The new Netflix movie The Rip reunites actors and longtime friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as a group of cops on a high-impact Florida drug team.
But is it a true story? Be forewarned that this article will contain spoilers for The Rip due to how closely it aligns with real life.
In the movie, Damon leads fellow police officer Affleck and others on an off-the-books team looking to search a cartel-run stash house, where they discover $20 million in barrels behind an attic wall. The movie occurs against the backdrop of the murder of the team’s captain, who was onto the stash. However, who really is behind the mayhem?
- Director Joe Carnahan told Decider the movie was “loosely” based on real Miami-Dade police officer Chris Basiano. Some of the other characters are completely made up.
Here’s what’s true and what’s not:
Matt Damon’s Character Is Based on a Miami-Dade Police Officer Named Chris Casiano, But the Movie’s Plot Is Heavily Fictionalized
According to Police1, Casiano “was supervising the former Miami-Dade Police Department’s Tactical Narcotics Team, which raided the home and found the millions.”
However, although there was a real-life stash, the movie fictionalizes the situation in a number of ways. A 2018 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami sheds more light on the real situation. It reveals that, in real life, a man named Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez ended up sent to prison for 65 months and forfeited more than $18 million following a money laundering conviction.
(Photo by Stephanie Augello/Variety via Getty Images)
The Miami Herald confirms that the woman named Desi, who unwittingly inherited the stash house from her grandmother, is a fictional character. Rather, Hernandez-Gonzalez owned the raided home; he ran Blossom Experience, “a store that sold fans, lights and other indoor gardening equipment,” The Herald reported.
In real life, the trade took place in Miami Lakes, FL, not Hialeah, according to The Herald, which added that Hernandez-Gonzalez didn’t buy up the whole block as is show on Netflix.
Rather, he “had a mango-colored 5-bedroom, 2-story home built in Miami Lakes,” the Herald reported, adding, “Neighbors here described Hernandez-Gonzales and his family as nice, but largely guarded, rarely interacting with them.”
From on or about January 2, 2010, to on or about June 28, 2016, Hernandez-Gonzalez “knowingly made deposits or purchased money orders with over $17,700,000 in United States currency in a manner designed to avoid the Department of Treasury Currency Transaction Report (CTR) filing requirement,” the release says. “These deposits and money order purchases were made at banks or United States Postal Service branches and were part of a pattern of criminal activity involving more than $100,000 in a twelve-month period.”
According to the release, he was involved in helping marijuana traffickers, deposited the money from Tennessee “marijuana trafficking activity” into business bank accounts or purchased money orders with the proceeds.
Chris Casiano Did Have a Son Who Died Tragically
The movie shows Damon’s character struggling with the loss of his young son to cancer. That really happened to Casiano.
Casiano’s life, who lost his 11-year-old son Jake to cancer in 2021. Casino lost “his 11-year-old son Jake to cancer in 2021,” Decider reported.
“These guys worry about paying bills,” Carnahan said to Decider. “When Chris went on that rip, his son had been diagnosed, and his chemotherapy was like $1 million a month. He didn’t have insurance. That money is life changing.”
Carnahan told Decider, “I’ve known Chris about 10 years, and it happened just before he and I met. It was one of the stories he told me early on that stuck with me. I could see the cinematic possibilities in that.”
The scenes counting the money were true, he said in that interview: “All that stuff about counting [the money] on the seizure, on scene, is all true. You’re required to count it twice, actually, by hand. The real rip—Sasha’s character [Desi, played by Sasha Calle], in real life, that was an older man. At some point they sat this guy down to start counting. [Laughs.] They had to get the guy that owned the place also counting! If you’re off by a dollar, Internal Affairs gets involved. This is a very real thing.”
The Money Really Was Found Inside Orange Buckets in an Attic, the Government Says
In the movie, Damon and Affleck and their team smash walls in an attic and discover the money squirreled away in orange buckets. After they start counting it, they realize the amount at stake, and Damon pretends to be considering stealing it in order to smoke out who killed the captain to get the cash.
On June 28, 2016, “pursuant to an investigation into the defendant’s criminal conduct, law enforcement seized over $21 million from Hernandez-Gonzalez’s residence – the majority of which were contained in orange buckets inside a hidden compartment in the attic and walls. In addition, law enforcement seized over $665,000 in currency and $42,000 in money orders from the defendant’s Miami business,” the release says.
He wasn’t tied to Colombians, but rather a “Cuban marijuana-grow-house ring,” pre the Herald.
Were there corrupt cops in the true story? Not according to The Herald, which wrote, “While there was likely some real life tension, there were no dirty police, shoot-outs or government corruption involved in the Miami-Dade bust.”
