On July 16, the FBI arrested Villar at his Miami-area home, alleging he was a member of one of two crews that Pino hired to murder Pino's estranged wife, Tatiana, amid contentious divorce proceedings. The bureau claims Pino, a prominent South Florida builder, offered Villar's group $150,000, with another $150,000 in hand if the kill-contract was carried out undetected.
The FBI alleges that the crew's would-be gunman, Vernon Green, attacked Tatiana, armed with a pistol, as she drove around her driveway in Pinecrest in late June. Tatiana blasted her horn and drove into her backyard before Green fled, the FBI says.
Pino fatally shot himself in his Coral Gables home on July 16 as federal agents swarmed the property to take him into custody, his lawyer told New Times. Pino had denied the allegations and pledged to fight the case.
New Times rummaged through court records and archival media reports and found that Villar had a prior, high-profile run-in with the law: In 2012, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for a 2010 robbery plot, orchestrated by him and his cousin, then-Miami-Dade police officer John Francisco Villar Jr.
The crime unfolded when a man named Marvin Duarte went to retrieve his gambling winnings of $131,000 from the gambling site GameDayVIP.com.
Big Score - Prior Conviction
According to police reports, Duarte collected his winnings from Leonardo Lastre, a bookie who operated on the site, in April 2010 and drove away in his SUV. While on the Palmetto Expressway, he was pulled over by John Villar, who was accompanied by Fausto Villar in an unmarked police car with flashing lights. Fausto was wearing a bulletproof vest marked "police" and carrying a stun gun at the time.After demanding Duarte's driver's license and questioning him about contraband, the cousins took the money, claiming it was evidence. Fausto threatened Duarte with a stun gun to prevent him from leaving his SUV, and then the Villars left in their unmarked car, police said.
Duarte pursued them and, with the help of a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, managed to stop John's car. Witnesses saw a man matching Fausto's description running from the scene carrying something, despite John claiming he was alone. John was suspended with pay after the incident.
Further investigation linked Lastre to the robbery through phone records and other evidence.
The investigation led to John Villar, Fausto Villar, and Lastre's arrests and charges including armed robbery, armed burglary, and conspiracy to commit robbery. Fausto was additionally charged with falsely impersonating an officer.
In a pair of plea deals with prosecutors, John was sentenced to eight years in prison and three years probation with a $10,000 fine, while Fausto received a sentence of seven years, which ran concurrently with a five-year sentence, with three years probation to follow. (More information on Fausto's sentencing can be found in the disposition below.)
New Arrest in Pino Case
Years after his release from prison, Fausto Villar apparently came back on law enforcement's radar, as federal investigators zeroed in on him as an alleged participant in what the FBI is describing as an insidious murder-for-hire scheme.On the same day the feds raided Pino's home in Coral Gables, Villar was taken into custody in Cutler Bay. The FBI confirmed in a statement that it arrested a suspect at a home on Bel Aire Drive in Cutler Bay, though it did not identify Villar at the time.
The Miami Herald reported that agents arrived at Villar's house early in the morning on July 16 and that a neighbor saw him being led off in handcuffs. Villar is now at the center of the labyrinthine criminal prosecution, one of Miami's most high-profile contract-kill cases in recent memory.
Among other claims, Tatiana says Sergio tried to have her poisoned and that she was in constant fear for her life, having been repeatedly targeted by hit men in her upscale residential neighborhood.
Four men previously charged in the case are accused of acts of intimidation and assault, including ramming Tatiana Pino's car in her driveway and setting vehicles on fire outside her sister's home in separate incidents. Those defendants have entered initial not-guilty pleas.
Sergio Pino was one of the nation's most prolific Hispanic developers. In 1995, he founded Century Homebuilders, a development group that has built thousands of homes. The company acquired, managed, or developed more than 50 condominium and multifamily communities in its first two decades of operation, according to its website.
Tatiana filed for divorce in 2022 after 30 years of marriage to Sergio.
The Real Deal reports that Sergio's life estate was valued up to $360 million. The couple was battling in divorce court over how to split the assets, with Sergio offering Tatiana around $20 million, according to criminal case documents.
