Jonathan Santana Sues Matt Damon, Ben Affleck Over The Rip

Jonathan Santana says the rip turned a real drug-bust case into something he says stained his name. On 6 May, he and fellow Miami-Dade sheriff’s deputy Jason Smith filed a defamation lawsuit against Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Artists Equity in a Florida federal courthouse.

Santana told 7 News Miami, “We never stole a dollar.” He also said, “[They’re] pretty much saying, you know, how many buckets of money did I steal?” The complaint says the Netflix film makes the deputies look like “dirty cops.”

Miami Lakes and the $24 million haul

The film is built around a 2016 drugs bust on a private residence in Miami Lakes, where officers recovered $24 million in cash. The money was found in 24 buckets containing a million dollars each and hidden behind drywall, and the haul was the largest ever recovered by the Miami-Dade police department.

That detail matters here because Santana and Smith say they were part of the real-life team behind the seizure, even though neither of them is named in the movie. Attorney Ignacio Alvarez said the officers suffered substantial harm to their personal and professional reputations, and added, “They portrayed police officers as dirty, they portrayed my clients as dirty,”

Artists Equity and reputation

The lawsuit lands after the Miami-Dade police department transitioned into a sheriff’s office in January 2025, leaving Santana and Smith filing under the new structure while challenging a January release that pulled a real case into a crime-drama frame. The movie centers on temptation and trust among narcotics agents handling a large sum of money, which is exactly the kind of narrative that can blur into a real officer’s public identity when a local operation supplies the source material.

Ignacio Alvarez also said, “If an individual got paid for the story then they should be compensated for being present,” putting the dispute on a simple business question: who gets paid when a real police operation becomes entertainment? For now, the officers are using the filing to force that answer into court, and the film’s portrayal of Miami-Lakes deputies is no longer just a screen credit problem.