Employee Misconduct Investigations in Aventura, FL
A property manager steering contracts to his brother-in-law. A store manager whose inventory never reconciles. A housekeeper with a key to the safe. A valet on FMLA who is parking cars at a hotel across the causeway. We document it before you act.
Confidential. Your staff will not know we were there.
Fire Someone Without Proof and You Buy a Lawsuit
An owner or board that suspects an employee is stealing has two bad options: confront with nothing and watch the evidence disappear, or terminate on a hunch and get a wrongful termination or discrimination claim. Wasser Investigations has given Aventura employers a third option since 1985. We document the conduct, lawfully and quietly, so that when you act, HR and your employment attorney have a file behind the decision.
Travis Wasser handles the work himself. He knows Aventura’s employers: the condo associations that employ hundreds of doormen, valets, engineers, and managers across the towers, the retailers and restaurants at the mall and along Biscayne, the medical and dental practices, the hotels across the Sunny Isles line, and the families who employ household staff and caregivers. He also knows how to work around a building where everyone knows who belongs.
Boards, Owners, HR, Families, and Employment Counsel
You Suspect Something and Need to Know
Reserve funds that do not add up, a manager who always handles a certain vendor personally, retail shrink the counts cannot explain, an employee on leave who is working somewhere else. We confirm it or rule it out.
Someone Inside the Home Is Taking Advantage
A caregiver, housekeeper, or driver with access to an elderly parent’s home and finances. We document what is happening so you can act, and so the police or a probate attorney can act if it comes to that.
Evidence for Termination, Defense, and Recovery
Independent documentation that supports a termination decision, defends against a wrongful termination or retaliation claim, or backs a civil recovery, an insurance claim, or a criminal referral.
Misconduct We Document
Condo association fraud
Property managers and board members steering contracts, taking kickbacks, inflating invoices, or misusing reserves. We trace the vendor relationships through public records and document the meetings.
Embezzlement and financial fraud
Bookkeepers, office managers, and controllers moving money through fake vendors, payroll, or expense accounts. Records analysis, surveillance, and coordination with your accountant and, when you choose, Aventura PD.
Retail and inventory theft
Shrink, register manipulation, fraudulent returns, and collusion with outside buyers at mall and Biscayne Boulevard retailers.
Caregiver and household staff theft
Missing property, unauthorized transfers, new names on accounts, and a patient being isolated from family. We document the pattern and coordinate with your attorney under Florida’s elder exploitation statute.
FMLA and leave abuse
Surveillance of employees on FMLA, disability, or workers’ comp leave who are working another job or doing things their restrictions rule out.
Time and attendance fraud
Phantom hours, buddy punching, and building staff who leave the post.
Substance abuse on the job
Documented use or impairment during work hours, particularly for valets, drivers, and anyone in a safety role.
Harassment and post-termination violations
Independent fact-finding on hostile-environment complaints, and documentation of former employees breaching non-compete or non-solicitation agreements.
Buildings Notice Everything
A tower’s staff knows every resident’s car and every vendor’s truck. A dental practice with six employees knows every face in the lot. If word gets out that the board or the owner hired an investigator, the subject cleans up, coworkers close ranks, and the organization has a morale problem stacked on the original one.
We work from outside the business wherever possible. Off-premises surveillance of the employee’s activity, records work, and interviews structured so the subject is not identified. When on-site work is required, we plan it with you and only the people who need to know.
The Investigation File
- Timestamped video and photographs of the documented conduct
- A written report with a dated timeline and sourced findings
- Witness statements from coworkers, vendors, or residents where applicable
- Chain-of-custody records for all evidence
- Background on the subject, including undisclosed employment or business interests
- Investigator testimony for unemployment hearings, civil suits, insurance claims, or criminal prosecution
Questions From Boards, Employers, and Families
Is it legal to have an employee followed?
Yes, in public places, without trespass, harassment, or audio recording. Off-duty surveillance of an employee on leave or suspected of moonlighting is lawful and routine.
Can you monitor an employee's personal phone or social media?
We capture what is public. We do not access private accounts, personal devices, or messages, and we advise against it. Public posts, with dates and URLs, are often enough.
Our board thinks the property manager is taking kickbacks. Where do you start?
Vendor records first, to see who is getting paid and how the relationships formed, then background on the manager and the vendors, then surveillance of the meetings. We coordinate with the association’s attorney throughout.
Will this hold up if the employee sues after termination?
That is the point of doing it this way. Documented, lawfully gathered evidence with a clean chain of custody is what defense counsel needs to answer a wrongful termination or retaliation claim.
How quickly can you start?
Within days. Our office is on Ponce de Leon Boulevard in Coral Gables, thirty minutes from Aventura.
Get the Facts Before You Make the Call
Tell us what you suspect. We will tell you what can be documented, how long it takes, and what it costs.
Get a Free Consultation