As the court found, the defendants’ claimed damages were pretextual, that is, they were calculated to camouflage the defendants’ mishandling of the plaintiffs’ security deposit. The statute allows for deductions to compensate for damages “suffered by [the] landlord by reason of [the] tenant’s failure to comply with such tenant’s obligations . . . .” General Statutes § 47a-21 (d) (2). In this case, however, the damages claimed by the defendants were neither suffered by the defendants nor created by the plaintiffs’ failure to comply with their obligations as tenants. Rather, they were simply fabricated by the defendants and, therefore, were not properly withheld by the defendants under § 47a-21 (d) (2). The language of the statute allows for landlords to deduct from a tenant’s security deposit actual damages, not pretextual damages. While the defendants complied, in form only, with the requirement that a written accounting of damages be sent to the former tenant within the time frame prescribed by § 47a-21 (d) (2) *311and (4), without also sending the plaintiffs the balance of the security deposit legitimately owed to them, they did not satisfy the statutory requirements. Accordingly, the defendants were subject to the doubling of damages under § 47a-21 (d) (2). We, therefore, conclude that the court improperly failed to award the plaintiffs damages equal to the amount of double their security deposit.