Sergio Pino, influential Miami builder and philanthropist, dead at 67

Sergio Pino, a prominent Miami developer who founded a company that became the largest Hispanic-owned home builder in the nation, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide after FBI agents descended on his Coral Gables home amid an investigation into threats against his estranged wife. He was 67.

Pino’s death was a shocking conclusion for one of Miami-Dade’s most influential and high-profile businessmen, who for several weeks had been the subject of reports detailing sordid allegations in what the FBI now says was a “murder for hire” investigation. Pino had not been charged and denied any involvement in the incidents.

For decades, Pino had been a leading developer, philanthropist and political fundraiser in the community. A company Pino founded in the mid-1990s, Century Homebuilders Group , has built over 16,000 homes in South Florida.

“We plan and build communities that people can enjoy,” Pino, who was the company’s CEO and president, told the Miami Herald in 2016 . “Since I can remember, I always wanted to be a builder. I love doing what I do — building things.”

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1956, Pino fled to the United States with his family at the age of 12.

They moved into a small apartment in Miami, and Pino worked part-time at a laundromat, where his mother ironed dress shirts and he cleaned hotel welcome mats, according to a 1997 profile in the Herald. Pino’s father, who had owned a grocery store in Cuba, earned $1.35 an hour as a plumber.

Pino graduated from Miami Senior High School in 1975 and attended Miami-Dade Community College for two years, hoping to become an architect. Instead, he borrowed $6,000 from his father in 1977 for a down payment on a tiny plumbing store in Hialeah. That business, Century Plumbing, quickly took off. Today, under the name Century Wholesale, the company has operations in South Florida, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

In 1989, Pino became president of the powerful Latin Builders Association, a Coral Gables-based construction group that he led for three years. In 1997, he created the real estate holding company Century Partners Group, which quickly raised millions of dollars to develop single-family housing in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

His influence in the community grew. After joining Florida International University’s board of directors in 2003, Pino announced a $2 million endowment for the “Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center” in honor of his father.

Pino was a force in Republican politics, spending tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for local, state and federal candidates. He was a friend and staunch supporter of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and also backed former president George W. Bush, donating a building in 2004 to headquarter George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in Miami.

Over the years, Pino came under the scrutiny of local, state and federal law enforcement, though he was never charged with a crime in connection with his home-building business and other investments or his prodigious political fundraising activities.

In 2002, Pino and his minority partners in the duty-free concessions business at Miami International Airport came under fire in a report by the Miami-Dade County inspector general for earning more than $14.6 million for their cut of a hefty airport contract despite having performed no actual work. Pino said he did nothing wrong and pulled out of the business when the contract expired in 2005.

In 2006, the Herald reported that a federal grand jury was investigating allegations that Pino hosted then-Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz on a weekend trip to Cancún in exchange for Diaz’s support of a large-scale project in Doral. Part of the investigation focused on a May 2004 fishing trip to Cancún aboard Pino’s private jet. Charges were never brought against anyone in the probe.

Pino was also a co-founder of U.S. Century Bank, which saw success in the early 2000s in its mission of creating the largest Hispanic bank in Miami. But by 2011, the bank was teetering on collapse and was hit with a federal enforcement order amid concerns about its financing and use of “insider loans” to the bank’s directors or officers, including millions of dollars for Pino’s development projects.

He resigned from the bank’s board that year, saying he wanted to focus on his real estate business.

As Century Homebuilders continued to expand its footprint in recent years, Pino occupied a leading role in Miami’s construction industry.

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, he issued a public plea for the industry to shut down construction sites to prevent outbreaks among their workers. He was the first developer in Miami-Dade to cease work at one of his sites, a $100 million mixed-use project on Le Jeune Road, after two of his workers tested positive for coronavirus.

“Everybody is doing their part and we should do ours,” Pino told the Herald at the time. “Our industry is not going to suffer from shutting down for 10 days. I don’t think we are an essential business. We’re not gas stations or pharmacies or supermarkets.”

Pino’s death Tuesday came weeks after the FBI raided his waterfront home as authorities investigated his possible connection to assaults against his estranged wife, Tatiana Pino, and her sister that led to the arrests of four men, including a household employee of Sergio Pino.

After 30 years of marriage, Tatiana Pino had filed for divorce in April 2022, and the dissolution proceedings were still ongoing at the time of Sergio Pino’s death. In court documents, both parties brought up alleged threats they had received in recent years while the divorce case was pending.

Sergio Pino’s lawyer, Sam Rabin, said Tuesday that Pino’s death was “a very tragic ending to an investigation that we were confident we could successfully defend.”

Pino was married twice and had four children. He and Tatiana Pino were wed in 1992 and raised two daughters together.