Now in 2012, director Michael Bay is bringing the story to the big screen with actors like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Ed Harris set to star.
The following is excerpted from the article "Pain & Gain."
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December 16, 1994.
Miami private investigator Ed Du Bois, the National Football League's investigator and security consultant in South Florida, sat in his office reviewing security procedures for the upcoming Super Bowl XXIX. Du Bois coordinated with law-enforcement agencies to provide safety for the dignitaries, politicians, and celebrities who would attend the festivities.
Du Bois headed Investigators, Inc., the oldest detective agency in Florida. It was a family business; his father, a former FBI agent, started the firm in 1955, and Du Bois had begun his own investigative career in 1960 as a high school intern there. He graduated from Florida State University in 1966, then enlisted in the air force.
During the week of his graduation from fighter-pilot training in 1968, just as Du Bois was about to start a tour in Vietnam, his father suffered a cranial aneurysm and died. Du Bois returned home and took over the agency, which he ran as an upscale, high-tech firm. Now age 51, he'd been married to his college sweetheart for 28 years; they had three children, all living at home.
Du Bois supervised hundreds of cases each year, and his firm maintained a close relationship with federal and local law enforcement. He frequently was retained as an outside contractor by police departments and state prosecutors. In Dade County, he'd worked for State Attorneys Richard Gerstein and Janet Reno. Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the current head prosecutor, had hired him, too.
On this morning he received a call from Miami attorney Gene Rosen. The lawyer was giving him a heads-up; he'd advised a hospitalized client, a man who had "a wild story," to call the investigator. The guy needed help with a problem. When Rosen's client phoned later that morning, he sounded drugged, thick-tongued, yet edgy with fright and desperation. His sordid story was a jarring contrast to the spectacle Du Bois was coordinating for the NFL.
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