On July 16, the FBI arrested Fausto Rafael Villar at his Miami-area home in connection with developer Sergio Pino’s alleged plot to murder his wife of 30 years, Tatiana. While just one of the nine individuals arrested in connection to Pino’s murder scheme, Villar also has a history of crime in Miami-Dade County, having already served a lengthy prison sentence for plotting to steal a massive gambling payout in 2010.
Villar’s current criminal activity is in relation to a prominent South Florida builder’s plot to kill Pino’s estranged wife, with the FBI alleging that Villar was a member of one of two crews that Pino hired to murder Tatiana amid contentious divorce proceedings. The bureau claims that Pino offered Villa’s group $150,000, with another $150,000 in hand, if the kill contract was carried out without detection.
According to the FBI, the crew’s would-be gunman, Vernon Green, was armed with a pistol when he attacked Tatiana as she drove around her driveway in Pinecrest in late June, the FBI stated. Tatiana blasted her horn and drove into her backyard before Green fled.
While Villar may be involved in one of Miami’s most high-profile contract-kill cases in recent memory, he had a prior high-profile run-in with the law back in 2010, which involved a robbery plot orchestrated by Villar and his cousin, then Miami-Dade police officer John Francisco Villar Jr.
The 2010 crime unfolded when Marvin Duarte, a man who had won $131,000 from the gambling site GameDayVIP.com, went to retrieve his winnings. According to police reports, Duarte collected his money from Leonardo Lastre, a bookie who operated the gambling site, in April 2010. While driving away in his SUV, Duarte was pulled over on the Palmetto Expressway by John Villar, accompanied by Fausto Villar in an unmarked police car with flashing lights. Fausto was wearing a bulletproof vest that was marked “police,” as well as carrying a stun gun at the time.
The victim was demanded to show his driver’s license while being questioned about contraband. The cousins took the gambling winnings, claiming it was evidence. According to police, to prevent Duarte from exiting his SUV, Fausto threatened him with a stun gun, and then the Villars left in their unmarked car.
With the help of a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, Duarte pursued the men, managing to stop John’s car. Despite John claiming he was alone, witnesses reported seeing a man matching Fausto’s description run from the scene carrying something.
John was suspended with pay after the incident; however, further investigation linked Lastre to the robbery through phone records and other evidence, leading to all three men’s arrests and charges, which included armed robbery, armed burglary, and conspiracy to commit robbery. Fausto was additionally charged with falsely impersonating an officer.
In 2012, in a pair of plea deals with prosecutors, Fausto was sentenced to seven years in prison, which ran concurrently with a five-year sentence, with three years of probation to follow. John was sentenced to eight years in prison and three years of probation with a $10,000 fine.
Yet, years after his release from prison. Fausto Villa, again, is on law enforcement’s radar, as federal investigators currently zero in on him as an alleged participant in what the FBI is describing as an insidious murder-for-hire scheme.
