? Being that these people were “employees” of a well known car company, I checked their LinkedIn. There were several accounts with different car companies. Being that I had a contact at the place of employment; I called a supervisor that I knew and asked if they could verify either the applicant or their supervisor. This very prestigious car company stated that they have never heard of either the applicant or the supervisor and would be sending the information to their fraud department. You must do your research because I believe people within companies are assisting with this.
Fake credit reports – For the case that i have been speaking about they also had fake credit reports. They gave me 3 reports from three different sources. One was even a screen shot taken in real time. All reports matched and showed low balances and good scores.
How did I debunk it? First thing i noticed was that accounts with high credit all had balances of zero although they had been used as early as a few weeks prior. Second, I used a third party service to pull a report myself. It came by as “no hit”. This means that they could not confirm this person existed at that address,with that drivers licence number or SIN number.
How deep does this go? This is the scary part of this. So many moving parts, no hesitation to use the names of large companies and appears to have many people involved. At this point just about anyone could alter documents so I am not finger pointing at one particular population; I was using the most recent as the examples for this article.
I always encourage landlords to hire a professional with lots of experience when filling a vacancy. The cost will reward you a thousand times over.