Florida's Fraudulent-Entry Law: When Someone Moves In on a Forged Lease

You list your Orlando house for rent, fly back to Ohio, and three weeks later a neighbor texts you a photo: someone's car in the driveway, patio furniture you don't recognize, lights on at night. You never signed a lease. But when you call, the person inside says they did — and they wave a lease around to prove it.

That's the nightmare behind a new Florida law. Starting October 1, 2026, moving into a rental on forged documents isn't just a civil headache you untangle in court for months. It's a third-degree felony. And for the first time, the statute hands you, the owner, a faster way out.

Here's the short version: if someone took possession of your property using fake paperwork — a forged ID, a doctored paystub, a lease they generated themselves — Florida's fraudulent-entry law lets you terminate the agreement without giving them a chance to "cure," then move to get them out. The catch, and it's a big one, is that you still can't change the locks yourself. More on that below.

What is Florida's fraudulent-entry law (HB 1293)?

HB 1293 makes it a third-degree felony to enter and take possession of a Florida home using false identity documents or a forged lease, and it gives landlords a no-cure termination path. It passed both chambers unanimously, was signed into law on June 12, 2026 (Chapter 2026-143), and takes effect October 1, 2026. A third-degree felony carries up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The law does two separate things, and it helps to keep them straight. First, it creates a new crime aimed at the person committing the fraud. Second, it gives you a contract remedy — a faster way to end the agreement and start removal. The criminal side is handled by police and prosecutors. The removal side is on you. You can read the bill itself on the Florida Senate's HB 1293 page.

This matters because the old playbook was slow. Before this law, a forged-document move-in usually got treated like any other tenancy dispute: notice, eviction filing, a court date, weeks of lost rent. The fraud was obvious, but your tools were the same slow ones you'd use for a tenant who simply stopped paying. HB 1293 finally separates the two.

What counts as fraudulent entry — and what doesn't?

Fraudulent entry means taking possession of a dwelling by lying about who you are or by presenting forged documents to the landlord — a fake driver license, a counterfeit ID, a doctored bank statement or paystub, or a false lease or deed. The key word is fraud at the door. A real tenant who signed honestly and later fell behind on rent is not committing fraudulent entry.

That line is the whole ballgame, so let's be specific. The law reaches someone who:

• Used a forged or fictitious ID, driver license, or Social Security number to pass screening
• Submitted a counterfeit paystub or bank statement to look qualified
• Made a materially false written statement about their identity on the application
• Presented a fake lease or deed they made themselves, claiming a right to be there

It does not reach the tenant you screened, approved, and leased to in good faith who then lost a job and got behind. That person has real tenancy rights, and trying to use this law against them is how owners land in legal trouble. The fraud has to be baked into how they got in — not something that went wrong afterward.

This is also where your records earn their keep. Call it "The Paper-Trail Defense": the felony charge hinges on proving the documents were fake, which means the application, the ID copy, and the income docs you collected are the evidence. If you toss that paperwork the day someone moves in, you've thrown away the proof.

How is this different from the squatter law (HB 621)?

They're two different tools for two different problems. Florida's 2024 squatter law (HB 621, now Statute 82.036) gives you an expedited sheriff removal — a notice to immediately vacate — but only when the occupant was never your tenant and has no lease, deed, or court order. HB 1293 covers the case where fraud created an apparent tenancy, and it raises the crime to a felony.

Think of it as a fork in the road. If a stranger broke in and is squatting with no paperwork at all, the squatter removal process under HB 621 is your fast lane — the sheriff can act quickly because there's clearly no tenancy to sort out. But scammers got smarter. The newer move is to manufacture a tenancy: generate a lease, fake an application, and create just enough paper to argue they're a "tenant" entitled to the eviction process. That gray area is exactly what HB 1293 targets. It says the fraud itself is a felony, and it gives you a clean reason to terminate.

Under HB 621, presenting a false lease was a first-degree misdemeanor. HB 1293 escalates the identity- and document-fraud version of that scheme to a third-degree felony — a real deterrent, and a charge police can take seriously.

Someone moved in on forged documents — what can you actually do?

You can terminate the agreement with a seven-day notice to vacate, and you don't have to give them a chance to cure. You can also file a police report, since the fraud is now a crime. What you cannot do is remove them yourself. If they don't leave by the deadline, you still file an eviction in county court and let the sheriff carry it out.

Here's the order of operations:

1. Document everything first. Pull the application, the forged ID or paystub, and any fake lease. This is both your termination basis and the evidence for a criminal complaint.
2. Serve the seven-day notice. HB 1293 treats fraudulent entry as noncompliance with no opportunity to cure, similar in spirit to the no-cure noncompliance path landlords already know from Florida Statute 83.56. The clock is seven days from delivery.
3. File a police report. The criminal case runs on its own track. A detective working a felony gets attention a civil dispute never does.
4. If they don't leave, file the eviction. County court, summary procedure, sheriff removal. It's faster than a normal fight because the fraud undercuts any claim to stay — but it's still a court process.

Now the part owners get wrong, and it's expensive. Do not change the locks, shut off the power, or haul their things to the curb. Florida bans self-help eviction under Statute 83.67, and the penalty is three months' rent or your actual damages, whichever is greater, plus the other side's attorney's fees. So you could end up writing the very person who defrauded you a check for three months' rent — all because you got impatient. That's the trap. The new law makes removal faster; it does not make it a do-it-yourself job.

How do you stop it before it starts?

The cheapest fraud case is the one that never moves in. Verify income at the source instead of trusting uploaded documents — most fraud rides in on manual paystub and bank-statement uploads, which AI now fakes convincingly. Call the employer directly, ask for the applicant's last three months of bank statements, and match the deposits to the paystub.

A few moves catch most of it:

• Verify the employer yourself. Look up the company's main number — don't call the one printed on the application — and confirm the person works there.
• Match the money. Real paystubs and real bank statements line up: same employer name, same deposit dates, same amounts. When they don't, you're probably looking at a fake.
• Use payroll-linked verification. Tools that connect to payroll systems like ADP or Paychex pull verified income directly, which is far harder to fake than a PDF.
• Treat document uploads as a backup, not the proof. If everything hinges on files the applicant emailed you, slow down.

This is the same discipline that protects you from every other version of the problem. If you want the deeper screening playbook, our guide to spotting rental application fraud walks through the document red flags, and the screening red flags every Florida landlord should know covers the application-level warning signs. The federal FTC rental scam guidance is a good plain-English refresher to share with tenants, too.

Common mistakes that turn a fraud case into your problem

Locking them out. It feels justified. It isn't. A self-help removal can cost you three months' rent under Statute 83.67, and it hands the scammer the upper hand. Use the notice, then the court.

Treating a real tenant like a fraud. If someone you honestly approved falls behind, that's a payment problem, not fraudulent entry. Use the normal three-day notice and eviction track. Misapplying the new law gets your case tossed and exposes you to a wrongful-eviction claim.

Throwing away the paperwork. The application and ID copy you collected are the proof the documents were fake. Keep every file for the life of the tenancy and then some — without it, there's no felony case and a weaker termination.

Get ahead of it, especially from out of state

If you own a Florida rental from another state, this is the risk you can't see coming. You're not driving past the house, you can't read the applicant in person, and a vacant listing is exactly what the scammers scan for. The fix is the same whether you live in Winter Park or White Plains: verify income at the source, keep your records, and have a plan for the first 48 hours if something looks wrong.

That's the part a local manager handles before it ever reaches a seven-day notice — screening at the door, eyes on the property, and the right paperwork on file if a fraud case ever needs to be made. If you'd like a clear read on what your Orlando or Tampa rental should earn and how to protect it, start with a free rental analysis. It's the simplest way to put a local set of eyes on your investment before a stranger does.