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Pain & Gain: The Crimes of Daniel Lugo and the Sun Gym Gang that Inspired a Mark Wahlberg Movie
Hollywood embellishes, but this is the true story of Lugo and Miami’s Deadly Sun Gym Gang.
To learn the full story, read my article on All That’s Interesting.
The 2013 movie Pain & Gain, starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie and directed by Michael Bay, is a wild action-comedy about a group of Miami musclemen who decide that in order to live the true American Dream, they will become rich through extortion.
But the real-life story the movie is based on is anything but a comedy.
In 1994, bodybuilder Daniel Lugo and the Sun Gym gang, members of the Sun Gym in North Miami, Florida, devised a hasty plan to start robbing the wealthy through kidnapping and extortion. The gang wasn’t very successful.
They ended up abandoning multiple kidnapping attempts and even failed to make one victim’s death look accidental. But their biggest blunder was accidentally killing two of their targets before they could even get to the money.
On May 25, 1995, Frank Griga, a 33-year-old wealthy businessman, and his 23-year-old girlfriend Krisztina Furton mysteriously vanished, and police would soon find out Daniel Lugo and his gang were responsible.
