Jared Decker was on his way to lunch when he received the phone call that kicked off a monthslong real estate nightmare.

It was the fall of 2023, and the caller was an aggrieved local businessman in Tampa, Florida, who had just discovered thousands of dollars missing from his bank account. The property management firm Decker works for, the caller said, had charged him nearly $10,000 for rent over several months — despite the fact that he had never lived at any of its more than 600 rental homes.

Decker and the owners of his company soon discovered the source of the mix-up. A fraudster had rented the home under a false persona, stealing the businessman's bank account information and cribbing other identifying info, including his name, from a different person in Pennsylvania. The scammer had begun living at the property before Decker's company, Coastal Pioneer Realty, took over managing it, so he hadn't gone through their usual screening process, Decker tells me. The ensuing ordeal, including an eviction and court proceedings to sort out the missing money, ended up costing thousands of dollars in legal fees and missed rent payments. The property's owner, a so-called "mom and pop landlord" who owns a handful of rentals, was on the hook for most of it.

My guess is he has people for that.

His process was sound but not fool proof.

We go thru our accounts weekly, if not more often.

Everything I buy with a card is checked, personal or business. The accounts are verified constantly. Same with checks.

Got a new teller at the drive up of one of the CUs we use. One tenant's rent was put in a different account. Maybe a couple weeks before that we had a deposit that we could not justify. Finally got the CU to realize they had put it in the wrong account.

Have been using this CU for probably 40 years and this is the first time for either of those mishaps. Maybe funds get put in the checking vs savings or a sub account, but was always in the correct account.

Think I mentioned my bug guy having problems. He never checked his CC or bank statements. He had a secretary for that.

One day he opened up a bank statement. He doesn't even know why he was prompted to do so.

He found a lot of small charges to a wifi jukebox account at a bar. As he dug thru and started looking at checking accounts as well he found a lot of money being taken out for illegitimate reasons.

Last he told me he was in the tens of thousands of dollars.

He turned it over to the police but I don't think she was ever convicted of anything.

She was paying her utilities thru his bank account even.

I changed the locks at his place before he confronted her.