In Ridley Scott's hit film American Gangster, corrupt officers raid the home of a notorious New York drug lord played by Denzel Washington. They shoot his dog, beat his wife and steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.

Gregory Korniloff is the retired Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer who led the real-life raid on the home of Frank Lucas, a drugs kingpin, in a leafy suburb in New Jersey on January 28, 1975.

“It's a total fabrication,” he told The Times yesterday, from his home in Las Vegas. “I did not shoot his dog, beat his wife or steal his money.

“Mr Lucas greeted me at the front door in a bathrobe. He was not in a tuxedo. At the same time, his wife and maid were climbing out the back window with $26,000 in cash in brown paper bags.

“It was routine until we found half a million dollars. At that time, we assigned three agents to witness counting it and sealing it on site. It was used as evidence in the trial.”

Mr Korniloff and two of his fellow DEA agents have now filed a $50 million (£25 million) libel claim on behalf of more than 400 former and current drug squad officers in the New York area who claim that they were besmirched by the movie.

The film, co-starring Russell Crowe as a police officer, has already taken $130 million at the box office and is considered an Oscar contender. It claims to be “based on a true story” of Lucas's heroin-dealing empire in the New York neighbourhood of Harlem in the 1970s.

The swaggering crime boss ran a $50 million drug ring called the Country Boys that imported pure heroin in false-bottomed coffins of dead US servicemen being flown back from Vietnam. He was indicted by Rudolph Giuliani, then a prosecutor and now a Republican presidential candidate, and sentenced to 40 years in prison before agreeing to co-operate with investigators in return for a reduced term.

The film version ends with text claiming that Lucas's co-operation with authorities “led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency”.

Mr Korniloff and his fellow plaintiffs — Jack Toal and Louis Diaz — are outraged by the suggestion that DEA agents in the case were corrupt.

“Most of the movie is not true,” said Mr Toal, who worked with Lucas after he became an informant. “If they had said 'This is based on a false story' it would have been a lot better.”

Dominic Amorosa, the prosecutor who won Lucas's conviction, is now the lawyer representing the DEA agents in the case. He insists that not a single law-enforcement officer was convicted because of Lucas's co-operation.

“The movie is a lie. That is what we are suing for,” he said.

The lawsuit accuses NBC Universal, the movie studio, of distorting the story because of “greed and financial gain”.

“The whole premise of American Gangster would have been eviscerated if the truth were revealed, and the defendant would not have made the money it did make if the libel was not made,” it says.

The claim cites the predicament of a former DEA agent now stationed in Iraq, who felt “deeply hurt and embarrassed” by questions from 20 fellow soldiers who had seen the film.

NBC Universal, owned by General Electric, responded with a statement insisting that “American Gangster does not defame these, or any, federal agents”.

“The end legend specifically refers to members of 'New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency' - not the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, where the plaintiffs formerly worked. We believe the lawsuit is entirely without merit,” the studio said.

The New York Police Department said that no NYPD officers were ever prosecuted because of Lucas.

“Hollywood is famous for distorting reality,” Paul Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said. “If we sued every time the movies made reality unrecognisable, there would be time for nothing else.”

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