Miami real estate consultant who provided ethics training busted for embezzlement

Andreina Monserratte, a self-styled real estate trainer who built a following by pitching herself as a compliance and ethics guru to brokers and agents in Miami-Dade County, allegedly stole nearly $90,000 from a home inspection company that hired her less than two years ago.

Miami-Dade Sheriff’s deputies last week arrested Monserratte, 42, on felony charges of organized fraud and grand theft tied to an alleged year-long scheme targeting her employer, Miami-based South Florida Inspectors.

Beginning in January 2024, about a month after she was hired, Monserratte swapped out the company email on its Zelle account and substituted her own email and phone number linked to her personal and business bank accounts, according to an arrest report.

Customers who believed they were paying Kendall-based South Florida Inspectors for services instead funneled money into Monserratte’s accounts, allowing her to allegedly siphon more than $89,000 through July, investigators alleged.

Deputies wrote in the arrest report that she “refused to provide a statement.” Reached by phone, Monserratte told The Real Deal, “I am not interested in talking. Please call my attorney,” then hung up without providing a name. No lawyer was listed on her court docket at the time of publication, and she has not yet entered a plea.

Guru without a license

Monserratte established her bonafides despite never being licensed as a broker or a sales agent, according to online state licensing records. South Florida Inspectors owner Danny Nieves and other real estate professionals who knew her and spoke to TRD were also unaware that Monserrate had previous run-ins with the law.

“Her standing in the real estate community is impeccable as a result of her teaching people classes on MLS [Multiple Listing Service] and ethics training,” Nieves said. “Nobody really was wise to this other side of her.”

Miami-Dade criminal court records show she was charged with petty larceny in 2003, and a year later she was charged with grand theft. Both times Monserratte completed a pre-trial intervention program, allowing her to avoid a conviction.

In 2006, she was arrested a third time for grand theft, receiving probation that she finished in 2011, when the court withheld adjudication — a disposition that spares defendants a formal conviction under Florida law if they successfully complete supervision. Details of Monserratte’s previous arrests were not available online, as the files have been destroyed.

Still, the earlier criminal cases did not prevent her from carving out a niche in Miami’s real estate ecosystem as an informal trainer and consultant. On her professional website, Monserratte leaned heavily on themes of ethics, compliance and risk mitigation. She casts herself as a behind-the-scenes architect of some of Miami’s largest brokerages.

“We have partnered up with some of the leading industry event companies, to have you mingle with other industry professionals,” Monserratte’s website states. “In all aspects of life sometimes who you know will take you to the next step of where you should be.”

She promotes intensive MLS coaching that goes beyond navigation, promising to make brokers and agents “fully proficient” on creating market reports, hot sheets and other data-driven practices to scale their business.

Her website biography claims Monserratte has “assisted in the recruiting, retention and training of over 500 real estate agents and brokers for some of the biggest brokerages in Miami.”

The alleged embezzlement

South Florida Inspectors owner Nieves said he first crossed paths with Monserratte soon after launching his firm in 2019, when he was struggling to gain traction and was introduced to her through a broker contact. One associate, Nieves recalled, told him that Monserratte had helped grow her brokerage from 200 to 900 agents, fueling a reputation as a “very praised” and “very respected” operator in the real estate industry.

At the time, Monserratte provided him with free advice, as well as opened doors and made introductions that “really helped us take off the company,” Nieves said. In 2023, after learning that Monserratte had left a full-time job as a sales manager with Broker’s, a Fort Lauderdale-based brokerage, he brought her on board as his company’s office manager.

“I actually pursued her and offered her a job,” Nieves said. “Since she had helped me grow my company for free, I could only imagine how much more she could do if I hired her.”

Shortly after, Nieves’ father was diagnosed with stage four cancer, forcing him to step back from daily operations to shuttle him to chemotherapy and care for him.

“For a period of almost over a year, I was taking care of my father until his suicide [earlier this year],” Nieves said. “So she took advantage of it. She kind of exploited a situation when I was at my absolute low.”

He slowly returned to the office after his father’s death and realized “things just weren’t adding up,” Nieves said.

He discovered financial irregularities in his company’s account in July. Internal checks revealed “a very sophisticated scheme” in which Monserratte allegedly “was able to manipulate and change the Zelle payments … to her personal bank account, and then embezzle money through it,” he said.

Previous employer speaks out

Claudia Serna, owner of Broker’s, told TRD that she would have warned Nieves to stay away from Monseratte, who worked for Broker’s from 2021 until late 2022.

Initially Monserratte excelled at the job, especially at agent support and recruitment, Serna said.

“She’s got it going on,” Serna said, describing Monserratte. “She’s bilingual, responsive to agents late at night and well-liked. She’s got WhatsApp and Telegram chats packed with brokers and sales associates.”

But within months, Serna said, irregularities surfaced in a referral incentive program that used $100 Amazon gift cards emailed as thank-yous to agents who sent recruits to Broker’s. Each card had a digital code that could be tracked to the Amazon account that redeemed it.

According to Serna, Monserratte was copied on the gift card emails in her role overseeing recruitment. After an agent complained that a promised card showed up as already redeemed, Serna dug into her brokerage’s Amazon’s logs and allegedly found that “many, many of the cards were cash[ed] on on Andreina’s [Amazon] account.”

When confronted, Serna said, Monserratte blamed her daughter.

“She said her daughter was the one that cashed them,” Serna recalled.

But that explanation did not add up, given the multiple email and push notifications Amazon sends when gift credits are used, Serna said.

“If your daughter was doing this, the Amazon account is yours, you receive the notifications,” Serna said. “You must have known.”

Serna said she fired Monserratte but declined to press charges.

“Her daughters were like 12 and 13 or something like that,” Serna said. “And she was a single mom. I felt sorry.”

Within months of the Amazon incident, Serna said she saw Monserratte resurface — this time aligned with “one of the big girls in the real estate industry” who had launched a new brokerage.

“When I saw that on Instagram, I called my colleague and I told her, ‘Listen, this happened in my office. Be careful with that girl. I really don’t know what she is into, just watch out,’” Serna said. The colleague brushed off the warning, Serna said.

After news of Monserratte’s most recent arrest, Serna said her phone and industry group chats have been lighting up.

“During this weekend, it was being discussed like 22 times on different chats with people in the industry,” she said. “She’s very well known in the real estate broker community.”

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