CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Attorney Sam Rabin said the law enforcement response to the Coral Gables home of Sergio Pino, a prominent developer and philanthropist, was “unprecedented and unnecessary.”
FBI agents found the former president of the Latin Builders Association behind the success of Century Partners Group, dead on Tuesday in a bedroom at his mansion in Cocoplum, a gated neighborhood on Biscayne Bay.
According to FBI Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey Veltri, law enforcement responded to the mansion along Isla Dorada Boulevard for a “search and arrest operation” connected to an ongoing murder-for-hire investigation that had started last year.
“We had offered to surrender him should that have become necessary,” Rabin wrote.
According to Veltri, Pino died of an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.” He was 67. The operation involved an FBI Miami SWAT team. The medical examiner’s office was investigating the cause of death.
Sergio Pino had been accused of trying to kill Tatiana Pino, whom he had wed in 1992. She was the mother of two of his four children.
Meanwhile, Rabin said they “were confident” they could “successfully defend” the accusations.
“There were many rumors and allegations but what was lacking was evidence,” Rabin wrote.
As a leader in the community, Sergio Pino delivered speeches about the American Dream and how he had overcome many obstacles with perseverance and hard work. His path to owning a mansion in Cocoplum was long.
Pino was born in Cuba and moved to Miami when he was 12. His father, Eugenio Pino, went from owning a supermarket chain in Havana to working as a plumber in Hialeah. His mother had to work in hotel housekeeping.
After graduating from Miami Senior High School and Miami-Dade College, he and his father opened Century Plumbing, a store in Hialeah. Then there was Century Wholesale, Century Homebuilders Group, Century Partners Group, and U.S. Century Bank.
Pino was an entrepreneur who had already been married and had two kids when he wed Tatiana Pino in 1992 and they had two children. They were married for about three decades before she filed for divorce in April 2022.
Tatiana Pino alleged he had attempted to poison her, so she was very ill and was treated at Mercy Hospital, South Miami Hospital, Doctors Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
She claimed the mystery of what was causing her constant ailments was solved after a physician at Johns Hopkins found fentanyl in her system, so fearing that he was trying to poison her, she decided to move out of the home in 2022.
Records show they had both accused each other of making threats. Attorney Deanna Shifrin, who represented Sergio Pino during their divorce, claims there was nothing “to indicate” that he ever “harmed or wanted to harm” her.
“He was a gentle and kind man, loved and respected by the many people he employed at his businesses. He loved his children and grandchildren and talked of little else,” Shifrin wrote.
Attorney Raymond J. Rafool, who represents Tatiana Pino, released a statement saying the FBI had been investigating Pino’s attempts to hurt his client.
“In this already complex divorce, we have had to address the terrorism and the attacks on Tatiana’s life,” Rafool wrote. " It is truly terrible.”
Last year, there were four arrests related to a hit-and-run crash in Miami-Dade County that Tatiana Pino, who now lives in Pinecrest, survived. The suspects were Michael Dulfo, Jerren Howard, Edner Etienne, and Bayron Bennett, who worked for Sergio Pino.
Shifrin believed in Sergio Pino’s innocence.
“I do believe that the combination of unnecessarily destructive divorce litigation along with selective and salacious media coverage was humiliating to him and led to this tragedy,” Shifrin wrote.