How a former felon helped FBI build case against developer in murder-for-hire scheme
.JPG "Sergio Pino, president of Century Homebuilders LLC, and his project Century Grand, on July 11, 2006.")
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FBI investigating Sergio Pino
FBI agents raided the residence the well-known home builder as part of a investigation into his alleged connection to threats against his wife Tatiana Pino’s life. The pair are in a divorce dispute.
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When Miami-Dade developer Sergo Pino began searching for someone to kill his wife, federal investigators say, he didn’t look very far. He hired a former felon who was working as a roofer on his waterfront home in the upscale Cocoplum neighborhood, they say.
Fausto Villar then recruited another ex-felon he knew from prison to help carry out the murder-for-hire scheme, according to FBI criminal complaints and affidavits. Villar put his faith in Avery Bivins, who brought in another friend to execute the deadly plot, the documents say.
Bivins, however, would end up betraying Villar when FBI agents persuaded him to call the roofer on July 15 on their burner cellphones in which Villar recounted Pino’s alleged plot to kill his wife at her Pinecrest home just weeks earlier and told him to cease contact until “the smoke clears,” according to the documents filed in Miami federal court. The recorded conversation was a turning point in the FBI investigation that led to an attempt to arrest the wealthy developer the following day, when Pino, 67, killed himself with a gun in his home rather than surrender to agents.
Bivins’ decision to flip on Villar set the stage for the arrests of the roofer and others who face indictment this week on likely charges of conspiring with Pino to kill his 55-year-old wife, Tatiana. She had sued her husband for divorce more than two years ago and was still battling him in court over potentially tens of millions of dollars in joint personal and business assets at the time of his death.
Bivins’ attorney, Humberto Dominguez, declined to comment.
Villar’s lawyer, Saam Zangeneh, said he’s aware of the allegations in the complaint and is looking forward to reviewing the FBI’s evidence, including the “controlled call” between Bivins and Villar.
“It’s a piece of evidence, and we will look at it for its value,” Zangeneh said Tuesday. “But with a controlled call, you’re dealing with a cooperating defendant or informant. These people don’t have a squeaky-clean background, which is the case here.”
Bivins, 36, served 12 years in state prison on charges related to drug-trafficking, theft and attempted murder. Villar, 42, also did six years in prison on charges involving armed robbery.
A Miami-area private investigator who has worked for 35 years on everything from financial fraud to gold smuggling cases said Bivins was targeted by the FBI as a potential cooperating suspect because of his position in the murder-for-hire crew and his criminal background.
“He was the one in the group who was probably the most vulnerable and the most likely to cooperate,” said David Bolton, who added that in his experience the Sergio Pino tale “has all the makings of a movie.”
Read more: Tatiana Pino’s life as a target: poisoned at home, followed from church, cars set ablaze
Here’s what the FBI charging documents say about Pino’s alleged plot targeting his wife: On June 23, Tatiana Pino drove to church that Sunday morning. She was followed by a man who’d been hired to tail her.
Ten miles away, in Pinecrest, another man was parked in a truck outside her house, waiting for her return from Calvary Church, according to the FBI documents. As Tatiana Pino pulled into her driveway, Vernon Green exited his truck and ran toward her, brandishing a gun. Pino slammed the horn and floored the gas pedal, roaring into her backyard.
During the commotion, Pino’s adult daughter ran out of the house and was confronted by Green, who pointed his pistol “inches from her face,” grabbed her arm and told her to get back, the documents allege.
After the botched attempt on Tatiana Pino’s life, Green fled in his truck. FBI agents went to her home that Sunday to gather evidence, including security surveillance footage. The following day, agents raided her husband’s home and business, Century Homebuilders Group, in Coral Gables.
For Tatiana Pino, the attack capped a five-year stretch of menacing and terrifying assaults that federal authorities say were orchestrated by her husband, including attempts to poison her, according to the FBI documents. Pino, a Cuban immigrant who turned a modest plumbing business into a home-building empire, directed Villar and his crew to kill his wife upon her return from church that Sunday because the couple was facing an imminent trial over their 1992 nuptial agreement and marital assets, investigators say.
But when the attempt to end the wife’s life failed, Pino ran out of moves.
The breakthrough in the FBI investigation came on July 12, when agents contacted Bivins, saying they had a federal search warrant for his cellphone and other evidence and wanted to talk with him. Bivins’ lawyer advised him to do so.
FBI agents learned Bivins knew Villar as “Cuba,” and that they got acquainted in state prison and remained in touch after their release. Villar reached out to Bivins in the fall of 2023 about a “wealthy man [Sergio Pino] who contracted him to kill his estranged wife,” according to FBI documents. Villar “enlisted Bivins to gather a group for the job,” which included contacting a friend named Clementa Johnson to execute the hit on Pino’s wife, the documents say. Johnson then brought in his cousin, Green, the gunman who allegedly assaulted Tatiana Pino outside her home.
Bivins agreed to the arrangement, and he and Villar met multiple times.
According to Villar, Pino’s wife “wanted half of what Pino owned and would not settle for the offered 20 million dollars” in their divorce case, the FBI documents say.
“Pino was willing to pay $150,000 for the murder contract’s completion and there were would be an additional $150,000 if the contract was carried out without detection,” according to the documents. “Villar also provided two cash payments of $30,000 and $45,000 up front during two separate meetings.”
Villar also provided syringes, vials and injections for use in the plot targeting Pino’s wife, but it’s unclear from the FBI documents how they were supposed to be used.
By mid-July, Bivins was starting to cooperate with FBI agents, agreeing to record a critical conversation with Villar on their burner cellphones.
“Villar implied to Bivins that he could not get more money from Pino because law enforcement was monitoring Pino,” according to FBI documents summarizing their conversation. Villar also told Bivins to delete his Instagram page, clear his phone logs and get rid of his burner phone.
Also significant, Villar talked about an earlier threat on Pino’s wife in August of last year, when another group of four men was allegedly recruited by the developer to target her. In that instance, a man driving a rented Home Depot flatbed truck rammed backwards into Tatiana Pino’s car in her Pinecrest driveway and then sped away. That same group has been charged with threatening the wife’s life as well as committing arson on three vehicles owned by her sister.
In the phone conversation, Villar warned Bivins that federal investigators might connect “the first attempts” on Tatiana Pino’s life with the second attempt outside her home in June, leading to a possible “conspiracy” charge against all of the suspects, according to the FBI documents.
Villar told Bivins “to take care of his people,” implying he needed “to keep them in line” and that they will be rewarded for their loyalty. By then, three other suspects in their crew had already been arrested: Johnson, Green and another associate, Diori Barnard. Their attorneys could not be reached for comment.
Villar said Pino expressed concern about their arrests and that they might be talking to investigators. Villar “instructed Bivins to make sure” the three arrested suspects “did not give [them] up” by making the murder-for-hire scheme look instead like a robbery, the FBI documents say.
Immediately after the July 15 phone conversation, the FBI monitored a “pen register trap and trace” on Pino’s cellular phone and found that the developer spoke with Villar for about three minutes and 15 seconds on a WhatsApp call. They also exchanged WhatsApp messages. Agents had a search warrant for cellphone call logs and messages between the men, though they could not listen in to their conversations.
In addition, FBI agents used the same monitoring device and toll data for Villar, Pino and the other suspects, which they say reflected how the group “coordinated their efforts” in the second murder-for-hire scheme.
Two weeks after Pino took his own life, people who knew him have expressed astonishment that he allegedly tried to kill his wife, pointing out that he appeared to do so in such a reckless manner and then refused to surrender to the FBI on July 16. Before he killed himself that morning, he had sent letters to his “team” at Century Homebuilders and to others in his inner circle, thanking them all for “caring” and expressing how “the last few days have been the most difficult of my entire life.”
It all made no sense to many.
“He knew the FBI was on to him and yet he still tried to kill her,” said one former associate, adding that a lot of people who knew him were in disbelief over the turn of events. “He was always viewed as a smart businessman. What he did was not only reckless but beyond stupid.”
Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed to this story.
This story was originally published July 31, 2024 at 12:00 AM.
