Ridley Scott's American Gangster, ostensibly based on the real story of the '70s drug dealer Frank Lucas, ends with Lucas (Denzel Washington) basically joining forces with Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), the detective who's nailed him, by agreeing to testify against their shared enemies, the crooked lawmen who shake down crooks and sneer at clean cops. The movie wraps up its story with a series of titles that state that "three-quarters of the drug enforcement agents assigned to New York" wound up being convicted thanks to Lucas' testimony. The DEA and its agents are pissed off about this, and they're not settling for barging into Scott's home and shooting his dog; a bunch of former feds have filed a class-action defamation lawsuit against the movie. The suit charges that "the defamation involved the defendant NBC Universal, through its Universal Studios, falsely communicating, in writing, to millions of people in a motion picture called American Gangster that three-quarters of New York City's DEA, from approximately 1973 through approximately 1985, were convicted criminals."

Dominic Amoroso, a former federal prosecutor who tried Lucas and is now representing the agents in their claim, says that, with regard to the titles suggested that Lucas' testimony brought down crooked feds, "No such thing ever occurred. Not a single agent of New York City's DEA, or any other law enforcement officer, was convicted of anything based upon the so-called 'collaboration' of Lucas and Roberts. Nor was a single agent of New York City's DEA or officer of the NYPD convicted in any case or investigation involving Frank Lucas whether based upon a collaboration of Lucas and Roberts or any other resource." NBC Universal earlier blew off the agents' demand for a retraction and an apology by issuing a statement that read in part, "The film in no way charges or even insinuates wrongdoing on the part of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. " Assuming that someone at Universal has actually seen the movie, this would seem to apply that the studio heads and its lawyers do not regard graft, theft, and violent shakedowns as "wrongdoing", which, depending on how long they've been working in Hollywood, might not be implausible.