Landlord Says She’s Doesn’t Have To Pay Back Our Security Deposit Because The Property Management Company Went Bankrupt??

Hello Reddit! For some more context on the title: my landlord has used a property management company since the beginning of our lease (March 2024) to handle rent payments, service requests, utilities, etc.. However, a couple months ago the PMC went bankrupt and out of business. Since then we’ve just been Venmo-ing her our rent.

Our lease ends at the end of this month, so she came over yesterday to check out the property and told us that she never received our security deposit or our rent for the last month (which we paid when we signed) because the PMC was apparently holding it for her for the duration of the lease(?), but then they went bankrupt. She told us that she’s taking the owner of the PMC to small claims court and that we could join her suit if we wanted but that we probably wouldn’t get our money back because he declared bankruptcy.

When we signed the lease we paid a $2,300 deposit, $2,000 of which is supposed to be refundable. If it was a smaller amount I might let it go but 2 grand is a ton of money for us, and we can’t really afford to just lose it.

After she left my partner and I reviewed our lease and although the PMC is mentioned in the lease, the landlord is the owner and from what we understand our contract is with her, not them.

So my question is: do we need to sue the bankrupt property management company for our money, or is our landlord liable for our deposit, even though she says she never received it?

Relevant facts: we are in SLC, Utah. Our landlord says she has a lawyer and talked to the cops already and that the PMC owner has 6-7 cases open against him right now and that they are pursuing the matter. Our lease ends March 31, 2025 and we’re moving out of state, so there is a bit of a time crunch…

Any advice or knowledge you can offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks internet strangers!