Pincho part-owner accused of funding fugitive dad won’t get jail time

Prosecutors have dropped a felony charge against a wealthy Miami Beach businessman who was accused of secretly funding his father, a supermarket magnate who spent years on the lam in a high-profile murder case.

Yaddiel Marin, whose family ran several Presidente supermarkets and who is also an investor in the Pincho restaurant chain, pleaded no contest Thursday to a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence. He won’t spend any time in jail.

Instead, as part of the plea deal, Marin, 32, agreed to pay $10,000 to a Miami victims’ rights organization. No criminal conviction will show on his record.

Prosecutors did not say why they dropped the charge against Marin, who was arrested in November on the same day his father was returned in shackles from Spain to surrender and face a murder rap.

Marin was not charged with participating in the murder itself. His defense lawyer said the resisting charge stemmed from the day in November when officers arrested him at his Miami Beach home. It is unclear whether Marin could be called to testify against his father.

His father, Manuel Marin, is accused of murdering Camilo Salazar, 43, whose body was found bound on a dirt road in West Miami-Dade in June 2011. Salazar had been brutally beaten, his throat slit, his groin torched.

Miami-Dade police say Salazar was having an affair with the wife of Manuel Marin, who became enraged and masterminded the murder. Prosecutors say Manuel Marin enlisted the help of a boxing promoter and two mixed martial arts fighters to help him kidnap, torture and murder Salazar.

Three days after the killing, Manuel Marin hopped a flight to Europe, where he lived while occasionally visiting Cuba. Prosecutors say Manuel Marin’s cellphone was used in the same area where Salazar’s corpse was discovered, and toll records also showed him driving near where the body was found.

Manuel Marin was listed as an executive and owner of Presidente supermarkets, a fast-growing Hispanic supermarket chain. The company listed him as a part founder of the chain of grocery stores that started in the New York area, although Presidente has since sought to distance itself from Manuel Marin, saying he only owned a few locations.

When he went to Europe, his son ran several supermarkets, and also invested in a string of Miami businesses.

Prosecutors alleged that Yaddiel Marin funded his father’s time on the lam, operating a joint bank account with his father that “was continually used to provide financial support on behalf of Manuel Marin.”

His lawyer, James Ferraro, called Thursday’s no-contest plea a “fair deal.”

“The evidence was not there. He was not involved in any murder,” Ferraro said. “He was not involved in any conspiracy to commit any type of murder.”

This story was originally published April 4, 2019 at 1:51 PM.