Real-life police officers suing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck over Netflix movie

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s recent film The Rip tells a fictionalised version of a genuine true story of Miami cops who discovered over $24 million in cash.

Damon and Affleck play a pair of cops who lead a Miami ‘Tactical Narcotics Team’ which discover $20 million in cash when carrying out a ‘rip’, a targeted seizure of a house expected to be storing weapons, money, or drugs for criminal gangs.

Where they embellished things however is that the rip in Netflix’s thriller is full of double-crosses and corruption, something that did not happen in the true story.

The Miami cops who carried out the operation the Netflix movie is based on however have sued Damon and Affleck, who also wrote the film.

In a complaint obtained by Entertainment Weekly Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, Miami police officers, have filed a suit against Damon and Affleck’s production company Artists Equity.

Smith and Santana claim that, despite the fact they were not named in the film, the two lead characters are inextricably linked to them by the highly specific details in The Rip.

The pair have said that the film has caused ‘substantial harm to their personal and professional reputations’.

The filing claims that The Rip implies ‘misconduct, poor judgment, and unethical behaviour in connection with a real law enforcement operation’.

Smith and Santana were part of the real-life operation which inspired The Rip in which they helped discover the huge cache of drug money in buckets of $100 bills.

The seizure was the biggest in the history of the local Miami-Dade police department and was found in a hidden wall in an attic.

The Rip stars Damon and Affleck as a pair of narcotics cops on a 'rip' (Netflix)

The Rip states that it was ‘inspired by true events’, but according to the lawsuit gives details too specific to be clear that it isn’t a true story.

They said: “The film’s 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.”

According to the attorneys for the plaintiffs, Artists Equity had responded after the film when pressed about the portrayal by saying that ‘concerns are unfounded because the film did not expressly name Sergeant Smith and there was no implication that the Plaintiffs engaged in any misconduct in the film’.

Smith and Santa are reportedly seeking a public retraction and correction, the addition of a disclaimer to The Rip, and ‘compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees’.

LADbible group have contacted representatives for Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Artist’s Equity, and Netflix for comment.