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

Tatiana Pino survived several attempts on her life allegedly masterminded by her late husband, Miami developer Sergio Pino, the FBI alleges

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,” says Ana Quincoces, host of the Dial M for Miami podcast and a Real Housewives of Miami alum, 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 suffer
from a mysterious epilepsy-like illness that a series of doctors tried, and failed, to diagnose
until 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.

The Pinos’ divorce battle took an even darker turn when, federal prosecutors claim, Sergio hired criminals to kill his wife. On Aug. 30, 2023, a flatbed truck allegedly driven by a man working for Sergio rammed Tatiana’s car as she entered the driveway of the house she had moved to in Pinecrest, Fla.

Ten months later, on June 23, 2024, she was confronted there by a masked man carrying a gun.

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.

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.”

Tatiana and Cuban-born Sergio, an up-and-coming entrepreneur who shopped at the Miami grocery
store owned by Tatiana’s family, met when she was a 17-year-old cashier and were married in a lavish
ceremony with 600 guests in 1992. They settled in Coral Gables and had two daughters, Carolina, 29,
and Alessandra. (Sergio had two children from a previous marriage.)

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.

In 2017, when rumors spread in the couple’s social set that Sergio was having an affair, “Tatiana turned a blind eye to it,” says Quincoces. But after she came to the realization she was being
poisoned, she filed for divorce—and her husband’s alleged campaign of terror began. Sergio hired a
crew of four hit men, headed by Bayron Bennett, who worked on Sergio’s yacht, a federal indictment claims.

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.”

Bennett, Michael Dulfo, Jerren Howard, Fausto Villar and Avery Bivens have pleaded not guilty to charges in connection to their alleged roles in the schemes, court records show.

The other four defendants have not entered pleas yet.

Their attorneys did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's requests for comment.

• With reporting by Linda Marx, Siobhan Morrissey and Wendy Grossman Kantor

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