BOISE -- Idaho State Police is now investigating a Treasure Valley property management owner after receiving several complaints, the bulk of which are from his clients who say he owes them money.
Property manager Brandon Curtiss, owner of Liberty Property Management and Curtiss Property Management, is no longer contracted by those clients because they claim that he is withholding collected rent payments.
"I don't know where the money is going," property owner and former client, Scott Amos, said, "I know where it's not going."
Property owners like Amos say Curtiss collected rent from tenants but didn't give the property owners that money.
"It's a little disgusting, discouraging. You know, we put our heart and soul into fixing these houses up," Amos added.
But Curtiss, also president of the group 3% of Idaho, says those claims are absolutely untrue.
"We keep copies of everything, we don't withhold rents from our owners," Curtiss told KTVB.
Amos was a client of Liberty Property Management for a few years until problems arose.
"He was two months late paying me rent, he finally wrote me a check, and the check bounced. He told me the check cleared his bank and said I was lying," Amos said.
Amos tells us Curtiss was also upcharging him on commission throughout his entire contract, which Curtiss says was an accounting mistake that they made up for.
"I started doing research on the guy and found forty other individuals in the same situation as myself," Amos said.
Amos says he started receiving threats from Curtiss after that, so he decided to cancel his accounts.
"He appears to be taking money which doesn't belong to him," Amos told KTVB.
Amos and several of Curtiss's other clients, along with some former tenants, met with the Idaho Attorney General's Office in early April to file complaints, claiming Curtiss owes them thousands of dollars.
"We've had some things that have come about because people are wanting to revisit old things, previous clients," Curtiss said. "But a lot of that stuff had already been handled and closed."
Those clients also say Curtiss kept tenants' payments and deposits after the property owners canceled their contracts with him. Curtiss tells KTVB that is absolutely false.
When asked if he ever demanded rent from a tenant at a property he no longer managed, he said:
"No. That was outside of our management agreement period, no."
Curtiss says his property management company reserves the right to withhold final funds for an extra 30 days to make sure there are no outstanding bills.
"Allegations of fraud and embezzlement and all these things are absolutely false, they are not true. They're not going to find anything happening," Curtiss said.
Along with the ISP investigation, Curtiss is facing legal action from Martinique Properties LLC in Meridian. According to the Idaho Repository, he had a civil case filed against him in 2013 from property owners, Leslie and Aaron Boyce.
