MIAMI — Two Miami cops aren’t happy about how they were portrayed in a Netflix film, and now they’re seeking justice — and damages.
On May 6, Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office filed a defamation suit in the Southern District of Florida against Artists Equity. That’s the production company founded by the leads of “The Rip,” Oscar winners Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Falco Pictures LLC, which also produced the project, is named as a co-defendant in the federal lawsuit.
The two deputies allege that the crime thriller, inspired by the largest cartel-cash seizure in South Florida’s history, damaged their reputations, despite their real names not being used.
Although promoted as fiction, “The Rip” is based on the infamous raid that went down June 29, 2016, in which Miami-Dade police seized over $20 million from a suspected marijuana trafficker in an attic at a Miami Lakes home.
Damon plays Lt. Dane Dumars and Affleck plays Detective Sgt. J.D. Byrne, who were part of the cash seizure (or “rip”) and subsequently uncovered corruption within what was then known as the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The Colombian cartel stashed the money in buckets in the Netflix flick, but it actually came from a Cuban marijuana grow-house ring, according to Miami Herald archives.
The lawsuit claims that “the film’s use of unique, non-generic details” of the investigation, “combined with its Miami-Dade setting and portrayal of a narcotics team, creates a reasonable inference that the officers depicted are Plaintiffs.” Smith and Santana are seen as “corrupt, criminal, and professionally unethical,” the complaint adds.
“Apart from the fact that a large seizure occurred, the events portrayed in the Film did not happen,” the lawsuit states.
The deputies’ lawyers demand “a public retraction and correction,” including “the addition of a prominent disclaimer” as well as monetary damages.
There is no monetary figure yet as the litigation is still in its early stages, the plaintiff’s lawyer Ignacio Alvarez of ALGO law offices in Coral Gables told the Miami Herald on Monday.
Alvarez says the reason for the filing is that the filmmakers “didn’t do their due diligence and ran with” the story. He conceded some basic stuff concerning Santana and Smith was right, such as the uniforms, badges and the unit name, the Tactical Narcotics Team.
Despite a disclaimer at the end saying the story was “inspired by true events,” Alvarez says that the average person came away from the movie thinking the plot was real and that his clients are dirty cops.
“The disclaimer is all the way at the end, after the credits. I had to put on my glasses to read it,” he said. “Now they have a cloud over their shoulder. It has destroyed their credibility and reputation.”
As per the docket, the “Good Will Hunting” stars’ law firm Ballard Spahr, with offices in South Florida, wrote a letter to Alvarez in March 2026 to address the initial claims:
“While ‘The Rip’ borrows some of the striking details of the real-life police raid that inspired it — including the orange five-gallon buckets containing millions of dollars in cash concealed within the wall of a house, the cash-sniffing dog, and the painstaking procedure of counting the currency on site — it does not purport to tell the true story of that incident or portray real people,” the document says.
This isn’t the first time “The Rip” has made local headlines for the wrong reasons.
Despite the actual event occurring in Miami Lakes, the dark, gritty film was set and partially filmed in neighboring Hialeah. In January, after its release, Hialeah Mayor Bryan Calvo pondered legal action against Netflix about the city’s negative portrayal.
Jose Smith, a former municipal attorney for the cities of Miami Beach and North Miami Beach told the Miami Herald at the time that there was no legal basis to sue Netflix due to First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.