First, take a close look at your expenses—are there any you can trim or optimize?

As of now, we pay our kids to collect the rent each month.

The MEDIAN rents (50% higher, 50% lower) for the entire country are surveyed, collected and posted by HUD on their website www.HUDuser.org by either county or zip code in all 50 states. 

One of their tenants was one of their maintenance guys but was not their manager (making sure rent was collected), I think he paid either half of what rent should've been for his unit while the unit next to him was a 1bd unit as well renting for $650/700 at the time and that was about market rent still.

What MAY make sense is to setup a Master LLC that operates like a PMC and collects all your rents, pays all your property-related expenses, etc.The owner of each property (you, LLC, trust, IRA, ect.) would have to execute a management contract with the Master LLC, so the Master LLC could legally act on behalf of the property owner(s).Check with Account Closed read our 

You do not use the $900 in fees you collected.

@Nathan GesnerCan a landlord report a tenant to collections on their own?...

He's someone I already knew, and he does the work for a small rent discount but he's about to move out and I don't think it'll be so easy to find another qualified tenant without losing a month's rent while looking.Before I bought the building, the tenants were all responsible for taking their own cans to the road and they were collectively responsible for keeping the area clean, but they didn't (and I didn't know they didn't.) 

What MAY make sense is to setup a Master LLC that operates like a PMC and collects all your rents, pays all your property-related expenses, etc. 

They got a large judgment against the people running the scam but can they collect against it?