10 moments in the Hustlers movie that really happened

You won’t believe how close the movie Hustlers sticks to the true story it is based on of an operation ran by former dancers.

Hustlers started things off on the right foot as they are sure to surpass the $32 million they made during opening weekend. The grand appeal of the film might just be Jennifer Lopez playing Ramona, a stripper veteran who can pull off a pretty advanced and impressive pole dance. Additional reasons to catch the movie are the star-studded cameos from stars like Lizzo, Cardi-B, and Usher.

But Hustlers’ most intriguing hook is the story that the movie illustrates which is based on a real-life story. The film itself is based on an article published in New York Magazine by Jessica Pressler on an exclusive interview with former stripper Roselyn Kao. Kao and Samantha Barbash had started a lucrative business of drugging and illegally wiping out the bank accounts of wealthy men. This came after the strip club stopped affording them the same type of income they had before the 2008 market crash.

Kao and Barbash are represented in the film by Constance Wu’s character Destiny/Dorothy and Jennifer Lopez’s character Ramona. Even Pressler is in the film as a journalist named Elizabeth played by Julia Stiles. After watching the movie, the article written by Pressler looks like the literal first draft of the film.

Quotes and moments mentioned are incorporated into the film the way fandoms could only dream of seeing their adaptations. Surprisingly, some of the hardest to believe moments really did happen, and we’ve laid out all those details below.

Spoiler alert! Major parts of the movie’s plot ahead. It would be best to see Hustlers before reading.

How they met

Barbash was a stripper that was older in years than the rest of the girls working the club, but she had an enviable list of clientele. As Kao puts it in her interview, everyone wanted to work with her. Just like Ramona, Barbash was able to include young girls in her routine, which made her more appealing. Soon Kao and Barbash were working selected wealthy clients together and reaping the benefits.

The $300 strippers

Kao really did take two years off to give birth to her daughter and eventually came back to the club to discover that the staff had changed entirely. The girls now working looked like models. And since they were giving sexual favors for $300, it made it hard for Kao to make lucrative money during her comeback.

Fishing

In the film, Ramona invites Destiny to join her small operation of bleeding wealthy men dry by meeting them in bars and luring them into the strip clubs. However, the article states that Kao had been watching Barbash going into the champagne room with her girls and barely doing anything but still making a lot of money. Kao was able to deduce what was going on after peeping the half-conscious clients whenever the doors opened, and she decided she wanted in.

Just a sprinkle

Ramona at one point tells Destiny that to ensure that they were going to make money and not lose out, they were drugging the men. She also provides Destiny with a recommended dose for the drugs. “Just a sprinkle.” In Pressler’s article, “just a sprinkle” was the amount that Kao said they were using when drugging the men.

Social security and mother’s maiden name

In Hustlers, after Ramona has hired her new staff off of ads, the girls are seen nuzzling up to their marks and asking very personal questions while the men were under the influence. One girl asks for a social security number, and another asks for their mother’s maiden name.

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According to Kao, she would usually be on the phone with American express confirming personal account information to verify their transactions. She would have to ask the victim his social, mother’s maiden name, address, and more while the girls were still doing their thing with him.

Rude Comment

One client during one of the scenes asks Destiny while she is giving a lap dance if she dances because she was abused. While the comment is inexplicably rude, it actually is something that was said to Kao. Kao admitted that during her stripping career she had been asked the question more than once by jerks.

Penmanship

Destiny, who was enrolled in school, is seen studying when a man looks over her shoulder and tells her that she has excellent penmanship. This scene happened, but under different circumstances. Pressler interviewed the man whose name is Brian and he stated that he liked to watch Kao study and raved to Pressler about her penmanship.

Shockingly, the rest of what happened to Brian’s character in the film is also true. Brian let his fiancé’s visa expire thinking Kao was going to have something serious with him and that’s when she disappeared for two years. When Kao finally called him, it was because she needed financial help and Brian had already married his former fiancé.

Doug

Doug is a real-life person who made a case for the police. The real Doug was on a limited income and was wiped out of $17,000 during a night that ended at the strip club. Doug called Destiny in the film asking to be refunded and was denied like the others. In reality, he took it to the next level by recording the phone conversation he has with an unnamed dancer that was there that night and showing it to the police.

The money was taken from a corporate account, so Doug’s livelihood was on the line, so he had no problems reporting Kao and Barbash. Combining Doug’s story with the story of the Cardiologist (that shows up in the movie as a news story, helped the cops catch the women. Other clients didn’t report the substantial charges because they didn’t want to admit to what happened.

Failed sting operation

In Hustlers, Ramona eventually recruits Dawn, a girl who is untrustworthy because of her questionable background and a drug problem. Dawn invites Ramona and Destiny over to supply the drugs to spike the drink of a guest at her home.

But when Ramona and Destiny leave, Destiny swears she sees a car following her. This is something that Pressler discovered after speaking with police. Kao and Barbash had walked into a  sting operation that ultimately failed because they did not provide any incriminating evidence.

ATM arrest

Ramona in the film is approached by cop cars while she’s standing at an ATM. Barbash admitted to Pressler that the police came to arrest her while she was at an ATM in her neighborhood. She also said she had a panic attack when she realized everyone was witnessing her arrest.

What part of the Hustlers movie are you most shocked to know is true? Leave your responses in the comments.

Hustlers is in theaters everywhere.