Miami Cops Sue Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s ‘The Rip’ Over ‘Substantial Harm’ to Their Reputation

Hollywood heavyweights Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are being sued by the Florida police over their Netflix movie The Rip.

According to reports, two Miami police officers — Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana — have filed a defamation lawsuit last week in federal court.

They accused Affleck and Damon’s 2026 movie of falsely portraying Smith and Santana as corrupt cops.

The two police officers are now seeking an undisclosed amount of punitive and compensatory damages from the actors and their production company.

In Affleck and Damon’s Netflix movie, The Rip, the two actors portray Miami-Dade narcotics officers who uncover cartel money and later become suspects in theft, murder, arson and other crimes.

However, real-life officers Smith and Santana argue that wasn’t the reality.

According to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida obtained by Entertainment Weekly, Santana and Smith noted that the film is based on a real 2016 police raid in Miami Lakes.

Therein, the officers discovered nearly $22 million hidden in 24 orange buckets inside the house of a suspected marijuana trafficker.

Now, the lawsuit argues that while the cash seizure really happened as shown in the film, Affleck and Damon’s movie used “distinctive elements of a real law-enforcement investigation” involving Smith and Santana and portrayed them as “engaging in criminal misconduct.”

They argued that the film portrayed them in a bad light.

The officers asserted that in real-life, Santana led the real investigation while Smith supervised the operation.

But according to the lawsuit, the fictionalized plotlines give the impression that the two officers, portrayed by the two actors, engaged in misconduct thus causing “substantial harm to their personal and professional reputation.”

Therefore, Santana and Smith are now seeking punitive and compensatory damages from Falco Pictures and Artists Equity, the production company owned by Affleck and Damon.

Amid Affleck and Damon facing the defamation lawsuit, entertainment lawyer Melissa Georges, who isn’t involved in the case, said it might be difficult for the two Miami-Dade officers to win their lawsuit.

Speaking with The New York Times, Georges said that despite the officers’ claims that the film damaged their reputations, it might be difficult for them to win against the makers of Netflix’s crime thriller The Rip.

She explained that since the movie is an “inspired-by” story and not a “based-upon” story about real people, it’s technically protected under the First Amendment.

“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,” Georges added.

Further, she also pointed out that as public figures, police officers face a higher legal standard in defamation cases.

Meanwhile, despite the low possibility of winning the case, Santana reflected on the impact of the film on his life and career.

Having worked for the Miami department for 21 years, Santana said coworkers and others started joking about the case after the trailer was released last year.

When he finally watched the film, he was “disgusted,” Santana said.

“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. When you lose your reputation, you can’t get it back,” he added.

He further stated, “People have laughed, people who know me and know my work ethic and my reputation know I wouldn’t do that. Now they have a doubt.”