On May 13, 2026, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Rental Marketing Solutions, LLC, a property management company based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The settlement resolves allegations that RMS violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by filing a false military status affidavit and obtaining an unlawful eviction judgment against an active-duty U.S. Navy sailor.
The case is small by the standards of recent DOJ enforcement, just $60,000 in compensation and a $6,000 civil penalty. But it illustrates two compliance failures that show up in nearly every SCRA enforcement action against a property manager, and one remedy that is new.
What Happened
The sailor was assigned to the USS Nimitz at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. He had not lived at the Florida property for several years when RMS initiated eviction proceedings against him.
Under 50 U.S.C. Section 3931, before a court can enter a default judgment against an individual who has not appeared in a civil action, the plaintiff must file an affidavit stating whether the defendant is on active military duty. The purpose is straightforward: to prevent civilian courts from issuing judgments against servicemembers who cannot defend themselves because they are deployed or on assignment.
RMS filed an affidavit. The affidavit stated the sailor was not in the military. He was an active-duty sailor on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier at the time. The affidavit was false.
Based on that affidavit, RMS obtained a default eviction judgment in a Florida county court. The judgment then appeared on the sailor’s background reports.
What the False Affidavit Cost the Sailor
The eviction judgment followed the sailor everywhere a landlord ran a credit or background check. More than a dozen landlords refused to rent to him and his wife after seeing the judgment on his record.
The downstream effects were not minor:
- The sailor was forced to live separately from his wife for four months
- During that time, he rotated among temporary accommodations, including sleeping on the Navy ship while in port
- His wife eventually had to move back in with her parents in a different state
These are the kinds of consequences SCRA was designed to prevent. A servicemember stationed thousands of miles from a courthouse should not lose a default judgment because he could not appear, and should certainly not lose his housing record because a property manager checked a box on a form without verifying the answer.
The Settlement
Under the consent order, RMS must:
- Pay $60,000 in compensation to the affected sailor
- Pay a $6,000 civil penalty to the United States
- Fund ten years of credit monitoring for the sailor
- Maintain SCRA-compliant policies and procedures
- Train staff on SCRA requirements
The credit monitoring requirement is worth noting. Most SCRA settlements compensate for the original violation and impose a civil penalty. The ten-year credit monitoring obligation acknowledges something different: the damage from a false eviction judgment outlasts the original wrong. The judgment can sit on background reports for years, denying the servicemember housing long after the underlying case is resolved. The DOJ is now extracting remedies that match the duration of the harm.
The case was handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.
Two Compliance Failures That Show Up Every Time
The RMS case fits a pattern. The DOJ’s PRG Real Estate settlement (2019, $1.59M) involved 152 false military status affidavits affecting 127 servicemembers. The S&K Towing complaint (March 2026, 148 vehicles) alleges the same root cause: no verification before action. Different industries, different scale, identical failure.
Failure 1: Filing an affidavit without verifying the answer.
Section 3931 requires the affidavit to state whether the defendant is in military service. A statement made without any factual basis is, in the DOJ’s view, a false statement. Whether the affiant believed it was true is not the question. The question is whether the affidavit was based on an actual check of DMDC records. If not, the affidavit is unsupported, and any judgment that relies on it is voidable, and any institution that signed it is liable.
Failure 2: Treating SCRA compliance as a paperwork exercise.
For most property managers, the military status affidavit is a form that gets signed before a default judgment goes to the court. Many never verify the underlying claim. They sign because the eviction process requires the signature. That is how every false affidavit case starts.
As Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated in announcing the settlement: “It is unacceptable and illegal for a landlord […] to file a false affidavit.” U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe added: “Protecting the civil rights of our service members is a top priority.”
Why This Case Matters for Small Property Managers
It would be easy to read Greystar’s $1.4 million settlement or PRG Real Estate’s $1.59 million case and conclude that DOJ enforcement targets the largest property managers. The RMS case proves otherwise.
Rental Marketing Solutions is not a national operator. It is a single-market property management company in St. Petersburg, Florida. The case involves one servicemember, not 152. The civil penalty is $6,000, not $79,380. But the DOJ pursued it anyway, secured a settlement, and put the company under federal compliance supervision.
The lesson for smaller property managers: there is no portfolio size that exempts you from SCRA. If you file affidavits in eviction proceedings, you have SCRA obligations. If you sign a false one, the DOJ can find you.
What Property Managers Should Do
The fix for false affidavit cases is the simplest in compliance: check before you sign.
The DMDC operates a free public website where any landlord can verify whether an individual is on active duty. A single check takes under a minute. The output is an official military status certificate that supports a Section 3931 affidavit and protects against exactly the kind of enforcement action RMS just settled.
For property managers running more than a handful of evictions per year, manual lookups do not scale. Automated DMDC verification integrated into the eviction filing workflow eliminates the failure mode entirely. Every affidavit filed is backed by a timestamped DMDC verification record, which means no affidavit is ever signed without a factual basis.
That is the difference between RMS and a compliant operator. Both file affidavits. Only one has a record proving the affidavit was true.
civrel.io verifies military status against the Department of Defense database, generates Section 3931 affidavits backed by timestamped DMDC certificates, and maintains the audit trail every eviction filing needs. To check whether the tenants in your portfolio are servicemembers before you file, request a free scan.
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