Miami sheriff’s deputies sue Ben Affleck and Matt Damon over The Rip movie | Miami
Two Miami sheriff’s deputies have filed a lawsuit towards Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, claiming the Hollywood actors’ portrayal in a Netflix crime drama makes them appear to be “dirty cops.”
The officers, Jonathan Santana and Jason Smith, deputies with the Miami-Dade county sheriff’s workplace, are searching for defamation damages from the actors’ manufacturing firm Artists Equity. The Rip is a dramatization of a 2016 drugs bust on a non-public residence in Miami Lakes through which $24m money was recovered.
The cash was present in 24 buckets containing 1,000,000 {dollars} every – hidden behind drywall on the property – and represented the most important haul ever recovered by the Miami-Dade police division, which transitioned right into a sheriff’s workplace in January 2025.
The Netflix movieswith Damon and Affleck in lead roles, presents a story of temptation and belief, given the big sum of cash within the fast and unsupervised custody of a staff of narcotics brokers. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs, who had been a part of the real-life staff that made the bust on which the fictionalized account within the movie was constructed, say The Rip portrays them in a unfavourable mild.
“When you rip something, you’re stealing something,” Santana advised 7 News Miamireferring to the crime thriller’s title. “We never stole a dollar.
“[They’re] pretty much saying, you know, how many buckets of money did I steal?”
It will not be the primary time The Rip, which was launched in January, has angered members of the south Florida neighborhood. Bryan Calvo, the Hialeah mayor, slammed the movie and its lead actors after they selected to put the scene of the raid in his metropolis – and not its fast neighbor the place the actual marijuana stash home was positioned.
“This movie is a slap in the face of our law enforcement personnel,” Calvo said at a news conference on the time.
“Movies can tell a story, but they are fiction. We respect fiction, but our work here, and the men and women of the Hialeah police department, is to defend our residents and defend the truth.”
An legal professional representing Santana and Smith advised 7 News that the lawsuit was filed as a result of the officers had suffered “substantial harm to their personal and professional reputations” from their illustration by Affleck and Damon.
“They portrayed police officers as dirty, they portrayed my clients as dirty,” the lawyer, Ignacio Alvarez, stated. “Now their reputations are hurt.”
Alvarez famous that the lawsuit – filed on May 6 in a Florida federal courthouse – contends the pair also needs to have been paid as consultants, as one other officer not concerned within the raid was.
“If an individual got paid for the story then they should be compensated for being present,” he stated.
Neither of the deputies is talked about by title within the movie. That doesn’t preclude a defamation motion being filed, however it typically units the bar larger for its success, in keeping with libel legal professionals.
“The description of the fictional character must be so closely aligned with a real person that someone who knows that person would have no difficulty linking the two,” Lloyd Jassin, a publishing legal professional, wrote on his weblog Copylaw.
“For a novel or other fictional work to be actionable, readers must believe the allegedly defamatory statements are actually about the plaintiff.”
According to to report Monday on WCVB News, attorneys representing Artists Equity – the corporate the actors founded jointly in 2022 – denied the allegations in a March demand response letter included with the unique grievance.
The movie used fictional names, settings and storylines – and the movie’s disclaimer made clear the story was dramatized and not meant to painting actual individuals, the report stated.
The Guardian has contacted Artists Equity for remark.
Netflix, which isn’t a part of the deputies’ lawsuit, settled a defamation case in 2022 with the chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili, who stated she was defamed in her drama The Queen’s Gambit, the New York Times reported.
Gaprindashvili, who was talked about by title within the sequence’ ultimate episode, sued over the “devastating falsehood” that she had by no means performed towards males – whereas in actuality she had performed towards and defeated many.
