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A Pembroke Pines medical spa nurse is behind bars after police say he swindled his coworkers out of $16,000 using a foreign currency trading scam.
Detectives began their probe into Jonathan Cuenca — the 39-year-old owner of Eternity by JC, a Hollywood-based medical aesthetics clinic — last April when two victims reported the theft to the Miramar Police Department, Cuenca’s police report says.
The family nurse practitioner and aesthetician also doubles as the director of education at Florida Academy of Medical Aesthetics, a Pembroke Pines beauty school located at 11280 Pines Blvd.
Police say the victims knew Cuenca “from work” but did not detail whether that was through the med spa or beauty school.
Neither Eternity by JC nor the Florida Academy of Medical Aesthetics has responded to the Pembroke Pines News’ requests for comment.
According to Miramar detectives, Cuenca “convinced both victims to invest money in his Forex trading team” — a global market where people buy and sell foreign currencies — and promised a 30% return on investment.
That prompted the coworkers to send several thousand-dollar payments over the course of two months.
Police say one sent Cuenca $5,000 through an “electronic, Bitcoin-based forum called Ethereum,” followed by a Zelle payment of $3,000 on Feb. 15, 2025.
The other “submitted four Zelle transactions totaling $2,300, $500, $2,500 and $3,000” between February and March 2025, according to the arrest report.
Cuenca then told the victims to each download a different investment app that investigators say had the same format and advised them that he’d load their funds into their accounts and tell them what to trade, the report states.
After nearly a month of seeing no gains on their investments, one coworker requested a return on her money on March 30, 2025, to which the aesthetician replied that she’d get the funds back in three days, police said.
An hour after Cuenca’s reply, both coworkers “could no longer access the app and were told the money was taken by an associate of Jonathan,” Miramar police said.
According to investigators, Cuenca stole $8,000 from one coworker and $8,300 from another.
When Miramar police interviewed him in October 2025, he told officers that he took the money “to invest it through an app called ‘ACMJ,’” a fraudulent mobile investment app that’s been flagged by consumers and international authorities alike.
Cuenca also told officers that he himself was a victim of fraud and scammed out of $20,000 in December 2024 by an individual whose name was redacted in the arrest report.
When asked if he’d reported the theft to police, he said he’d only told the FBI, to which officers advised him to gather any documents that show he was also a victim of fraud and that did not intend to take advantage of his coworkers by Nov. 3, 2025.
Investigators say he never returned to the Miramar Police Department, attempted to contact detectives or returned the funds to his coworkers.
Cuenca was arrested Aug. 26 by the Pembroke Pines Police Department and now faces two third-degree grand theft felony charges.
Jail records show he was being held at Broward Main Jail without bond due to a 48-hour immigration hold as of Aug. 27.
Broward records do not list who will represent him in court.
Isabel Rivera covers the city of Pembroke Pines for the Pembroke Pines News, a sister publication of the Miami Herald. She graduated from Florida International University (go Panthers!), speaks Spanish and was born and raised in Miami-Dade. Her last meal on death row would include a cortadito.
