Pain And Gain Real Story: It is impossible for Zsuzsanna Griga to forget the abduction of her brother Frank and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton, which took place in 1995. He loved fast vehicles, attractive women, and the pursuit of happiness,” Griga recalled. “She was really stunning. She was just 23 years old. When I think about what she had to go through, my heart aches for her.”
Felix Jimenez, a former officer from the Metro-Dade Police Department’s murder division, was the case’s main investigator.
Within six weeks, Lugo’s gym membership has risen by 300 percent, and he meets and befriends trainer and bodybuilder Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), who has been made impotent by drugs. Vicente Lugo (Tony Shalhoub) is a gang member that Lugo starts to train. After hearing a motivational speech by Jonny Wu (Ken Jeong) who encourages him to be a “doer,” Lugo devises a scheme to extort Kershaw for his assets by kidnapping and torturing the member.
By January 1995, Lugo has recruited Doorbal as well as Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), an ex-con who has converted to Christianity. Doyle ultimately decides to join the squad after getting thrown out of his halfway home for the second time.
After many failed attempts, the “Sun Gym gang” successfully kidnaps Kershaw and takes him to a tiny warehouse. Despite the fact that Kershaw is disguised, Lugo is identified, and the rest of the scheme proceeds as planned: Kershaw makes phone calls under duress in order to provide false explanations for his disappearance, convinces his family to relocate out of state, and signs documents transferring his assets to Lugo. During Kershaw’s absence, John Mese is even paid to notarize papers in Kershaw’s place.
Even though the Sun Gym gang has been able to seize Kershaw’s money and possessions, they have come to the conclusion that freeing him would be a terrible decision. Lugo devises a scheme to assassinate Kershaw by coercing him into drinking alcoholic beverages and crashing his BMW, making it seem as though he was involved in a drunk driving accident. Because he survives the accident, the vehicle in which he was riding is set on fire. Kershaw manages to get out from the engulfing truck, and the gang runs over his corpse twice before abandoning him to die. Kershaw, on the other hand, lives and is taken to the hospital.
The gang’s archivist
“They were a really attractive pair who seemed to be meant for one other,” Jimenez said of the couple. In his own words, “Frank was the American success storey — an immigrant who arrived to this nation with just ten dollars in his pocket and went on to make a fortune.”
He relocated to New York City from Budapest, Hungary, where he was able to get minimum wage work.
Marc Schiller did not get a phone call from the producers of Pain & Gain, the new dark comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, at any time during the film’s development. This shocked the Buenos Aires-born businessman since he was the victim in the true-life tale of abduction, torture, extortion and, eventually, redemption upon which the film is based.
“Since they chose not to speak to me they got the characteristics of all the major characters incorrect,” says Schiller from his office in Boca Raton, Florida. “I was familiar with all of these people.”
A series of stories that appeared in The Miami New Times in 1999, detailing the misdeeds of the Sun Gym Gang, a gang of recidivist bodybuilders who were drawn together by their mutual love of hard workouts and easy money, served as the basis for the film. It was decided by the gang that they would abduct Schiller, a former business partner of one of the members, compel him to sign up his life, and then murder him.