By Sofia Saric
Miami Herald
MIAMI — The crime-thriller movie “The Rip” released Friday on Netflix is centered around a real Miami-Dade officer who uncovered over $20 million stuffed inside Home Depot buckets during a 2016 raid.
How much of the film’s portrayal of the bust was based on true events?
In “The Rip” and the true story, Miami-Dade investigators raided a home and found buckets of cash stored inside a secret compartment only accessible through an attic.
Matt Damon stars as Lt. Dane Dumars, who was based on real Miami-Dade cop, Chris Casiano. Casiano was supervising the former Miami-Dade Police Department’s Tactical Narcotics Team, which raided the home and found the millions.
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At that time, it was the largest cash seizure in the department’s history, according to Miami Herald archives.
While the bust and Damon’s character stem from reality, much of “The Rip” was fictionalized.
Who?
In the movie, a woman named Desi lives in the home with the hidden cash.
Narcotics detectives actually raided the home of Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez in June 2016, the Herald reported at the time. Hernandez-Gonzalez ran Blossom Experience, a store that sold fans, lights and other indoor gardening equipment.
His home and businesses were raided after he was caught on a wiretap “giving growing advice to Miami pot growers arrested by feds in Tennessee,” the Herald reported.
Where?
“The Rip” places the stash house in Hialeah , but the raid took place at 7780 NW 169th Terrace in Miami Lakes, according to Herald archives.
In the film, investigators believe drug cartels bought up the entire neighborhood to keep away neighbors from the hidden cash.
Hernandez-Gonzalez bought a lot and had a mango-colored 5-bedroom, 2-story home built in Miami Lakes , according to the reporting. Investigators believed the secret attic compartment was added during its construction.
“Neighbors here described Hernandez-Gonzales and his family as nice, but largely guarded, rarely interacting with them,” the original story said.
The background?
The Colombian cartel stashed the money found in “The Rip,” but in real life, the millions stemmed from a Cuban marijuana grow-house ring, according to the archives.
Hernandez-Gonzalez came to the United States from Cuba in 1994 and later opened Blossoms Experience, which netted $68.1 million over a decade.
He hid money so that the government would not see the profits he was making selling to marijuana growers and traffickers, according to the original reporting. He was intentionally staggering out bank deposits, each under $10,000, to avoid the attention of the feds, explaining the massive cash stash.
Hernandez-Gonzalez was sentenced April 25, 2018 , to 65 months in prison and agreed to forfeit over $18 million as a result of the raid, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
How much?
It’s hard to say down to the last dollar how much money investigators found in Hernandez-Gonzalez’s possession, but it was about $22 million.
In “The Rip,” investigators found $20,650,480 in the cartel’s stash house.
The Herald reported Hernandez-Gonzalez had $22 million stuffed in 24 orange “Homer’s All-Purpose” buckets from The Home Depot and an extra $600,000-plus was found at his business. Other media outlets reported he had an estimated $24 million in cash.
Hernandez-Gonzalez got to keep around $4 million, the archives said.
At the end of the movie, Desi, who worked with police, finds out she is going to receive a 20% cut of the stash funds — which would amount to about $4 million.
The action?
While there was likely some real life tension, there were no dirty police, shoot-outs or government corruption involved in the Miami-Dade bust, according to the original reporting.
Director Joe Carnahan told Decider that Casiano’s life experience was a springboard for a mostly fictional movie.
“All that stuff about counting [the money] on the seizure, on scene, is all true,” Carnahan told Decider. “You’re required to count it twice, actually, by hand.”
It took investigators 42 hours to count the real-life rip, Carnahan told Decider, adding “we couldn’t make a 42-hour movie.”
The record-setting discovery stunned even veteran narcotics detectives who were used to processing large amounts of cash, the archives said. Whether “The Rip” is more fiction than fact, it’s bringing back the story of a Miami-Dade bust that drew worldwide attention when it happened.
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