Buffaloed 2019

Peg Dahl, Zoey Deutch, is born in Buffalo, New York, into a poor, blue-collar family. She watches her family’s finances struggle and soaks in the hustler’s mindset she inherited from her late father, fueling a relentless drive to find ways to make quick money. As a kid and teenager, she digs into economics information and tests small, clever money-making schemes, always with the bigger dream of earning a spot at an Ivy League school and landing a high-powered job on Wall Street.

When Peg earns a place in a good college but discovers she can’t afford to attend, she pivots to selling counterfeit Bills game tickets. The risk pays off only briefly before she’s caught and is sentenced to forty months in prison. Upon release, she starts off working at her brother J.J.’s bar, cleaning toilets, before escalating to hustle a local debt-collection firm to wipe out her own legal debt by joining their operation. Her rise is swift, but it’s built on a shaky foundation and is eventually undermined by the firm’s owner.

Back in Buffalo’s social scene, Peg reconnects with Graham, who works for the DA and is investigating the illicit debt-collection racket that has tainted the city. They share a spark and a plan, slipping away during a bar brawl to a private space where she explains she’s quitting her current line of work. They trade information and share a night together, deepening a bond that will shape Peg’s next move.

The morning after, Peg announces she’s going to start her own debt-collection business—legitimate in spirit, driven by the intel Graham supplied. She assembles a team of diverse talents, from phone-sex operators to Asian business owners and a fellow parolee, pitching them the idea of freeing people from crippling debt through smart, ethical leverage. The venture quickly proves successful, but it’s met with relentless sabotage, veiled threats, and pressure from her former employer. Peg reinvests her new commissions back into the company, broadening its reach while her old rival fights back with more aggressive tactics, even targeting her brother’s bar.

At a tense family dinner, Peg’s brother J.J. pushes back on the unknowns surrounding Wizz, the ruthless boss she’s trying to outrun. When Peg presses her family’s safety, the confrontation escalates; Wizz retaliates by assaulting J.J. and orchestrating trouble for Peg’s family, including getting her mother in trouble for off-the-books hairdressing. Peg escalates to action, driving to Wizz’s premises, firing shots into the air to lure him out, and a physical confrontation erupts just as the police intervene. Peg is arrested for the firearm incident, and she and her mother face interrogation where Peg is challenged for always chasing money through schemes rather than earning it honestly.

In court, Peg accepts a deal that aligns her with the police to dismantle the shadowy network of debt collectors. She mobilizes the city’s debt-collection entities, bringing them together at J.J.’s bar to record their confession on tape as cops raid their offices. The operation leads to a nationwide sweep: forty-two individuals are arrested for illegal debt collection, and in a dramatic moment, Peg destroys over 50 thousand debt sheets—an act symbolically representing the elimination of debts totaling more than a billion dollars. Yet the act also lands her back in prison, this time for destruction of evidence, where she uses her time to educate fellow inmates about finance as part of her plea deal.

When she’s eventually released again, Peg returns to her family and friends, who rally to support her with seed money to try again. This time she resolves to tackle hedge funds, aiming to channel her sharpened financial instincts into a legal, impactful enterprise that can shake up the system from the outside.