Miami Wife ‘Picking Up Pieces’ After Millionaire Husband Allegedly Hired Hitmen to Kill Her: Friend

Mar. 15, 2025

Sergio Pino and Tatiana Pino at a wedding reception in Miami Beach in 2019.Photo:Elaine Palladino photography

Elaine Palladino photography

In the Miami social scene, real estate developer Sergio Pino and his wife, Tatiana, were known as generous philanthropists who counted prominent politicians among their friends, including U.S. senator Marco Rubio and his wife, Jeanette, and Florida’s lieutenant governor Jeanette Nuñez.

“Sergio was a networker,” saysAna Quincoces, host of the Dial M for Miami podcast and aReal Housewives of Miamialum, who knew the Pinos for 20 years. “Tatiana was always a beauty and a real good mother.”

In private, however, the glamorous couple, who had two children together, had entered a rough patch in 2017.

Sergio, 67, was having an affair with another woman, and Tatiana, 55, began to sufferfrom a mysterious epilepsy-like illness that a series of doctors tried, and failed, to diagnoseuntil a specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore came to the shocking conclusion that Tatiana was being poisoned with fentanyl that somebody was putting in her prescription medications.

“I thought I was going to die,” Tatiana later recalled during a deposition in the couple’s divorce proceedings.

Suspicious that her husband had given her the tainted medicine, Tatiana filed for divorce in April 2022. In bitter negotiations in court, she demanded half of the family’s $360 million fortune,while Sergio fought to pay her less than 10 percent.

Sergio Pino, the president, CEO and founder of Century Homebuilders Group, at the company’s Midtown Doral, Flordia, residential complex sales center.Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald via ZUMA

Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald via ZUMA

Tatiana, who was unharmed in both alleged attempts on her life, alerted the FBI, whose investigation of the incidents pointed to Sergio and his murder-for-hire conspirators.

But on July 16, when FBI special agents with a warrant for Sergio’s arrest raided his mansion in the gated community of Cocoplum, using stun grenades, they discovered Sergio, in his bedroom, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

South Florida developer Sergio Pino dead amid FBI investigation.NBC 6 South Florida/Youtube

NBC 6 South Florida/Youtube

Says Pinecrest police chief Jason Cohen, whose department took part in the investigation: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 27 years in law enforcement. It’s like something you’d see in a movie.”

In 1995 Sergio left his family’s plumbing business to start Century Homebuilders Group, which he grew into one of the largest Hispanic-owned homebuilders in the country. “He did a lot of good,” says Sergio’s brother Carlos Pino.

Bennett and the three men were arrested and charged in connection with a “campaign to stalk, torment and attempt to kill a victim,” U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said in a statement.

At a July 17 press conference, Lapointe alleged that Sergio then hired a “second crew,” who chased Tatiana with a gun in her yard.

“Her daughter [Alessandra] came out, and the perpetrator pointed the gun at the daughter,” he said. “Literally, she was looking at the barrel.”

With Sergio’s death, Tatiana is now fighting with Sergio’s family for control of Century Homebuilders, of which she claims she is now sole owner.

Says one friend: “She’s healing, focusing on helping her daughters deal with the trauma and picking up the pieces.”

On July 31, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida announced that asuperseding indictmentwas returned charging Bennett, 33, Fausto Villar, 42, Avery Bivins, 36, Clementa Johnson, 47, Vernon Green, 53, Diori Barnard, 47, Jerren Howard, 38, Michael Dulfo, 42, and Edner Etienne 27, all of Florida, “for their respective involvement in a campaign to stalk, torment and attempt to kill a victim.”

They have pleaded not guilty.

Bivens' attorney, Humberto R. Dominguez, said in an email to PEOPLE, “We are currently reviewing the discovery in this matter. It is rather extensive. Once our review is complete, we will decide on how to resolve the pending litigation. That is all that I can say at this time.”

Dulfo’s attorney, Paul Donnelly, said in an email to PEOPLE, “While some have said here were murder plots, I fully understand that my client, Mr. Dulfo, was not part of any plot to kill.”

He continued, “I think the facts have now established that the end constituting Bennett, Howard, Etienne, and Dulfo had no intent to kill. Perhaps, they had a plan to intimidate, but never kill. Ever.”

Bennett’s attorney had no comment.

Attorneys for the other defendants did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

source: people.com