A property manager for several low-income apartment complexes in Tennessee cashed some of the tenants' rent payments and kept the money for herself rather than turning it in to the company, and as a result she has been fired and is facing charges in a few different counties for the thefts.
However the rental company - while acknowledging the fact that one of their own employees stole the money -
is telling tenants that they are responsible for paying back-rent to cover what was stolen:
The apartments have a locked deposit box than tenants deposit their rent checks or money orders into every month, and the only one with the key is the property manager whose job is to collect those money orders and take them to the company. My first very first apartment worked like this, although my property manager was live-in and I don't know if the one in this case was necessarily, since she was responsible apparently for a few properties in different towns. But an any rate, as a tenant, your responsibility is to put your money order in that slot by the cutoff date, and that's basically it. Once it's in the deposit box, it's in the hands of the apartment company.
But in a letter to tenants from the management company, it never acknowledges the former manager as such, only as "a person you trusted with your money", and repeatedly characterizes the money as having been stolen from
them (the tenants). The letter even urges them to obtain copies of their spent money orders and file individual complaints of theft with the police, which would reinforce that the money was stolen from the tenants before the apartment company got it, rather than stolen by their own employee after she collected it in the course of her duties as an employee.
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