It was the fall of 2023, and the caller was an aggrieved local businessman in Tampa, Florida , who had just discovered thousands of dollars missing from his bank account. The property management firm Decker works for, the caller said, had charged him nearly $10,000 for rent over several months — despite the fact that he had never lived at any of its more than 600 rental homes . Decker and the owners of his company soon discovered the source of the mix-up. A fraudster had rented the home under a