Plea talks get started for nine accused in developer Sergio Pino’s murder-for-hire case
When developer Sergio Pino fatally shot himself last July just before FBI agents could arrest him at his Coral Gables home, he erased himself as the ringleader of a plot to murder his estranged wife amid a nasty divorce over tens of millions of dollars.
But Pino’s death did not spare the two crews of men that authorities say he had hired to threaten and kill his wife, Tatiana.
As a Miami trial looms for nine defendants in federal custody, their lawyers plan to begin negotiations with a prosecutor that could lead to guilty pleas and lesser prison sentences, according to newly filed court records.
“Prosecutors have expressed an interest in discussing and/or offering plea agreements in the near future, but with nine defendants, such efforts are reasonably expected to take additional time,” defense lawyer Danise Ponton wrote in a motion seeking to postpone a trial that was set for Monday.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles granted delaying the jury trial until May 5.
Thousands of pages of documents
A few of the defense lawyers representing the nine men, who face from 10 years to life in prison on charges including stalking, arson and murder conspiracy, said the plea negotiations with Assistant U.S. Attorney Abbie Waxman have been on hold because of the voluminous discovery — thousands of pages of documents and tens of thousands of “phone dump” results from electronic devices.
“I don’t see anyone here going to trial, with the possible exception of the leaders of the conspiracy,” said attorney Paul Donnelly, who is representing a defendant with a supporting role. “This is the home stretch toward a resolution.”
“Despite the fact that this case has been out there for a while due to its complexity, we’re just at the beginning of the plea negotiations,” said attorney Humberto Dominguez, who is representing a defendant who flipped for the FBI as a cooperating witness a few days before Pino killed himself.
“At least for my client, I do anticipate a prompt resolution,” Dominguez said.
If Pino, 67, 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 Cocoplum in the Gables, he would have been charged in the indictment as the lead defendant who directed a 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 — Michael Jose 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, Etienne rammed a rented Home Depot flatbed truck backwards into Tatiana Pino’s Land Rover Defender in the driveway of her Pinecrest home and then sped away. A month later, the same crew allegedly committed arson on three vehicles owned by her sister.
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, Averey 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 affidavit.
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 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 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
She 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, 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 in Kendall, 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.
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.
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.
