Sergio Pino, 67, was regarded by many in his Coral Gables, Florida, community as something of an only-in-America success story. At 12 years old, he arrived in Miami from Cuba and built his company, Century Homebuilders Group, into what is said to be the largest Hispanic-owned homebuilder in America. A success at nearly everything he did, he failed miserably at one thing: his persistent attempts to kill his wife, Tatiana, 55, who, as an alleged hit man explained, “wanted half of what Pino owned and would not settle [their divorce] for the offered 20 million dollars,” and instead began a fight for 50 percent of his $153 million fortune.
First, Pino tried poisoning her—with cyanide, arsenic, and fentanyl, which is suspected to have tainted the brussels sprouts Tatiana brought to a “Friendsgiving” dinner that ended with 10 powerful Miami women, including her, in the hospital. But his subsequent attempts included a gun, arson, a car ramming, and what a Miami F.B.I. agent would call two “Murder Crews” consisting of nine hit men. They were also more intimately violent.
This week’s installment begins after Pino’s attempts at poisoning Tatiana failed, and he and his Murder Crews had to resort to other means of destruction.
In the near-biblical trials and tribulations that would follow, Tatiana Pino’s faith would be tested but apparently never wavered, even in the face of persistent poisoning, the extent of which would later be detailed in The Miami Herald: “Coral Gables police and fire-rescue squads responded to more than 35 calls at the couple’s home for reports that Tatiana Pino was suffering from apparent seizures, illnesses, fainting or breathing problems.”
Things had gotten very ugly in the beautiful home that Tatiana and Pino shared.
“Before she moved to my house she was very ill, and he said, ‘I can’t wait for her to just die,’” her older sister Maria said in a deposition. “He didn’t expect me to be coming around the corner. And I saw him and he just looked at me.... Apparently, he was talking to somebody [on the phone].... I just looked at him and just [thought], Let God deal with him.”
“I was surprised in his ways,” she added. “I guess I live in the world of fantasy of love forever.”
Now, not only was Tatiana still alive, but she had discovered the poisonings. She would file for divorce in April 2022 after her younger sister Aurora “saw Husband [Pino] at his girlfriend’s house before the filing of the divorce,” according to a filing by Tatiana’s divorce attorney.
Aurora would prove to be a stalwart source of comfort throughout the divorce and Tatiana’s other travails.
“I was released from Johns Hopkins,” Tatiana would later say. “The doctors say, ‘I want you to go to your sister’s house. I want you to … recuperate there and I want you not to go to your normal surroundings.... They were scared for me because had this happened to me again, I would have been dead.”
And for six months in her sister Maria’s home, Tatiana Pino regained her strength.
Throughout their marriage, Tatiana had been a wife and mother, enjoying what she would call the couple’s “lavish and luxurious lifestyle” while supporting her husband, who, she said, told her she was part owner (“50/50”) of Century Homebuilders, without ever getting more specific. Tatiana did not respond to AIR MAIL’s request for comment.
Now, knowing her husband was still having an affair—along with perhaps other infidelities, and poisoning her—she hired one of Miami’s premier divorce attorneys, Raymond J. Rafool II, and began the fight over what she felt was rightfully hers. “The Husband did all and will pay the consequences for his greed and heartlessness,” Tatiana’s attorney wrote in a court filing once the threats on her life were reported in the local news.
The case of Pino v. Pino became, at least for Sergio, a ticking time bomb.
Dial M for Murder
In the bloody annals of marital murder and crime, surely no Sunshine State spouse has become as determined to settle a divorce with death as Sergio Pino—nor is there one who had so much trouble getting the job done.
When repeated attempts at poisoning failed, he unleashed his first alleged Murder Crew, which included a mate on his yacht, Bayron Bennett, and, according to the authorities, three other men—Jerren Howard, Edner “King” Etienne, and Michael Dulfo. They began what an indictment would call “numerous attempts to intimidate and kill [Tatiana] through acts such as arsons, a staged home invasion robbery and poisoning with cyanide, arsenic, and fentanyl.”
First, though, Pino turned his wrath on Aurora. She had accompanied Tatiana to Johns Hopkins, where the doctors found fentanyl in her bloodstream. With Pino being the only apparent suspect, and Tatiana too sick to speak, Aurora spilled everything she knew to police from her sister’s Maryland hospital room and filed a police report.
When they returned home, things got strange. “When I got back from Johns Hopkins … [Sergio] wanted me to be in charge of the investigation of the fentanyl poisoning,” Aurora said.
Then the “firebombs” began.
Late on the hot and humid night of July 2, 2022, a video-surveillance camera outside Aurora’s house caught what the criminal complaint describes as “a subject wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shorts” at 3:26 a.m. He walked toward her 2019 Dodge Ram and a bright-orange flash soon blazed across the video. “[The subject] then ran towards another vehicle, a 2019 Chevrolet Tahoe … poured a liquid from a red colored container on the hood of the Tahoe … then appeared to light something on fire and place the lit object near the hood and windshield area of the Tahoe. A flash of fire was seen, and the Tahoe became engulfed in flames.”
A year later, on August 12, 2023, the firebombing lit up the hot South Florida night again—although this time they were only successful in burning one car.
“And do you believe Sergio is behind that?” the sister was asked in the deposition.
“Yes, I do.”
“And what reasons do you have to think that he’s behind that?”
“Because he’s the only one with motive to do it,” she said. “Nothing has ever happened before. All of a sudden everything starts happening at the same time.”
Two weeks later, on August 30, 2023, after what Tatiana’s attorney would call “a contentious hearing in this divorce action,” the violence moved to the new home that Tatiana had purchased in the Miami suburb of Pinecrest. Again, the home video-surveillance camera captured everything: Tatiana pulling into her driveway at 4:12 P.M.; a Home Depot truck appearing and advancing; the driver putting the big truck in reverse, turning around behind Tatiana’s vehicle, racing through the front yard “at an increasing rate of speed,” and ramming Tatiana’s vehicle with the truck’s flatbed.
BAM!
“It was an intentional act and not an accidental collision,” an F.B.I. affidavit noted.
And a very weak one at that.
“Todo estas bien?” one member of the Murder Crew would ask the other over text message.
No, it wasn’t at all bien. Tatiana escaped unharmed.
“They rented a Home Depot truck the same day of our hearing and they waited for her to come back from the hearing and they shoved it in reverse when she came into her driveway, slammed into her car, and took off,” Tatiana’s attorney said in a deposition, before turning to Pino with a question.
“Do you know anything about that?… Did you have anything to do with that?”
“Why are you asking me?,” Pino replied. “What are you insinuating?”
He was a victim, too, he insisted. “My car was put on fire.”
Pino was in a business meeting, he explained, and when he emerged, his BMW was ablaze. Not only did he report the “firebombing,” as the torching of cars would be called in the combustible divorce proceedings, he had the proof in photos, which he showed on his phone during the deposition.
Then, he added, someone fired a gun at his house.
“I was coming home from Nancy’s house,” he said, referring to his girlfriend. He was opening the door when the shots rang out, shattering both the glass and the peace of his privileged Cocoplum gated community.
Along with the bullets and the car bombings came threats, said Pino. “A bunch of calls, anonymous calls.... Threats.... ‘You gotta get this divorce done. You gotta settle.’ Stupid things. And since I’m not afraid of anything it doesn’t concern me at all.”
For good reason. To deflect attention, Pino apparently staged attacks on himself, a fact that the F.B.I. would discover when it opened an investigation on him in 2023. “This investigation has identified Pino’s solicitation of individuals to burn his own car on September 7, 2023, shoot at his property, and provide false statements to law enforcement agents,” wrote an F.B.I. agent.
Bayron Bennett might have been capable of food-and-drink service on Pino’s yacht, but his alleged efforts to coordinate a successful Murder Crew failed spectacularly. By March of 2024, Bennett and all three members of his crew had been arrested.
“But the arrest did not deter Pino’s efforts,” U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe would say. “Mr. Pino then hired a second crew … to keep the murder plan going.”
“Make It Look Like a Heart Attack”
Soon, five fresh, hungry hit men, determined to collect the bounty Pino offered for proof of Tatiana’s death, were hot on her trail.
To assemble the second Murder Crew, Pino had turned to Fausto “Cuba” Villar, a roofer who had worked on Pino’s home and reportedly served prison time for armed robbery and other crimes.
Villar, who investigators would find had 16 WhatsApp calls with Pino in one month alone, enlisted the help of someone he’d met in state prison: Avery Bivins, 36. He told Bivins “about a wealthy man [later identified as Pino] who had contracted him to kill his estranged wife,” according to an affidavit. Villar told Bivins “to gather a group for the job.... Bivins contacted [Clementa] Johnson to kill [Tatiana].... Johnson researched [Tatiana] and Pino and explained to Bivins how much money they possessed.”
And, brother, the money was endless: $150,000 for the job, and another $150,000 if Pino wasn’t connected to the crime.
They also recruited Diori Barnard and Vernon Green, who, according to NBC 6 South Florida, was on probation after serving 27 years for armed robbery and attempted murder.
“Villar also provided cash payments of $30,000 and $45,000 up front during two separate meetings … [and] syringes and vials to use during the execution of the murder contract.” Pino had allegedly suggested to Villar that the crew kill Tatiana “by injecting her with a provided liquid substance to make her death appear to be a heart attack,” according to the indictment.
There was also a deadline. Villar emphasized that Tatiana had to be dead by June 24, 2024, “to ensure she could not make the next divorce proceeding between her and Pino.”
Getting close to Tatiana Pino with a syringe would prove to be tough, so the crew employed other tactics, according to the indictment: “stalking and intimidating, tracking her movements in Miami Dade and Monroe Counties, entering her property masked and without consent and menacing others on her property by pointing a gun at their head.”
On June 23, with the deadline fast approaching, Pino’s crew struck yet again while Tatiana was returning from worship at Calvary Chapel Miami, waiting for the gate of her Pinecrest home to open.
First, she saw “a black male individual … brandishing a firearm and running toward her vehicle.” It was Vernon Green, dressed South Florida–style: shorts, a T-shirt, yellow boots, a beanie, and a face mask. The ensemble might have been laughable, but the pistol in his hand was not.
He pointed it at Tatiana, who immediately sprang into action.
Continuously honking her horn, she drove into her backyard, scraping the sides of her car against a tree and a fence. The would-be assassin ran after her with the pistol, but Tatiana, once again, got away. So Green turned and ran toward the front of the house. Inside, Tatiana and Pino’s 26-year-old daughter, Alessandra, heard the car honking and the crash, and ran outside to see what was happening. At one point, she turned around and was facing Green, who “pointed a pistol with a silver slide inches from her face,” according to court documents. “Green grabbed [Alessandra’s arm] and told her to go back in the house,” where she frantically called 911.
“There is a guy with a gun!” she managed to tell the dispatcher. “He just pointed a gun at me, and they are still here.... I need to tell my mom not to come home. I think they might be looking for her.”
The next day, on June 24, the F.B.I. raided Pino’s Cocoplum home, seizing his phones and computers. But the raid and F.B.I. investigation didn’t faze him at all. Lapointe later said that the law-enforcement officers on Pino’s trail “felt somewhat disturbed at the level of brazenness that he had, even though he knew they were after him.”
A Death in Coral Gables
By July, it was clear that Pino’s murder-for-hire scheme had backfired spectacularly. All nine of the bumbling hit men were—or would soon be—arrested on a cascading array of charges, some with murder for hire, others for stalking, arson, and use of fire to commit a felony. “They were either the worst hit men in the world, or they were just trying to scare her so that she would settle for less money,” says Ana Quincoces, a real-estate attorney, former member of The Real Housewives of Miami, and host of the Dial M for Miami true-crime podcast, who has known Sergio and Tatiana for many years.
Those who have appeared in court have pleaded not guilty, but some had apparently sung over intercepted phone calls.
“After Barnard’s and Johnson’s arrests, Bivins notified Villar.... Villar expressed that ‘his boy,’ [Pino] was worried about their arrests. Villar stated he would contact Pino for money to cover their legal fees,” reads the criminal affidavit. “During the call, Villar impressed upon Bivins that they needed to cease contact and lay low until ‘the smoke clears,’” and “instructed Bivins to delete his Instagram, clear his phone logs, and get rid of his burner telephone.”
The divorce hearing was looming, Tatiana Pino was still breathing, and the F.B.I. was circling, preparing to arrest Pino. But he plowed forward, denying everything and determined to finish the job.
In getting his affairs in order, it seems that Pino was attempting to beat Tatiana once and for all. This time it would be on paper: he reportedly transferred funds and re-wrote his will, leaving his company and residences to his younger brother, Carlos, who could either retain the properties or sell them. But the proceeds from any sale wouldn’t go to Tatiana. Instead, they would be split between Pino’s four children.
“We knew he was trying to kill his wife,” said Lapointe. “What if we give him notice and he decides, ‘You know what? I’m going to speed up the process now. Since the two crews couldn’t kill [her], I’m going to kill her myself.’”
Before dawn on July 16, the F.B.I. drove through the gates of Cocoplum and toward Pino’s home in a tremendous show of force. “It started at six a.m., and I got there at seven,” says Pino’s attorney, Sam Rabin. “They went to the house with an armored car, SWAT team, drones, flash-bang grenades, tear gas and sharpshooters. Agents were on his yacht at the back of the house. They drove the armored vehicle up to the house and were on a loudspeaker, demanding that he come out. Then they set off flash grenades every 15 minutes for several hours. But he never came out of the house.”
Shortly before noon, in his multi-million-dollar home, Pino pulled out a gun. But he didn’t aim it at Tatiana. He pointed it toward himself, and fired.
The agents found his body in his bedroom, and pronounced him dead at 10:20 A.M.
Sergio Pino had arrived in Miami from Cuba on a wave of hope and aspiration. He left in a body bag, a symbol of both the American Dream and the American nightmare.
“It’s been four years of a nightmare that we’ve lived and we’re just trying to recover as a family,” says Tatiana’s sister Aurora. “We’ve lived through unimaginable trauma from someone that was once a trusted family member. We just don’t know what got Sergio to the point where he would turn to such horrific violence against us.”
“I think about how sad it was that he fought over giving her half of his wealth to the point of trying to kill her, and in the end he committed suicide, leaving her with 100 percent of it,” says Florida state representative Vicki Lopez.
It won’t happen without a fight. Tatiana arrived in a Miami court on August 9, her attorney insisting that her late husband had been stricken with an “insane delusion” and “a diseased condition of the mind,” and that the will he left behind should be invalidated and that financial transfers he made before his death be investigated. The judge ruled round one in her favor, temporarily blocking any takeover of Pino’s estate by his brother, Carlos, who charged, in court filings, that Tatiana “failed to provide any specific facts to support the allegations.”
The estate will surely be tied up for some time. For now, the woman who survived so many attempts on her life, who endured poisoning and triumphed over nine allegedly hired hit men, will not be denied.
“Jesus alone is responsible for Tatiana being alive,” her friend Lisa Lorenzo would tell The Miami Herald in a statement. “He’s protected her at least a dozen times.”
“Praise the Lord,” Tatiana said at one point in her deposition.
After Pino’s death, she changed the locks on the doors of Century Homebuilders, according to local news reports, and removed his name and photograph from atop the company’s online list of officers.
In his place, she put her own name.
“Tatiana Pino,” it reads. “President.”
Mark Seal is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of many nonfiction books, including The Man in the Rockefeller Suit and Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli
