Two men hired in Pino’s murder-for-hire plot plead guilty — the first to admit to the crime
Two men who never personally knew big-time Miami-Dade developer Sergio Pino pleaded guilty on Wednesday to federal charges involving his hiring of a couple of crews to kill his estranged wife.
Both men are the first of nine defendants charged in Pino’s murder-for-hire conspiracy case to admit to the crime in Miami federal court. Pino would have been charged along with them, but the prominent South Florida home builder fatally shot himself at his Cocoplum residence when FBI agents came to arrest him last summer.
Pino, 67, had been going through a bitter divorce with his wife, Tatiana, who stood to inherit half of his empire — valued at more than $100 million.
On Wednesday, Michael Jose Dulfo, 43, pleaded guilty to charges of stalking, racketeering and use of fire as part of efforts to ram an SUV driven by Pino’s wife, Tatiana, and to torch her sister’s vehicles. Dulfo faces at least 10 years in prison, but because he’s cooperating with federal prosecutors, his ultimate punishment is unclear. He has a sentencing hearing on July 8 before U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles.
Avery Bivins, 37, pleaded guilty to the murder-for-hire conspiracy, stalking and brandishing a firearm as part of attempts to kill Tatiana Pino, including an incident where another man in his crew pointed a gun at the wife and then at her adult daughter in the driveway of their Pinecrest home. Bivins faces from seven years up to life in prison, but since he’s also cooperating with authorities, it’s unclear what prison time he will get at his sentencing on July 8 before Judge Gayles.
After Wednesday’s plea hearing, Dulfo’s lawyer, Paul Donnelly, and Bivins’ attorney, Humberto Dominguez, said their clients, who are being held at a federal lock-up, decided to cooperate with prosecutors Abbie Waxman and Brian Dobbins at early stages assistance. The defense lawyers said their assistance should help reduce their punishment. In fact, Bivins flipped for the FBI as a cooperating witness a few days before Pino killed himself, playing a critical role in solidifying the feds’ case.
If Pino, the former CEO of Century Homebuilders Group, had not killed himself on the morning of July 16 as FBI agents swarmed his waterfront home in Coral Gables, he would have been charged in the indictment as the lead defendant who directed the murder-for-hire conspiracy that unfolded in two parts.
In the first part, Pino recruited Bayron Bennett, a handyman who provided services for his yacht excursions. Bennett is accused of enlisting three other men — Dulfo, Jerren Keith Howard and Edner Etienne — for his crew in the alleged plot targeting the developer’s 55-year-old wife, Tatiana.
Rammed truck backwards in her driveway
In 2023, the group is accused of coordinating a couple of bizarre attacks to threaten and harm the wife. That August, with Dulfo’s assistance, Etienne rented Home Depot flatbed truck and rammed it backwards into Tatiana Pino’s Land Rover Defender in the driveway of her Pinecrest home and then sped away. Dulfo played the role of a lookout.
A month later, the same crew committed arson on three vehicles owned by Tatiana’s sister and brother-in-law at their Miami-Dade home, according to a factual statement filed with Dulfo’s plea agreement.
In the second part, Pino recruited a former felon who was working as a roofer on his Cocoplum home.
Fausto Villar then enlisted another ex-felon, Bivins, whom he knew from prison to help carry out the murder-for-hire scheme, according to the FBI. In turn, Bivins brought in another friend to execute the deadly plot, according to an FBI criminal complaint and the factual statement filed with his plea agreement.
Bivins, however, would end up betraying Villar when FBI agents persuaded him to call the roofer on July 15 on their burner cellphones. During that conversation, Villar recounted Pino’s 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 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 on charges of conspiring with Pino to kill his wife.
Divorce fight over millions
Tatiana Pino had sued her husband for divorce in 2022 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.
Here’s what the FBI charging documents say about Pino’s alleged plot targeting his wife:
On June 23, 2024, Tatiana Pino drove to church in Kendall. She was followed by a man who’d been hired to tail her that Sunday morning.
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 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’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.
But when the attempt to end his 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.
Knew each other from prison
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 and Bivins’ factual statement.
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, instructing that Tatiana “had to be killed by June 24, 2024, to ensure that she could not make a July 2024 divorce proceeding between her and Pino,” according to Bivins’ factual statement.
According to federal authorities familiar with the investigation, Pino’s end game was to have Villar’s crew kill his wife and then in a cover-up inject her with a syringe of fentanyl, a lethal synthetic heroin, to make it look like she died by suicide.
Poisoned wife with fentanyl: feds
FBI documents state that attempts on Tatiana’s life began in 2019, years before the FBI says Pino hired “murder crews” to kill her. They say Tatiana “had been poisoned with fentanyl through the tampering of her prescribed medication,” making an oblique reference to her near-death overdose at the couple’s Cocoplum home in February 2022.
The central conspiracy charge brought against the defendants cites alleged attempts to kill Tatiana between June 2022 and July 2024 with cyanide, arsenic and fentanyl, as well as the other attempts on her life.
This story was originally published April 16, 2025 at 6:33 PM.
