FBI alleges Miami developer Sergio Pino hired ‘murder crews’ to kill his estranged wife

Miami developer Sergio Pino crafted multiple plots to harm or kill his estranged wife over a period of years as the couple’s marriage unraveled, including poisoning her with fentanyl and hiring “murder crews” to end her life, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. One of those crews was given the instruction to kill Pino’s wife before an upcoming divorce hearing, a directive that led Tatiana Pino and the couple’s daughter to be threatened at gunpoint last month, the officials said.

Those details emerged the day after Sergio Pino, the founder of Century Homebuilders Group and a high-profile Miami-Dade County builder and political donor for decades, died by suicide in an upstairs bedroom of his Cocoplum estate as a SWAT team descended on his home in an effort to arrest him in connection with the alleged murder-for-hire scheme.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged in a press conference Wednesday that Pino had hired two separate crews to kill his estranged wife amid a contentious divorce. In total, nine people have now been arrested in connection with the alleged murder-for-hire plots, the officials said.

“This case is about a husband, Mr. Pino, who decided after years of marriage that he was going to kill his wife,” said Markenzy Lapointe, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

The attempts on Tatiana Pino’s life began in 2019 and continued through June of this year, FBI officials said in related court documents. She filed for divorce in April 2022 after 30 years of marriage.

Lapointe alleged that initially, Pino tried to poison his wife with fentanyl “over a period of time.”

“When that failed,” Lapointe continued, “he put out a contract on her head on two separate occasions, hiring separate groups of hitmen to do the job.”

Before his death, Sergio Pino had denied any involvement in the threats against his wife. Pino’s attorney Sam Rabin on Wednesday criticized the FBI’s handling of the case, particularly the raid on Pino’s home Tuesday.

“Sadly, I no longer have a living client to allow me to respond to the government’s new allegations. That is because prosecutors ignored my emails and phone conversations where I volunteered to surrender Mr. Pino if they wanted to arrest him,” Rabin said.

He added: “Although I have not seen any of the evidence that the government claims to have, the narrative that they are putting forth is contrary to the person and character of Sergio Pino.”

The first alleged crew of hired help included four men , including Pino’s part-time employee, Bayron Bennett, federal authorities said. That crew has been charged in connection with a hit-and-run and arsons targeting Tatiana Pino and her sister, incidents that became public after the FBI first raided Sergio Pino’s home and office on June 24.

On Wednesday, the FBI announced that another group had been quietly charged in connection with another threat against Tatiana Pino. Five people were arrested from a second alleged murder-for-hire crew, according to officials: Diori Barnard, Clementa Johnson, Vernon Green, Avery Bivins and Fausto Villar.

An attorney for Green, Richard Serafini, said they would “be putting forth a vigorous defense.” Bivins’ lawyer Humberto Rolando Dominguez declined to comment. Attorneys for Barnard and Villar did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and no information was filed in court records to indicate the legal representation for Johnson.

That second crew made an attempt on Tatiana Pino’s life last month at her Pinecrest home, with the instruction to kill her before the next hearing in the couple’s contentious divorce battle, Lapointe said. Sergio Pino offered to pay $150,000 for the crew to kill Tatiana Pino, with another $150,000 “if the contract was carried out without detection,” according to the criminal complaint against Villar .

But when an armed Vernon Green appeared outside Tatiana Pino’s Pinecrest home as she pulled into the driveway on the morning of June 23, the planned operation didn’t go quietly — or well. Rather than stay still as Green waved a gun at her car, Tatiana Pino hit the gas and roared into her backyard, scraping a tree and a fence with her vehicle, honking her horn the entire time, the complaint said.

Green initially chased her into the backyard, then rushed back to the front. At the same time, the Pinos’ adult daughter came outside to see what was the cause of the commotion. As she turned around, the daughter saw Green as he pointed a pistol “inches from her face,” according to a criminal complaint. Green grabbed her and ordered her back inside, the complaint said. She complied.

With that, Green allegedly bolted from the front yard in the suburban neighborhood, jumping into a Dodge Ram pickup truck with a getaway driver that the criminal complaint does not identify.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey Veltri said Wednesday that “money was disbursed” as part of that plot, but officials did not specify how much of the potential $300,000 was paid out to the crew.

The day after that incident was when the FBI raided Sergio Pino’s waterfront estate for the first time.

FBI agents then returned to his home Tuesday morning as part of a “search and arrest” operation in the case.

Between 9:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., several loud bangs were heard from the police perimeter, though it was not clear what was happening since the home was out of view from the police line. Around 10 a.m., Coral Gables Fire Rescue vehicles arrived, and they left about 30 minutes later. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner told the Herald that Sergio Pino was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m.

On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI released a statement on the “search and arrest” operation that involved going to two locations: Pino’s residence and another home in Cutler Bay, where a man — later identified as Villar — was arrested.

Veltri said the FBI Miami SWAT team attempted to call out to any occupants of Pino’s home. According to the statement, when no one came out, agents entered the home and found Pino dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, alone in an upstairs bedroom.

Miami Herald reporter Chuck Rabin contributed to this report.