Jonathan Santana<\/strong>, two police officers from the Miami-Dade Sheriff\u2019s Office, are suing the actors\u2019 production company over their depictions in the Netflix movie, created by Artists Equity and released on January 16.<\/p>\nAs the outlet pointed out, Smith and Santana are not mentioned or referenced to by name in the film, however the lawsuit alleges that performances by Affleck, 53, and Damon, 55, were \u201cso heavily associated with the two officers\u201d that the film caused \u201csubstantial harm to their personal and professional reputations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Us Weekly has reached out to Artists Equity and representatives for Affleck and Damon for comment.<\/p>\n
The outlet stated that the lawsuit, which is reportedly seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney fees, is also the result of the film and its advertisements implying \u201cmisconduct, poor judgment, and unethical behavior in connection with a real law enforcement operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit reportedly accuses \u201cDamon\u2019s LLC production company Falco Productions of defamation per se and defamation by implication.\u201d There is also an alleged claim made by the officers detailed as \u201cintentional infliction of emotional distress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damon and Affleck star as Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Detective Sergeant JD Byrne, respectively, in The Rip. It follows their journey after discovering $20 million of cartel cash and subsequently unearthing corruption within the Miami-Dade Police Department. As widely reported around the film\u2019s release, the plot is based on the true story of Miami police officer Chris Casiano<\/strong> who served as the head of the department\u2019s Tactical Narcotics Team in 2016 when a cash stash was uncovered.<\/p>\n\n
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Per the outlet\u2019s reporting, Smith and Santana\u2019s lawsuit details that the pair themselves \u201cseized more than $21 million in June 2016,\u201d as part of the event. The pair reportedly allege that \u201cthe film\u2019s use of unique, non-generic details of the June 29, 2016, investigation, combined with its Miami-Dade setting and portrayal of a narcotics team, creates a reasonable inference that the officers depicted are Plaintiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also alleges that Smith and Santana\u2019s lawyers sent the companies responsible for the film a letter \u201cenumerating the allegedly defamatory details in the movie and demanded that they cease and desist from releasing it in December 2025.<\/p>\n
Per the lawsuit, a representative for the companies \u201cafter the film was released,\u201d and alleged that the concerns were \u201cunfounded because the film did not expressly name Sergeant Smith and there was no implication that the Plaintiffs engaged in any misconduct in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.usmagazine.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck and Matt Damon\u2019s company Artists Equity is the subject of a lawsuit alleging defamation against two Miami law enforcement officials who inspired its film The Rip. According to a report by Entertainment Weekly, published on Saturday, May 9, Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, two police officers from the Miami-Dade Sheriff\u2019s Office, are suing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2354101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[24003,21912,21738,21913],"class_list":["post-2411063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-celebrity-news","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/The-Valleys-Zack-Warns-Theres-More-Amanda-West-Drama.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2411064,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411063\/revisions\/2411064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2354101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}