It's dishonest, you are likely to be found out and the tenant may lose respect for you, and it doesn't provide you with any additional protection.I recommend honesty and strong boundaries.

Dumping him now may save you some money but more importantly you are getting rid of a dishonest PM.

I think he either removed the old mount completely or was in a process of adding a new cheaper mount which obviously had different configuration so he had to patch the wall. he is really a type of a person that will slip a dishonesty here and there and I experienced it many times. he would turn the AC to 67 when it was 100 outside and after unit would malfunction would change back to 72 and claim the unit is bad. he would do it when he would go on a trip which he did often is summer. now that he moved out the thermostat is on 73 and it is 100 outside and there is no issues at all. he also had his girlfriend live with him although he claimed he was the only one. he was always very particular about 24 hours notice that is how I know he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to. he is definitely dishonest but he was paying on time and relatively clean. 

All I ever hear is how unreliable, slow, expensive, and/or dishonest most contractors are.

This seems dishonest and deceptive to me.

I used to walk properties with my contractor, my contractor is great but it stopped doing it because it was useless we couldn’t know what issues to anticipate in advance so the 1st bids were worthless, like a 45k bid that turned into 130k, and again not because he was dishonest or anything just modernzing a house has so many different parts you couldn’t possibly imagine, now that said I figured out over time given age of and condition of home I could reliably estimate total cost within like 90% accuracy, so I’d ask around other people in your area what are they spending on a similar type of project, I do this periodically in my market just to make sure I’m not getting screwed but especially when you adjust for quality I kind of found everyone was kind of paying the same. 

Needless to say we will not be buying the home and now they have been so dishonest that who knows if we will even get our $3000 and $300 pet deposit back!!!

@ Matt Harris a longer we all spread the words about dishonest contractor it will help to clean up the contruction industry ,I'm been in business for 15 years and it is the first time a subcontractor take money from us ,I learned my lesson that why ,I only do business with  contractor that have all they paper work in order and are members  of the BBB,BBC or other organizations 

I’ve met allot of skilled and honest handy skilled people from Craigslist that charge fair rates, but I love also met allot of dishonest people there.

Although a permit was needed (most dishonest contractors will get the homeowner to pull a permit themselves) you are out of state and relied on his assertions.