Relatives of Colombian drug trafficker Griselda Blanco have filed a lawsuit against her Netflix and against the actress Sofía Vergara for the miniseries that the streaming service will release about the criminal's life to prevent the launch.
Entertainment news site TMZ first reported the legal action. The lawsuit was filed this week in Miami-Dade County, Florida, by the drug trafficker's son, Michael Blanco, and his wife, Marie Blanco.
Michael Sepulvedablanco and Marie Sepulvedablanco, as the plaintiffs are called in court documents, filed an “emergency motion” to temporarily halt publication of the series. They accuse Netflix of doing this used the unpublished “work” of Michael Sepulvedablanco without permission to depict the life of Griselda Blanco in the series.
Sepulvedablanco says in the lawsuit that he “spent several years meticulously documenting his private narratives as well as those of his mother, with the intent of publishing a book and developing a soap opera” about Griselda's life.
According to court documents reviewed by Univision Noticias, the drug trafficker's son requests that “the court grant a temporary restraining order against the defendant, NETFLIX. INC., prohibits the publication of (the series) 'Griselda,' which is scheduled for release.” Netflix on January 25, 2024; Use of all of Plaintiff’s unauthorized artistic literary works and use of all of Plaintiff’s other content.”
Sepulvedablanco says that Andrés Hernando López and Rafael Alfredo Rojas Vega, two of the defendants, agreed in 2009 to help him publish a book and develop the telenovela, and that both never had access to his “work” on Griselda has been published . The plaintiff assumes that this is the case The basis for the Netflix-produced series starring Sofía Vergara has been released.
Who was Griselda Blanco?
“I apologize on behalf of my mother”: Son of drug trafficker Griselda Blanco, “The Black Widow”
The Netflix production tells the story of Griselda Blanco, leader of one of the most powerful drug cartels that operated in Miami until the 1980s.
Blanco was born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1943 and was known by other nicknames as “the black widow” for the alleged murder of two of her husbands During the two decades he ran the drug business.
The miniseries follows Blanco's arrival in Miami in the 70s, where he arrives with his three children to start a new life. He arrived with a load of cocaine to make money, but he gradually built a lucrative drug trafficking business.
Griselda Blanco is identified as the inventor of mules used to transport drugs through airports and a woman who resorted to violence to run her multi-million dollar business.
After being imprisoned in the United States for nearly three decades, The “Queen of Cocaine” was murdered in Colombia in 2012 by two hitmen on a motorcycle who shot her dead in a butcher shop.