Florida Fraudulent Entry Law 2026: Felony and Eviction Ground

Chapter 2026-143, enacted as CS/HB 1293, does two connected but separate things. It creates a brand-new criminal offense at Florida Statutes section 817.537, and it amends the state's residential landlord-tenant termination statute, section 83.56, to fold that same conduct into civil eviction law as a specific, non-curable ground.

[Cite: Ch. 2026-143, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1293)]

The criminal statute defines the offense narrowly, around three specific kinds of conduct, not around a general suspicion of dishonesty. A person commits fraudulent entry by knowingly and willfully making materially false statements about their identity on a rental application, by presenting forged or counterfeit documents such as a driver's license, another form of identification, bank statements, or pay stubs, or by impersonating another person on a rental application.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. § 817.537]

That specificity matters for how a landlord assesses a situation. An applicant who rounds up their income slightly or omits a prior eviction isn't automatically committing fraudulent entry under this statute; the conduct has to involve actual identity misrepresentation, forged or counterfeit supporting documents, or impersonation, not just an inaccurate or incomplete application.

Fraudulent entry of a residential dwelling unit is classified as a third-degree felony, punishable under Florida's general felony sentencing statutes.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. § 817.537]

For a property manager, the felony classification is significant mainly because it signals how seriously the legislature treats this conduct, and it gives law enforcement a specific charge to pursue when a landlord reports the situation. But as described below, a landlord's ability to terminate the tenancy civilly doesn't actually depend on a criminal case moving forward at all.

Under Florida's standard landlord-tenant framework, most lease violations give a tenant a chance to fix the problem within a notice period before termination proceeds. This law specifically carves fraudulent entry out of that structure. The amended section 83.56 lists fraudulent entry as noncompliance "of a nature that the tenant should not be given an opportunity to cure it."

[Cite: Fla. Stat. § 83.56, as amended by Ch. 2026-143]

That's a deliberate legislative choice. There's no version of "curing" a forged identification or a fabricated pay stub that restores the tenancy to a legitimate footing; the entry into the lease itself was obtained through fraud, so the law treats it as a defect the tenant can't remedy after the fact.

Once a landlord discovers fraudulent entry and serves notice, the tenant has 7 days from the date the notice is delivered to vacate the premises.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. § 83.56, as amended by Ch. 2026-143]

Seven days sounds similar to Florida's existing 7-day noncompliance notice for curable violations, but the two work differently in practice. The standard curable notice gives a tenant 7 days to fix the problem and avoid termination altogether. This notice gives the tenant 7 days to leave, full stop, with no cure option built in. A landlord and tenant reading "7 days" without checking which track applies could easily misjudge what the notice actually requires.

This is the detail most likely to get missed by a landlord unfamiliar with how the two halves of this law interact. A landlord doesn't have to wait for an arrest, a criminal filing, or a conviction before terminating the tenancy on fraudulent entry grounds. The statute specifically allows termination once the violation is discovered, regardless of whether criminal proceedings have commenced.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. § 83.56, as amended by Ch. 2026-143]

That decoupling matters operationally. A landlord who discovers a tenant used a forged pay stub during screening, for instance, doesn't need to file a police report or wait for prosecutors to act before serving the 7-day non-curable notice; the civil termination track and the criminal referral are two separate, independently pursued paths.

Because there's no cure period and the felony classification carries real weight, a landlord invoking this provision needs to be confident the conduct genuinely meets the statutory definition, not just suspect it. That means having the forged document, the impersonation evidence, or the materially false identity statement itself, not a general impression that something about the application seemed off. Using this non-curable, felony-adjacent ground for a situation that's actually an ordinary application inaccuracy risks the termination notice itself being challenged as improper.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. §§ 83.56, 817.537]

Chapter 2026-143 was approved and takes effect October 1, 2026, not on enactment. Until that date, Florida's existing landlord-tenant termination framework, including the standard curable-notice process for noncompliance, governs any fraudulent-entry-adjacent situation a landlord encounters. A landlord discovering forged application documents before October 1, 2026 doesn't yet have access to this specific non-curable, 7-day track, even though the underlying conduct is the same kind this new law targets.

[Cite: Ch. 2026-143, Laws of Florida]

Take a landlord who discovers, three months into a tenancy, that the pay stubs submitted during screening were fabricated using a template found online, and that the name on the application doesn't match the applicant's actual government identification. Under the pre-October 2026 framework, a landlord in this position would typically have needed to fit the situation into an existing noncompliance category and, in most cases, offer some form of notice-and-cure process before terminating, even though curing a fabricated identity isn't really possible in any practical sense.

Once this law takes effect, that same discovery triggers a different, more direct path: the landlord serves a 7-day non-curable notice under the amended section 83.56, and the tenant's obligation is to vacate within that window, not to submit corrected paperwork or otherwise attempt to fix the underlying misrepresentation. Separately, and on its own timeline, the landlord can also report the conduct to law enforcement for possible prosecution under the new felony statute, but that criminal process runs independently and doesn't have to conclude, or even begin, before the civil termination proceeds.

[Cite: Fla. Stat. §§ 83.56, 817.537]

The practical starting point is building a clear internal process for verifying application documents more rigorously going into this effective date, since a documented, defensible finding of forgery or impersonation is what actually supports using the non-curable track once it's available. Screening staff should know the specific categories that qualify, false identity statements, forged or counterfeit documents, and impersonation on the application, so a borderline case gets routed to the standard curable process instead of an unsupported non-curable notice.

Coordinating with legal counsel before October 1, 2026 on how the property's screening and termination procedures will document a fraudulent-entry finding is worth doing well ahead of the effective date, rather than working it out for the first time when a live case comes up.