Syracuse officials must stay on target to root out slumlords (Editorial) Updated Dec 30, 2020; Staff writer Chris Baker’s recent investigation into a 10-year-old property investment scheme by a British con man, Simon Slee, was revealing in a couple of ways. It explains why roughly 100 Syracuse rental properties, marketed mainly to foreign investors, fell (or fell further) into disrepair – forcing tenants to live in squalor and dragging down already struggling neighborhoods. It also shows how things are slowly turning around due to changes to the city’s approach to tax delinquency, code violations and lead paint over those 10 years. A Slee-like scam would be harder to pull off today because: