After being sentenced, Dominic Toretto is being transported to Lompoc Prison by bus,[N 1] his sister Mia Toretto and friend Brian O’Conner lead an assault on the bus, wrecking it and freeing Dom. While the authorities search for them, the trio escapes to Rio de Janeiro. Awaiting Dom’s arrival, Mia and Brian join their friend Vince and other participants on a job to steal three cars from a train. Brian and Mia discover that agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are also on the train and that the cars are seized property.
When Dom arrives at the train with his accomplices, he realizes that their leader Zizi is only interested in stealing one car; the Ford GT40. Dom has Mia steal the car herself before he and Brian fight Zizi and his henchmen, during which Zizi kills the DEA agents assigned to the vehicles. Dom and Brian are captured and brought to crime lord Hernan Reyes, the owner of the cars and Zizi’s boss. Reyes orders the pair interrogated to discover the location of the car, but they manage to escape and retreat to their safehouse.
Dom, Brian, and Mia are framed as the murderers of the DEA agents, causing the U.S. government to send a team of Diplomatic Security Service agents, lead by Luke Hobbs and assisted by local officer Elena Neves, to Rio to arrest them. While Brian, Dom, and Mia examine the car to discover its importance, Vince arrives and is later caught trying to remove a computer chip from it. He admits he was planning to sell the chip to Reyes on his own, and Dom forces him to leave. Brian investigates the chip and discovers it contains the complete financial details of Reyes’ criminal empire, including the locations of US$100 million in cash.