A millionaire property developer tried to kill his wife through multiple failed contracted hits before the feds closed in on him and he took his own life.
Sergio Pino, who died by suicide in July, was accused of sending a man to kill his estranged wife, Tatiana, until his 26-year-old daughter Alessandra unknowingly foiled the plan on June 23.
‘Please, someone with a gun is here,’ a frantic Alessandra can be heard telling the 911 operator at the time. ‘He just pointed a gun at me, they’re still here.’
Authorities believe he arranged the murder plot several times beginning in July 2022 by hiring multiple men and even tried to poison her with fentanyl, police said.
‘I’ve been in law enforcement for 27 years, and something like this … it seemed like something out of a Hollywood movie, but this was unfortunately real life,’ Pinecrest Police Department Chief Jason Cohen told Fox News Digital.
Federal authorities have accused Pino of hiring multiple men to stalk and poison his wife before the June 23 attempt, which saw alleged hitman Vernon Green, 53, being charged.
Sergio Pino has been accused of sending a man to kill his estranged wife , Tatiana, until his 26-year-old daughter Alessandra unknowingly foiled the plan on June 23
Authorities believe he arranged the murder plot several times beginning in July 2022 by hiring multiple men and even tried to poison her with fentanyl, police said. Federal authorities have accused Pino of hiring multiple men to stalk and poison his wife before the June 23 attempt
A year earlier, a hitman allegedly rammed a rented Home Depot truck into her car in her driveway. Cohen said the driver had been waiting for Tatiana to come home.
The investigation began after this incident after police were ‘made aware of a lot of the background of what had been going on with Mrs. Pino, the accusations of her being poisoned or drugged by potentially her soon-to-be ex-husband,’ Cohen told Fox News Digital.
‘It was brought to our attention that this incident here was likely much more than just somebody crashing into her while she’s coming home,’ he told the outlet. ‘It started to make sense that this was just another piece in that big puzzle.’
A total of nine people, including Green, have been allegedly involved in Pino’s plots. Six have been charged with murder-for-hire, while the others face charges for stalking and arson, according to Fox News Digital.
Those arrested include Bayron Bennett, 33; Fausto Villar, 42; Avery Bivins, 36; Clementa Johnson, 47; Diori Barnard, 47; Jerren Keith Howard, 38; Michael Jose Dulfo, 42; and Edner Etienne, 27.
They all face a maximum penalty of life in prison.
In July, Bivins agreed to cooperate with authorities and made a recorded phone call to the man he said recruited him for the hit, according to NBC Miami.
Bivins called Villars, whom he met in a Florida state prison while the former was serving time for murder and armed robbery and the latter for just armed robbery.
‘It’s going to be good, everything gonna be straight,’ he told Villar.
‘Straight. But the f**king smoke has to clear. Everything has to clear, smoke has to clear. So with what you got, try to fend off,’ Villar replied.
In July, Bivins agreed to cooperate with authorities and made a recorded phone call to Villar, who he said recruited him. The feds moved into to arrest Pino and Villar after the phone call
Alessandra (pictured with her mother) called police on June 23 after finding a man with a gun in her home. She can be heard telling the 911 operator at the time. ‘He just pointed a gun at me, they’re still here’
Villar had expressed worry the feds were already onto their plot as several of the nine were already being arrested.
‘Why would you, if you get pinched, they’re going to have, this becomes now a conspiracy,’ he told Bivins on the phone. ‘Now you can’t shake the rap. Your two boys now, or whoever the f— they are, they can shake the rap.
‘You should erase your ‘gram. You erase your ‘gram. You delete…delete. Do that for me, erase that. And then, I’m going to go Zero Dark Thirty on this s**t for a while.’
They even discussed what would happen if the feds showed up at Bivins door, with Villar saying: ‘We need a plan where, let’s say, God forbid, they knock on your door one day or like whatever the case, someone’s got to let me know through here, like a code or something, yo.’
The feds moved in to arrest Pino and Villar after the phone call, according to NBC Miami.
Villars had paid Bivins $75,000 of the $150,000 contract to murder Tatiana. If the murder was completed successfully, he would have received an additional $150,000 bonus, according to the FBI.
Later in July, Pino shot himself in the bedroom of his waterfront Coral Gables mansion, where Villar’s wife’s roofing company had done work on the $8 million property.
In July, Pino shot himself in the bedroom of his waterfront Coral Gables mansion
Police continue to keep watch over Tatiana’s home ‘at least a few times day,’ despite her husband’s suicide
‘It would appear he saw it was coming down. He likely thought he was going to get charged with this,’ Cohen told Fox News Digital. ‘It definitely, in my opinion, is very telling of someone with a guilty conscience, but just my opinion of a 27-year veteran.’
Pino and his wife were married for 30 years before she filed for divorce in April 2022 after she thought he had tried to poison her.
Police continue to keep watch over Tatiana’s home ‘at least a few times day,’ despite her husband’s suicide, Cohen told Fox News Digital.
‘We have what’s called a watch list … the officers will go by and just kind of do an exterior search to make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary,’ he said. ‘That will continue for the foreseeable future just because there’s still a lot of, you know, open and moving parts.’
Lawyers for Pino have slammed the ‘level of law enforcement activity at his residence’ and said it was ‘unnecessary’ considering ‘we offered to surrender him’.
The lawyer, Sam Rabin, said the claims made against his late client are ‘lacking’ evidence and are simply ‘rumors and allegations’.
However, Bivins told the FBI that Villar said Pino wanted his wife dead for denying his $20 million divorce settlement offer.
The couple had a net worth between $153 million and $359 million as of 2022, according to financial statements.
