When Doug and Bonnie Bennett didn’t receive their tenants’ rent payments for April, they gave their property manager, Albany-based Watson Management Services LLC, about a month to make it right.
Doug Bennett quickly scans over paperwork he received as a result of his Aug. 12 court date at the Linn County Courthouse.
The couple, from Chattaroy, Washington with two rental homes in Albany, were fortunate in a way. There’s a queue of property owners who have sued Watson in the last few months. Only a few have seen their cases resolved.
The Bennetts’ was among the first. But despite being heard in small claims court, it wasn’t easy.
They filed the suit in Linn County on May 28. Then someone from Watson Management Services informed the court 11 days later that the Bennetts had been made whole. The proof was an image of a check made out for $7,139.10, all neatly type-written on a company check from the company’s bank.
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The court dismissed the case June 10. But by June 18, the Bennetts had appealed, arguing the supposed check never made it to them.
“They came to the court and showed the court clerk a check — well, the front of the check,” Doug Bennett said. Anyone can display an image of a check. That doesn’t mean there’s been a transaction, he said.
“I could write you a check for $10 million.”
This check was submitted as proof that Watson Management Services had paid April rents to Doug and Bonnie Bennett for two Albany properties they own. But Doug Bennett was able to reopen his Small Claims Court case when he proved he never received it. Sensitive information on the check has been redacted.
As part of the evidence, the Bennetts had included a statement Watson had sent for April, indicating that the company had collected the rents and distributed the proceeds. But they received exactly “zero,” Doug Bennett said.
Not only did the court reinstate the lawsuit, Judge Thomas McHill said in August that the whole charade served as a “confession.” He quickly awarded judgment to the Bennetts for a total of $7,256.10.
They didn’t have to argue their case. No one came forward from Watson Management Services to put up a defense because Angela Watson was the sole member — and she died July 16.
Doug Bennett was well aware of the circumstances that had unfolded between the time of his filing and his Aug. 12 court date. And he doesn’t really expect to collect.
“I was just doing this because it gives me a judgment. I’ll throw it in the shoe box,” he said. “People who don’t have judgments will be behind me. And I don’t know how many that is, or how many are ahead of me, because there are so many.”
Indeed, since March 31, a dozen property owners have sued Watson Management Services for not turning over their tenants’ rents. Five of them weren’t able to serve Watson. In hiring a Linn County Sheriff’s deputy to serve notice, they all got the same response:
“Watson Management Services has been closed since Angela Watson’s passing. No employees are working at the business, as the last known employee stated her last day of work was July 15. No one at this business address can be served, and phone calls and emails to the business have not been returned. Angela was the only person listed as the Registered Agent for her company with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.”
Doug Bennett flips through a stack of notes and paper work in search of a photocopy of a check he never received from Watson Management Services but one that was presented to the court as if he did.
Collectively, these 12 plaintiffs are asking for more than $175,000 in back rents, according to their lawsuits. A former employee who requested anonymity said Watson probably managed about 160 units for 100 clients at the time of her death. In her heyday, she was juggling 320 units, the former employee said.
One property owner alone claims to be owed $150,000 in back rents and likely another six figures in existing deposits — Mohit Singla of Eugene is not exactly sure what Watson was charging — that were never forwarded when he ended his contract. Having consulted an attorney last month, he’s still deciding whether it will be worthwhile to sue.
Based on the lawsuits and interviews with more than a dozen property owners, the claimed losses could possibly top $1 million.
So what happened and what will happen to those who claim they are due money? In the aftermath of Watson’s apparent suicide — the police report is not available yet — some of the answers are emerging. Some are clear while others are clearly not.
In the beginning
As a property manager, Watson was required to be licensed with the Oregon Real Estate Agency. The office received a complaint about Watson in 2022, alleging that a property owner’s check had bounced. The complaint led to an “advice” letter in which she was told to keep better records.
But in the case file, she gives regulators her origin story. She wrote:
In 2009, I began my business as a cleaning company DBA (doing business as) Angela Watson, and by 2013, I started taking on clients where we would offer maintenance and handyman work as well as the cleanings. This was the step that started us into helping landlords with their rentals and getting them flipped and ready for their next tenants.
In 2016, we decided to give our business a name, and this is when we decided to get a property management license as well and we became Watson Management Services LLC doing cleanings, maintenance, carpet cleanings, repairs, yard work and painting.
In February 2017 we then decided to branch off and decided to start a construction side of the business (DRW Contractors INC.) since we now held a general contractor license.
All the cleanings, maintenance, carpet cleanings, repairs, yard work and general contracting type of work that has kept our business growing and is the primary source of the company’s finances and is mainly what our business is comprised of.
Watson Management Services trucks parked at its headquarters in July. The company’s name since has been removed from the monument sign, and a Linn County Sheriff’s deputy reports that no one works at the company any longer.
She never indicates who the other members of “we” are, but Watson’s husband, Dennis Watson, has had a general contractor’s license off and on since January 2018. It was revoked by the state Construction Contractors Board in March this year for failure to maintain an “acceptable surety bond.”
Mid-Valley Media sent messages via instant message, email and phone to Dennis Watson, who did not reply.
Watson Management Services was located at 626 Queen Ave. SW in Albany. The monument sign out front also included DRW Contractors and Wicked Fab Works, which customizes off-road vehicles. The latter business, also run by Dennis Watson, went live in 2022.
Sometime in the last month, the property management company’s name was removed.
About that advice letter, in it, the Real Estate Agency warned Watson: “We urge you to exercise caution in your conduct of professional real estate activity and must inform you, your clients’ trust accounts may be submitted for a future review.”
A new investigation
On Jan. 17, the first of a series of complaints came in to the Oregon Real Estate Agency, this one from a Corvallis landlord. Eight days later, the agency sent notice to Watson that it would undertake a “reconciliation review.”
In response, after five missed deadlines, Angela Watson provided documentation regarding the client trust accounts — the bank accounts that hold the property owners’ rents and deposits — for November 2024.
The state’s compliance specialists found it lacking and questioned Angela Watson’s accounting acumen.
“It appears that Watson may not understand the Agency’s accounting and reconciliation requirements. Watson may not be recording all transactions in a receipts and disbursements journal and only recording the transactions clearing the bank account,” an internal agency “findings report” says.
Mid-Valley Media received the entire Watson case file following a public records request.
The reconciliation review morphed into a bona fide investigation, according to a letter the agency sent Watson on April 22. By then, she had stopped responding to the Real Estate Agency despite many documented efforts.
The complaints from property owners owed their monthly rents — 13 in all between January and when her license was suspended July 8 — started piling up. The primary reason for the suspension, according to the 12-page final order: not complying with the investigator’s requests.
By July 16, Watson was dead. The Linn County Sheriff’s Office has yet to turn over documents connected to the death. A records manager said the report is still pending from the patrol division.
A post-investigation revelation
Even after the license suspension, the Oregon Real Estate Agency pushed on, subpoenaing Watson Management Services’ bank records. Officials learned that on June 1, Watson closed the client trust funds accounts, the ones with all the rent proceeds and deposits.
“The Oregon Real Estate Agency did not have access to the records associated with the clients’ trust accounts. We do not know if funds were disbursed or transferred prior to the accounts’ closure on June 1, 2025, nor the number of property owners whose funds were being held,” agency Communications, Policy, and DEI Director Mesheal L. Tracy said by email to Mid-Valley Media.
The Oregon Real Estate Agency learned after it suspended Angela Watson’s real estate license that she had closed out the client trust accounts at Citizens Bank on June 1 without informing the state, as required.
What they do know is that there were two accounts at Citizens Bank — one for the rents, one for the deposits — opened in 2018. Tracy said Oregon law allows property managers to pool funds from numerous clients together in trust accounts.
The law also requires that licensed property managers inform the state of any bank account closures within 10 days. That didn’t happen, Tracy wrote.
As for where that money went, “the bank only informed the Agency that the accounts were closed but provided no additional information about fund transfers or disbursements,” Tracy reiterated by email.
But just before closing the accounts, Angela Watson may have used it one last time: That $7,139 check she submitted to Small Claims Court, which purportedly included $152 in court fees — to show the Bennetts had been made whole — was written on an account ending in the same numbers as the client trust account the Oregon Real Estate Agency was trying to reconcile.
Up next: Property owners weren’t the only ones with claims and complaints against Watson Management Services. Get more details in the next story at the Democrat-Herald and Gazette-Times.
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Penny Rosenberg is regional editor of three Lee Enterprises news publications in the Pacific Northwest. She earned a Master of Legal Studies from UCLA School of Law. She can be reached at Penny.Rosenberg@lee.net and 541-812-6111.
