Skyrocketing apartment costs are pushing would-be renters to resort to document forgery and identity theft, turning multifamily leasing into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse. The latest State of Multifamily Fraud Report from Snappt highlights a surge in sophisticated scams, with fraudsters leveraging AI-driven tools to churn out fake documents that slip past property managers undetected.

Fraudsters use a range of schemes to deceive property managers. Some applicants engage in first-party fraud, directly altering pay stubs and bank statements to inflate their income, while others impersonate a third party by using stolen identities or forged documents. A newer and more sophisticated threat is synthetic fraud, where fraudsters create entirely fictitious identities with fake supporting documents generated by AI tools like FraudGPT.

FraudGPT, in particular, has emerged as a powerful enabler of leasing fraud. The AI tool can produce high-quality fake pay stubs, synthetic identities, and other supporting documents at scale. Fraudsters can also tap into online templates that replicate authentic payroll provider formats, allowing them to fill in false information and present it as legitimate. These tactics, combined with the availability of done-for-you document services—where third parties create falsified financial documents on behalf of applicants—are giving rise to a more complex fraud landscape.