Two Miami police officers are suing Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, accusing it of negatively portraying them in the Netflix crime drama “The Rip.”
In a defamation lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Miami, Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, both currently sergeants in the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, say the movie uses “distinctive elements of a real law-enforcement investigation” involving Smith and Santana and portrays them as “engaging in criminal misconduct.”
The officers are seeking an undisclosed amount of punitive and compensatory damages from Falco Pictures, which helped produce the film, and Artists Equity, the production company owned by Affleck and Damon. The two actors also star in the movie. A lawyer for Artists Equity did not comment.
The movie, which Netflix released in January, is “inspired by true events,” according to a disclaimer at the beginning of the film. In 2016, the Miami-Dade police executed an operation similar to the one depicted in the movie, conducting a search on a house in Miami Lakes following a yearslong drug trafficking investigation. At the house, they discovered more than $21 million in cash linked to a suspected marijuana trafficker in an attic, with bundles of $100 bills packed in 24 orange buckets.
While the seizure did in fact happen, the truth stops there, the lawsuit says. The movie uses the seizure as a turning point of the police officers, who conspire to steal the money, work with cartel members, commit arson and murder a supervising officer, among other plotlines.
In the real-life episode, Santana was serving as a lead detective on the case and Smith was supervising the investigation team, according to the lawsuit (the Miami-Dade Police Department transitioned to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in January 2025). But the fictionalized plotlines give the impression that Santana and Smith committed these acts, the lawsuit claims, causing “substantial harm to their personal and professional reputation.”
People have approached Santana and Smith and asked “which character they were and how many buckets they kept” since the movie was released, the lawsuit said.
Capt. Chris Casiano of the Miami-Dade Police served as a technical adviser on the film. Damon told The Associated Press in January that he and Affleck spent time with Casiano and other narcotics officers in preparation for the film. The lawsuit claims Casiano was not involved with the initial investigation.
In an interview, Santana said he started being teased as soon as the trailer dropped in September. When he finally watched the movie, he was “disgusted.”
“It’s not right at the end of the day, reputation is huge in this line of work. It’s earned, not given to you,” he said. “When you lose your reputation, you can’t get it back.”
Santana, who has worked for the Miami department for 21 years, said the last few months have been challenging at work. People have asked him how much money he kept from the seizure.
“People have laughed, people who know me and know my work ethic and my reputation know I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Now they have a doubt.”
Melissa Georges, an entertainment lawyer who is not associated with the lawsuit, said it would be difficult for Santana and Smith to prove their case.
“The Rip” is an “inspired-by” story and not a “based-upon” story, Georges noted, and by its nature “not intended to be entirely truthful.” The characters in the movie are given fictional names, for instance.
“The ability to tell stories like this is widely done and very much protected by the First Amendment,” she said. “They would have to show the fictional characters are so closely aligned with them that the people who know them would automatically link them as being those people.”
Second, the police officers are considered public figures and would have to meet a very high burden of proof, she said.