In Arizona, attempting to recover missing funds from a property manager who walks away and cannot be found is a discouraging process that included filing claims with the Small Claims Court.
Legal council was clear: by the time we tried to recover any of the missing funds, our legal fees would likely exceed the $13,000+ in missing funds that in all likelihood would be unrecoverable, regardless of our best effort and any additional out of pocket costs.
Choosing not to hire an attorney left us with one option: Small Claims Court. However, the maximum amount of a small claim suit in our area is $2,500.
After mulling the problem over for a few days, I concluded that the $13,000+ in missing funds was the total amount representing several properties. If I filed individual civil small claim suits for each property in question, each claim would be under the $2,500 maximum, since all but one property had injuries that were larger than the $2,500 allowed. In addition, even though my losses on that property were greater than $2,500. I could find no information that stated that I had to seek to recover the full amount of the loss. I could at least attempt to recover $2,500 of them!
Accessing the County’s website, I secured and completed the claim forms for each property then presented myself at the Justice Court to file the claims. Each claim required a $24. filling fee.
Small Claim Court procedure requires that the accused party or its statutory agent receive notice of the complaint by one of several approved court methods. Since the accused party cannot be found, we choose to deliver notice to the statutory agent by certified mail with restricted delivery at a cost of $10.86 per filing (more than $60 in total). 
Four days after the letters were postmarked, they were returned with the following explanation:
“Retired. REF Return to Sender. Not Deliverable as Addressed. Unable to Forward”.
All our civil efforts attempts to recover the missing funds taken by the property manager had failed, including that of securing a small claims court judgment.
Hopefully we will be eligible to file a claim with the Arizona Department of Real Estate Recovery fund.
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