A millionaire real estate developer attempted to kill his wife through multiple failed hired hits before the feds closed in on him and he took his own life.
Sergio Pino, who committed suicide in July, was accused of sending a man to kill his ex-wife, Tatiana, until his daughter Alessandra, 26, unknowingly foiled the plan on June 23.
“Please, there’s someone with a gun 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 organized the murder plot multiple times starting in July 2022 by hiring several men and even tried to poison her with fentanyl, police said.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 27 years, and something like this… seemed like something out of a Hollywood movie, but unfortunately this was real life,” said Pinecrest Police Department Chief Jason Cohen. . Fox News Digital.
Federal authorities have accused Pino of hiring several men to stalk and poison his wife before the June 23 attempt, in which alleged hitman Vernon Green, 53, was charged.
Sergio Pino has been accused of sending a man to kill his ex-wife, Tatiana, until his daughter Alessandra, 26, unknowingly foiled the plan on June 23.
Authorities believe he organized the murder plot multiple times starting in July 2022 by hiring several men and even tried to poison her with fentanyl, police said. Federal authorities have accused Pino of hiring several 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 his car in his driveway. Cohen said the driver had been waiting for Tatiana to return home.
The investigation began after this incident, after the police “learned much of the background to what had been happening with Mrs. Pino, the allegations that she had been poisoned or drugged by her potential future ex-husband.” Cohen told Fox News Digital.
“We were informed that this incident here was probably much more than someone crashing into her while she was walking home,” he told the outlet. “It started to make sense that this was just another piece of that big puzzle.”
A total of nine people, including Green, have allegedly been involved in Pino’s plots. Six have been charged with murder for hire, while the others face charges of stalking and arson, according to Fox News Digital.
Those arrested include Bayron Bennett, 33; Fausto Villar, 42; Avery Bivins, 36 years old; Clementa Johnson, 47; Diori Barnard, 47 years old; Jerren Keith Howard, 38; Michael José Dulfo, 42; and Edner Etienne, 27 years old.
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 NBCMiami.
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 armed robbery.
“It’s going to be okay, everything is going to be okay,” he told Villar.
‘Right. But the damn smoke has to clear. Everything has to dissipate, the smoke has to dissipate. So with what you have try to defend yourself,’ Villar responded.
In July, Bivins agreed to cooperate with authorities and made a recorded phone call to Villar, who he said recruited him. The feds moved in to arrest Pino and Villar after the phone call.
Alessandra (pictured with her mother) called the police on June 23 after finding a man with a gun in her home. She can be heard telling the 911 operator at that time. ‘He just pointed a gun at me, they’re still here’
Villar had expressed concern that the feds were already in on their plot, as several of the nine were already being arrested.
“Why, if they catch you, are they going to have to do it? This becomes a conspiracy now,” he told Bivins over the phone. ‘Now you can’t get rid of the guilt. Your two children now, or whoever they are, can be free of the blame.
‘You should delete your’ gram. You delete your gram. You delete… you delete. Do that for me, delete that. And then, I’m going to use Zero Dark Thirty on this shit 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, one day they knock on your door or, in any case, someone has to let me “. I know it around here, like a code or something.’
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 had been completed successfully, he would have received an additional bonus of $150,000, according to the FBI.
Later in July, Pino shot himself in the bedroom of his oceanfront mansion in Coral Gables, where Villar’s wife’s roofing company had performed work on the $8 million property.
In July, Pino shot himself in the bedroom of his oceanfront mansion in Coral Gables.
Police continue to monitor Tatiana’s house ‘at least a few times a day’, despite her husband’s suicide
—It seems that he saw that he was falling. “He probably thought he was going to be charged with this,” Cohen told Fox News Digital. “It’s definitely very telling in my opinion of someone with a guilty conscience, but it’s 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 thinking he had tried to poison her.
Police continue to monitor Tatiana’s home “at least a few times a day,” despite her husband’s suicide, Cohen told Fox News Digital.
“We have what’s called a watch list…officers will go through and just do an outside search to make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary,” he said. “That will continue for the foreseeable future simply because there are still so many open and moving parts.”
Pino’s lawyers criticized the “level of police activity at his residence” and said it was “unnecessary” considering that “we offered to hand him over.”
Attorney Sam Rabin said the allegations leveled against his late client “lack” evidence and are simply “rumors and accusations.”
However, Bivins told the FBI that Villar said Pino wanted his wife dead for denying his $20 million divorce offer.
The couple had a net worth of between $153 million and $359 million in 2022, according to financial statements.