Miami landlord special: 7 months without security deposit + promised last month’s rent back, am I screwed?

Hi everyone, I’ve got another local landlord story for you all…

It’s been 7 months since we’ve moved out of our previous apartment. Our old landlord has yet to return our security deposit. No claim was made for damages within 30 days of us moving out. Needless to say, we are well beyond any reasonable period for the deposit to be returned.

Because we received a 90 Day Notice to Vacate, we were able to break our lease before it ended without any penalty. The Landlord told us over the phone prior to move out that we’d also be getting our unused last month’s rent back that was paid upfront several years ago since we were leaving the month prior to lease end. He’s no-showed on several meetings over the last 7 months, including a meeting to get the apartment keys. Their property manager had to get involved on that one. After not responding to emails and texts, we finally got a hold of them and they claimed that they don’t recall the conversation we had about giving us our last month’s rent back, and also tried saying they had to paint the place, etc but were going to give us our deposit back. They then proceed to no show again to that meeting, which was supposed to take place in March. Not sure why they can’t just Zelle the funds which we’ve asked for multiple times and insists on meeting in-person.

I’m very familiar with FL Statute 83.49 and have sent 2 different demand letter formats to our attorney for review in case we have to go to small claims court.

If you were us, would you do anything else? Are we SOL with regard to last month’s rent? That really bothers me. I really wish I had his promise in writing instead of verbally, and didn’t expect this to be such a ridiculous hassle!

FYI, this landlord currently has 2 separate lawsuits in Civil Court over unpaid mortgages and/or HOA dues where his LLCs have been declaring bankruptcy to avoid foreclosure. This includes where we were previously living.