How to Spot a Fake Pay Stub: A Guide for Ontario Landlords
Free online tools can generate a convincing fake pay stub in under five minutes. Knowing what to look for can save you a $15,000 eviction nightmare.
The Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board takes 12 to 18 months to process a non-payment eviction. By the time you have a hearing date, you may have lost $20,000 or more in unpaid rent. And it often starts the same way: a tenant who submitted documents you had no way to verify.
According to a 2023 TransUnion Canada survey, nearly half of Toronto landlords reported receiving at least one application with suspected falsified documents. The problem is not rare. It is routine. And the documents are getting better. Today's fakes are not blurry screenshots. They are pixel-perfect PDFs with real company names and plausible-looking numbers.
This guide covers the eight most reliable signals that a pay stub may be fraudulent, what to do when you find one, and why document review alone is not enough protection anymore.
Before you start
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, you cannot ask a tenant for income verification as a condition of being considered. You can request it as part of your standard application process, but the process must be consistent: ask every applicant for the same documentation. Do not request extra documentation from applicants based on their background.
8 Red Flags on a Pay Stub
No single flag is definitive. Look for patterns. Two or three of these together should prompt you to verify employment through other means.
Round numbers everywhere
Real paycheques are almost never round numbers. Payroll software applies income tax, CPP, EI, and benefit deductions that produce irregular amounts like $2,847.32 or $1,619.55. If a pay stub shows exactly $3,000.00 gross and $2,400.00 net every single period, that precision is a red flag. Fabricators often use round numbers because they are easy to type and sound plausible.
Deductions that do not add up
Ontario payroll deductions follow specific federal and provincial formulas. CPP contributions, EI premiums, and federal/Ontario income tax are all calculated as a percentage of insurable earnings, with annual maximums. Ask yourself: does the CPP deduction match the income level? Are the tax witholdings roughly in line with the income bracket? If the numbers feel off but you cannot identify why, use the CRA Payroll Deductions Online Calculator to cross-check. Fakes often have deductions that are either too low (making net pay look better) or copied from a template without adjustment.
Employer information that does not check out
Search the employer name on the Ontario Business Registry (ontario.ca) and Google. Does the company exist? Does it have a real address, phone number, and website? Call the number on the pay stub and ask to speak to HR or payroll about a reference. A legitimate employer will confirm employment, though they usually only disclose title and employment dates. If the company cannot be found, the address does not exist, or the phone goes straight to voicemail with no company greeting, treat that as a serious warning.
Font inconsistencies and spacing errors
Professional payroll software like ADP, Ceridian, or QuickBooks generates pay stubs using fixed templates. When you zoom into a suspicious pay stub (in Preview on Mac or any PDF reader), look for: mixed fonts within the same document, text that is slightly misaligned, numbers that appear bolder or lighter than surrounding text, or spacing between digits that looks uneven. These are signs that someone edited an existing PDF. You can also check the PDF metadata: right-click the file and view properties to see what software created it.
YTD figures that do not match the pay period
Year-to-date (YTD) figures are cumulative. If a pay stub from October shows a YTD gross of $28,000 and a claimed bi-weekly pay of $2,500, something does not add up. By October there would have been roughly 20 pay periods, which should produce $50,000 YTD. Ask for multiple consecutive pay stubs and verify that the YTD figures increase logically from one to the next. Inconsistencies in YTD figures are one of the easiest ways to catch a fabricated pay stub, because the person faking it often forgets to adjust the cumulative numbers.
Pay period dates that fall on weekends or holidays
Most Ontario employers process payroll on Fridays, or the last business day before a weekend or holiday. A pay stub showing a payment date of Saturday December 25th should raise a question. Payroll software automatically adjusts deposit dates to avoid non-business days. Humans filling in fake dates often do not bother to check.
T4 figures that conflict with the pay stubs
If an applicant provides both pay stubs and a T4 slip, cross-check them. The T4 box 14 (employment income) should match the annual YTD gross from the last pay stub of the prior year, within a few hundred dollars of benefits or adjustments. A T4 showing $42,000 employment income alongside pay stubs that suggest $65,000 annual earnings is a hard conflict. Note: some people have multiple employers, so always ask for a complete picture before drawing conclusions.
The applicant cannot answer basic questions about their employer
Ask conversational questions: What is your manager's name? What are your usual hours? Is your role salaried or hourly? Where is the office located? A legitimate employee can answer these easily. Someone who falsified documents often has rehearsed answers about income but gets vague or inconsistent on operational details. This is not a foolproof method, but it is a useful data point alongside the document review.
What to Do if You Suspect a Fake Pay Stub
Do not accuse the applicant directly. You may be wrong, and a wrongful accusation can expose you to a human rights complaint. Instead, use neutral language: "We verify income for all applicants as part of our standard process."
Call the employer directly
Find the company's main phone number independently. Do not use the number on the pay stub, which can be fabricated. Call the main reception or HR department and ask to confirm that the person is a current employee in the listed role. Most employers will confirm employment status and title without disclosing salary.
Request a Notice of Assessment
A CRA Notice of Assessment (NOA) is harder to fake than a pay stub because it is generated by the Canada Revenue Agency from filed tax returns. Ask for the most recent NOA. The total income figure should be roughly consistent with what the pay stubs show. Note that an NOA shows last year's income, not current. It is a historical check, not a real-time one.
Ask for bank statements
Six months of bank statements showing regular payroll deposits are more reliable than pay stubs alone, because they involve a separate institution. Look for deposits that match the claimed net pay, arriving on the claimed pay dates. One caveat: bank statements can also be edited, and some do not clearly identify the source of deposits.
Decline without citing the documents
If you decide not to proceed, you are not required to explain why you chose another applicant. Under the RTA and OHRC, you can choose among qualified applicants. You just cannot reject based on a prohibited ground. "We have selected another applicant" is a complete answer.
Why Document Review Is No Longer Enough
The challenge is not that landlords are not careful enough. It is that the tools available to bad actors have improved faster than landlords' ability to detect them. Three years ago, a fake pay stub might have obvious tells. Today, free tools generate PDFs with embedded fonts, authentic-looking company letterhead, and calculated deductions.
The only way to truly verify income is to go upstream of the document: connect directly to the data source. That means verifying through the bank that issued the account, or through the payroll system that processes the employment. A bank transaction is not a document that can be edited. Neither is a payroll record from ADP or Workday.
This is why bank-connected income verification exists. Instead of asking a tenant to provide a document (which they control), you ask them to authorize a read-only connection to their bank account. You get the raw transaction data. No PDF. No intermediary. No opportunity to fabricate.
Bank-connected verification
Stop reviewing documents. Verify the source.
ScreenTenants sends your tenant a secure link. They connect their bank account directly. You get a verified income report with 6 months of transaction history. No PDFs, no editing, no faking it. $22 per check. No subscription.
Get early accessThe Ontario Landlord Context
Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act strongly protects tenants in possession. Once a tenant has moved in, removing them for non-payment requires a formal LTB process that typically takes 12 to 18 months from the first missed payment to an enforcement order, assuming no appeals.
During that period, you are legally required to maintain the unit and collect whatever rent the tenant chooses to pay, if anything. The cost of a bad placement is not just lost rent: it is legal fees, property manager time, potential damage, and the carrying costs of the unit during the process.
This is why screening matters more in Ontario than in most other provinces. The asymmetry between getting in (easy, tenant-friendly) and getting out (slow, expensive) means that the application stage is the only meaningful opportunity you have to assess risk.
What you can and cannot ask for
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, you can ask for income verification, but you cannot require a specific income-to-rent ratio, ask about source of income (employment, ODSP, CERB, support payments), or use income type as a selection criterion. You can confirm that a person has the income to support the rent, and that the income is real and ongoing.
A compliant screening process asks for the same information from every applicant, evaluates income verification results without reference to source, and makes decisions based on ability to pay, not on how the money is earned.
Quick Checklist: Pay Stub Review
Are all dollar figures non-round numbers with cents?
Do CPP, EI, and tax deductions appear and look proportional to the income level?
Does the employer exist on the Ontario Business Registry and Google?
Can you reach the employer at a number found independently (not from the stub)?
Are the fonts and spacing consistent throughout the document?
Do YTD figures accumulate correctly across multiple pay stubs?
Do pay dates fall on weekdays (not weekends or statutory holidays)?
If a T4 was provided, does the box 14 figure match annualized pay stub income?
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Related Guides
Guide
Ontario Tenant Screening: A Complete Landlord Guide
The end-to-end process for screening tenants legally and effectively in Ontario, from listing to lease signing.
Early Access
Verify income at the source, not from a PDF.
ScreenTenants connects directly to your tenant's bank. You get 6 months of verified income history. No pay stub review required. $22/check, no subscription.
Join the waitlistStatutory references
Sections of Ontario law this guide is grounded in. Read the source text before acting on a specific situation.
About this guide
Written and maintained by the ScreenTenants.ca editorial team and reviewed against Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and the Landlord and Tenant Board's published rules. Last reviewed June 2026.
This is general information for Ontario landlords, not legal advice. Rules change and individual situations vary — confirm details with the LTB or a licensed paralegal or lawyer before acting on a specific matter.
See our editorial policy for sources, review cadence, and corrections.