Our property manager did not collect full deposit

[Jen Irving]

Hi.  New to BP and wanted to get advice/ feedback about ethical property management behavior.  We've been renting a home for about 4 years and had to evict the last set of tenants. The details make me sick.  Basically, we agreed to rent to a family with less than perfect credit with the condition they pay a $3,000 deposit (house rents for $1,200 per mo).  About 4 months into the lease, the tenants missed their 1st payment.  After asking the PM to find out what was going on, we were told they would pay soon yadda yadda yadda.  We should have started eviction right then but PM convinced us other wise.  I SPECIFICALLY asked if we could start using the deposit and PM advised against this. OF COURSE it didn't work out and by the time we got them out of the property we are out 6 months rent plus unpaid bills, cleaning and other damages.  We've been trying to get the final tally so we can file a judgement and have the security deposit transferred to us.  We just heard from our PM that he didn't collect the full security deposit from the tenants.  

I have two huge problems with this. 1St is that we would never have rented to them if we had known we wouldn't have the deposit as a safety net.  2ND, I'm not sure if I trust the PM.  How do you forget to tell someone you didn't collect the full security deposit and why on earth did he let them move in without it?

Does anyone have suggestions on how we might verify that the $3000 was not collected?  And any PMs out there, if you forgot to collect the agreed upon deposit from tenants what would you suggest as a fair way of handling the situation?

Thanks,

Jen