jordan belfort on his yacht

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How Jordan Belfort's 37m superyacht Nadine sank off the coast of Sardinia

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Coco Chanel was famously outspoken on many things, but yachting, in particular, attracted her ire. “As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom,” she was once quoted as saying.

Her solution was to buy her own yacht. A 37m with a steel hull, built by the Dutch yard Witsen & Vis of Alkmaar. The yacht passed through many hands, finally ending up belonging to the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, on whose watch she foundered and sank in 1996.

The yacht was originally built for a Frenchman under the name Mathilde , but he backed out and she caught Chanel’s eye instead. With a narrow beam, a high bow and the long, low superstructure typical of Dutch yachts of her era, she was certainly a beautiful boat. But she was also well equipped, with five staterooms in dark teak panelling, magnificent dining facilities, room for big tenders and, later, a helipad. A frequent sight along the Florida coast, she caught the eye of a young skipper called Mark Elliott.

“In those days, she was the biggest yacht on the East Coast,” he remembers. “Nobody had ever seen anything like it. I needed a wrench once and went up to the boat - Captain Norm Dahl was really friendly.” He didn’t know it then, but Elliott was destined to become the skipper of the boat himself and was at the helm when the storm of the century took her to the bottom off Sardinia.

Coco Chanel died in 1971 and sometime thereafter the yacht was renamed Jan Pamela under the new ownership of Melvin Lane Powers. He was a flamboyant Houston real estate developer, fond of crocodile skin cowboy boots and acquitted of murder in a trial that gripped the nation.

Powers sent Jan Pamela to Merrill Stevens yard in Miami, where a mammoth seven-metre section was added amidships. “We made templates for the boat where we were going to cut her in half, then she went out for another charter season,” remembers Whit Kirtland, son of the yard owner. “When the boat came back in, we cut it just forward of the engine room, rolled the two sections apart and welded it in.”

He remembers how the sun’s heat made the bare and painted metal expand at different rates. “You had to weld during certain time periods – early in the morning or late at night,” says Kirtland.

The result of the extension was a huge new seven-metre full-beam master stateroom, an extra salon and one further cabin – pushing the charter capacity to seven staterooms. During this refit, the boat’s colour was also changed from white to taupe. “No one had really done it before and it was gorgeous,” says Elliott. By 1983, Powers was bankrupt and the yacht was sold on again. She next shows up named Edgewater .

Elliott’s chance came in 1989. He was working for the established yacht owner Bernie Little, who ran a hugely profitable distribution business for Bud brewer Anheuser-Busch. “Bernie Little had always wanted to own the boat,” Elliott says. “He loved it. He bought it sight unseen – and I started a huge restoration programme, including another extension to put three metres in the cockpit.”

It was a massive task, undertaken at Miami Ship. “We pulled out all the windows, re-chromed everything, repainted – brought it back to life,” says Elliott. They also cut out old twin diesels from GM and replaced them with bigger CAT engines, doubling her horsepower to 800. “Repowered, she could cruise at up to 20 knots. She was long and skinny, like a destroyer.”

A smart hydraulic feature was also brought to life for the first time. Under two of the sofas in the main stateroom were hidden 3.6m x 1.2m glass panels giving a view of the sea under the boat. At the push of a button, the sofas lifted up and mirrors above allowed you to gaze at the seabed – from the actual bed.

Now called Big Eagle , like all of Little’s boats, she was a charter hit and her top client was a certain New York financier named Jordan Belfort. He fell in love with her and begged Little to sell to him. But he needed to secure financing, and in 1995, Little agreed to hold a note on the boat for a year if Mark Elliott stayed on as skipper.

With the boat rechristened Nadine after his wife, Belfort set about another round of refit work, restyling the interior with vintage deco and lots of mirrors, extending the upper deck this time, and fitting a crane capable of raising and stowing the Turbine Seawind seaplane.

Nadine also carried a helicopter, a 10m Intrepid tender, two 6m dinghies on the bow, four motorbikes, six jetskis, state-of-the-art dive gear. “You pretty much needed an air traffic controller when all these things were in the water,” says Elliott.

Belfort’s partying was legendary and Elliott clearly saw eye-watering things on board, but as far as he was concerned, he was there to safeguard the boat. “When Jordan Belfort became the owner, he could do whatever he wanted. I was there to protect the note,” says Elliott. “He is a brilliant mind and a lovely person. It was just when he was in his party mode, he was out of control.”

Nadine and her huge cohort of toys and vehicles plied all the usual yachting haunts on both sides of the Atlantic. But Belfort’s love story was to be short-lived. Disaster struck with the boss and guests on board during an 85-mile crossing between Civitavecchia in Italy and Calle de Volpe on Sardinia.

What was forecast to be a 20-knot blow and moderate seas degenerated into a violent 70-knot storm with crests towering above 10.6m, according to Elliott. Wave after wave pounded the superstructure, stoving in hatches and windows so that water poured below and made the boat sluggish. By a miracle the engine room remained dry and they could maintain steerage way, motoring slowly through the black of the night as rescue attempt after rescue attempt was called off.

Nadine eventually sank at dawn in over 1000m of water just 20 miles from the coast of Sardinia. Everyone had been taken off by helicopter, and there was no loss of life. Captain Mark Elliott was roundly congratulated for his handling of the incident. “The insurance paid immediately because it was the storm of the century,” he says. “I took the whole crew but one with me to [Little’s next boat] Star Ship . That was my way to come back.”

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Jordan Belfort’s ex-wife tells the real story behind the yacht on The Wolf of Wall Street

The ex-wife of jordan belfort shed some light on the infamous scene.

Ben Thompson

Jordan Belfort's ex wife, Nadine Macaluso, has set the record straight about the scene in The Wolf Of Wall Street where Belfort splashes out and buys his wife a yacht on their wedding day.

I mean, when you have a lot of money , what better way to treat your new spouse after saying I do?

After their lavish wedding, Belford ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) covers Nadine's, or Naomi as she's known in the movie, eyes with a blindfold before revealing the huge yacht, which has been christened the 'Naomi'.

And Naomi (played by Margot Robbie ) cannot contain her excitement.

"Are you serious? A f***ing yacht?!" she exclaims.

However, it seems that the real Belfort wasn't very serious, as Macaluso revealed on TikTok that her ex-husband, who she was married to from 1991 to 2005, 'did not' actually buy her a boat on their wedding day.

She said: "Actually what happened I think we were married for a few years and we were always chartering yachts, because he loved to do that.

"And I had given birth to my beautiful daughter Chandler and he said 'I want to buy a yacht'."

However, this idea didn't sit well with Macaluso at the time.

She continued: "I said 'I don't think we should buy a yacht, we have a baby and I don't feel comfortable.

'She can't swim.'

"I had visions of her falling off the boat and I was actually terrified.

"I did not want to buy the yacht ironically. And he was like 'Nope, I'm buying a yacht and I'm calling it the Nadine'. And I was like 'Okay, here we go'.

"And you know how that went."

Macaluso's final line is a nod to a scene in the film, in which Belfort and Naomi need to be rescued from the yacht after it gets caught up in a storm.

This scene was indeed based on the real life sinking of the ship in June 1996, which resulted in a rescue by the Italian Navy Special forces.

The yacht was sunk after violent waves repeatedly hit it, but luckily everyone on board was able to escape the ship in time.

Macaluso has previously commented on the scene's accuracy , where she admitted in a TikTok video that the yacht sinking scene was 'totally true'.

Speaking of the memory, she said: "It was horrific, horrifying, we were in a squall for 12 to 18 hours and we lived, thank god, for my kids."

She even showed real life footage of her, Belford and their friends being rescued by the Navy.

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Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

The true Jordan Belfort yacht story is as strange and unbelievable as the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street depicts it to be. There are several insider stories behind the sinking of the mighty yacht that are not widely known but are quite interesting and different from the reel version in several ways.

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine?

As the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street shows, the superyacht Nadine sank close to the coast of Sardinia in 1997 while battling what many calls “the storm of the century”. Jordan Belfort narrates the event in detail in the memoir describing his life in the 90s, which is what the Martin Scorsese movie is about.

Before getting into the details of the sinking, it is worth noting that the 37m yacht had a long and interesting history. She carried renowned celebrities like Coco Chanel before reaching Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie) and was one of the largest yachts in the East Coast’s waters.

While the yacht was initially manufactured for a French native and given the name Matilda, he backed out of the deal. This led Coco Chanel to buy the beautiful yacht with the low superstructure that Dutch yachts are famous for.

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The yacht took on different names as it passed through famous hands, even those of the murder trial acquitted Melvin Lane Powers. Belfort named the yacht after his wife and renovated it with the capacity to carry a helicopter, 6 Jetskis, 4 motorbikes, and much more. Under Belfort’s ownership, the yacht witnessed a series of wild parties that were like unlimited glamour and fun in a package until disaster struck unexpectedly.

Did the yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street actually happen?

The Jordan Belfort yacht sinking scene in The Wolf of Wall Street was heavily inspired by a real-life event, though the movie did take some creative liberties. For one, the yacht was called Naomi in the reel version since the name of Belfort’s wife (played by Margot Robbie ) was changed in the movie. In reality, the yacht was named Nadine.

The movie further depicts Belfort’s helicopter getting thrown off the yacht by strong waves. In reality, the yacht’s crew went up to the deck and pushed off the helicopter so that Italian navy seals would have a space to land. The yacht’s itinerary was altered a bit by the movie’s director Martin Scorsese to add to the drama, though the power of the storm was scarily accurate.

Belfort admitted that the yacht’s captain Mark Elliot explicitly warned them not to sail to Sardinia on that fateful night. But according to the movie, there was a business opportunity in the city that Belfort could not bear to miss out on despite his wife’s protests.

Some sources claim that in reality, the passengers were simply eager to hit the golf course at Sardinia the next morning. They refused to pay heed to the captain’s warning and asked him to go through the storm, which eventually led to the famous Jordan Belfort yacht sinking incident. Therefore, unfortunately, if someone wants to have a yacht rental in Dubai or any other destination, they have missed their chance with this yacht.

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Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The movie captures the fear and stress that each passenger felt when the yacht got caught up in the 70-knot storm. There is some hilarity when Belfort starts yelling for his drugs to avoid the horror of dying sober.

Several rescue attempts were made, but due to rising risks, each of them was called off. By some twist of luck, the yacht’s engine room remained mostly undamaged for a while, because of which they were able to make their way through the sea.

In the end, everyone survived the incident without any major injuries. At dawn, the Nadine made its way 1000m under the water only 20 miles away from Sardinia’s coast. Now, the movie’s audience gets to watch the Jordan Belfort yacht story unfold on the screen with a pinch of humor.

The Nadine’s captain Mark Elliot’s heroic actions did not go unnoticed. He was praised for leading all the passengers to safety, though he was able to get out of the yacht only 10 minutes before it sank. The captain also admitted that the insurance was granted immediately considering the ferocity of the storm. As for the yacht, many still wonder about the highly expensive equipment that had to be thrown into the water and is probably rusting away at the bottom of the sea.

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

The 167 ft Nadine, as its former passengers claim, was a beautiful yacht. When owned by Coco Chanel under the name Matilda, the yacht had five staterooms, large dining areas, and a helipad. The interiors were furnished with dark teak paneling. Each new owner customized the yacht’s name and interiors based on their tastes.

Belfort decorated the Nadine lavishly with a variety of mirrors and set a vintage deco theme. He renovated the upper deck to fit a crane that was able to stow his Turbine Seawind seaplane. The yacht carried the best dive gear available in the market plus a variety of Belfort’s ‘toys’ such as his motorbikes and jetskis.

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

Martin Scorsese got the yacht Lady M to represent Nadine onscreen. While Nadine actually had a luxuriously vintage charm to it, Lady M is a modern vessel with contemporary features. Lady M was manufactured in 2022 by Intermarine Savannah, while Nadine was built in 1961 by Witsen & Wis. The 147 ft Lady M is currently worth $12 million and is similar to Benetti yachts in its glamorous design.

Jordan Belfort’s life today

The entrepreneur and speaker Jordan Belfort’s shenanigans are well-known thanks to his detailed memoir and the hit movie based on some parts of his life. He spent 2 years in prison and now, at 59 years of age, has a practically negative net worth. Yet, his extraordinary motivational speaking skills continue to attract and inspire people even today.

It is easy for anyone watching the movie to wonder if many of the incidents are exaggerated. But considering Belfort’s eccentric life, even the Nadine sinking incident remains another regular anecdote shared in the movie.

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The Real Story Behind the Yacht in The Wolf of Wall Street

Based on the eponymous memoir, the 2013 hit The Wolf of Wall Street told the story of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker who was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie was a smashing success through and through. Amongst its many impressionable scenes, one of the most memorable ones was the yacht party, where Belfort and his colleagues indulged in lavish excess. However, Belfort’s ex-wife, Nadine Caridi, has now spoken out about the real story behind the yacht.

Nadine Caridi, the Ex-Wife

Caridi, who was portrayed in the movie by Margot Robbie, gave an interview in which she revealed that the yacht scene was not entirely accurate. According to Caridi, the yacht that was shown in the movie was not the one that Belfort actually owned. Instead, it was rented for the filming of the scene. In reality, Belfort owned a different yacht called Nadine. Caridi claims that the yacht was named after her and that she played a significant role in its design and decoration. She says that the yacht was much smaller than the one shown in the movie, but it was still luxurious and served as a symbol of Belfort’s wealth.

The Sinking of the Nadine Yacht

Nadine Caridi recently spoke about the sinking of the yacht in June 1996, an event that inspired a scene in the movie. The yacht’s sinking during a storm off the coast of Italy was a terrifying experience for everyone on board. The waves were violent and relentless, hitting the yacht repeatedly. Rescue services had to be called in to rescue the passengers and crew, including Belfort and Caridi. In a recent TikTok video, Caridi shared real-life footage of the rescue, showing the fear and chaos that ensued during the storm, while expressing gratitude that everyone survived.

Everything The Wolf Of Wall Street Doesn't Tell You About The True Story

Martin Scorsese's film "The Wolf of Wall Street" is an over-the-top celebration of greed and excess, inspired by the memoir of the notorious stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who is played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film. It tell of the rise of Jordan Belfort from a low-level assistant at L. F. Rothschild to a Long Island penny stock pusher, as well as Belfort's dramatic fall from filthy rich CEO of Stratton Oakmont to a stint in federal prison for stock fraud and money laundering.

Despite being ostensibly based on a true story, many question the veracity of the film because of how absolutely outlandishness of Belfort's claims, and how outrageous the antics at Stratton Oakmont are. Scorsese obviously recognized Belfort is an unreliable narrator with a penchant for exaggeration. In the film, Belfort breaks the fourth wall, addressing the camera and the audience directly. This was a strategic choice by the screenwriter and director. Screenwriter Terence Winter told Esquire , "Jordan is talking directly to you. You are being sold the Jordan Belfort story by Jordan Belfort, and he is a very unreliable narrator. That's very much by design."

Despite how unlikely this story is, most of what transpires in the film actually happened. Winter added, "I assumed he must've been embellishing. But then I did some research, and I talked to the FBI agent who arrested him, who had been tracking Jordan for ten years. And he told me, 'It's all true. Every single thing in his memoir, every insane coincidence and over-the-top perk, it all happened.'" 

That said, this film is Belfort's truth, not necessarily the definitive truth. Keep reading if you want to learn everything "The Wolf of Wall Street" doesn't tell you about the true story of Jordan Belfort's meteoric rise and fall.

Belfort's wives' names were changed for the film

Although their real-life counterparts are obvious, the names of Jordan Belfort's ex-wives were changed in the film, giving the filmmaker creative license with the characters. Belfort's first-wife in the film is Teresa Petrillo (Cristin Milioti), but her real-life counterpart is Denise Lombardo. Denise met Belfort in high school, and the childhood sweethearts married in 1985 after Denise graduated from college. Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont while married to Denise, and they divorced after she found out about his affair in 1991 (per The U.S. Sun ). After their divorce, Denise led a low-profile life, staying out of the public eye.

Belfort's second-wife in the film is Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie). Naomi's real-life counterpart is Nadine Macaluso. Like Naomi, Nadine was a model and met Belfort at a party before they married in 1991. Nadine and Belfort had two children together and separated in 1998 as depicted in the film (per the U.S. Sun). Nadine got a Ph.D, becoming a marriage and family therapist. She lives in California with her second husband (per Daily Mail TV ).

Margot Robbie , who played Naomi in the film, met Nadine while preparing for her role. Robbie told IndieWire meeting Nadine helped her understand her character's motivations, saying, "I could do or say any horrible thing and know that my character's motivation was out of protection for her child. Whether or not the audience sees my side of events is another matter, but just to know my motivation can give me an authentic performance." She added how strong Nadine is, saying, "She's has to be, to have put up with Jordan and his shenanigans."

The original crew Belfort recruited from friends are composite characters

Although Belfort recruited the original crew for his Long Island brokerage firm from a group of friends; Alden "Sea Otter" Kupferberg (Henry Zebrowski), Robbie "Pinhead" Feinberg (Brian Sacca), Chester Ming (Kenneth Choi), and Nicky "Rugrat" Koskoff (PJ Byrne) are composite characters with fictitious names. These characters are an amalgamation of numerous people who worked at Stratton Oakmont and do not represent actual people.

This didn't stop Andrew Greene, a board member of Stratton Oakmont, from filing a defamation suit against the film's production company. He was offended by the depiction of "Rugrat" in the film, saying the character damaged his reputation. He called the character a "criminal, drug user, degenerate, depraved and devoid of any morals or ethics" (per The Guardian ).

In 2018, Greene lost his suit . In 2020, an appellate court threw the suit out, stating that the filmmakers, by creating composite characters and fictitious names, "took appropriate steps to ensure that no one would be defamed by the Film," (per the Hollywood Reporter ). The filmmaker included the hijinks of the employees at Stratton Oakmont in the film to illustrate the raucous corporate culture of the brokerage firm, rather than defame former employees.

Donnie Azoff doesn't exist, his real-life counterpart is Danny Porush

Jonah Hill 's character Donnie Azoff in "The Wolf of Wall Street" doesn't exist. He is a composite character created to avoid defaming anyone while making the film. To anyone who is familiar with Jordan Belfort and Stratton Oakmont's story, it's obvious Danny Porush is Azoff's real-life counterpart. Porush disputes the veracity of both Belfort's memoir and the film, telling Mother Jones , "The book ... is a distant relative of the truth, and the film is a distant relative of the book." Porush admits to swallowing the goldfish, but under different circumstances than depicted in the film.

As reported by Mother Jones, Porush was Belfort's friend and business partner between 1988 and 1996. Like Belfort, he cooperated with authorities, ultimately serving 39 months in prison for his securities and financial crimes at Stratton Oakmont. Porush disputes the throwing of dwarves, insists there were never animals in Stratton Oakmont — other than the goldfish he ate — but admits to the wild parties and taking part in the depravity and excesses encouraged at the brokerage firm, saying "Stratton was like a fraternity."

Porush told Mother Jones, "My main complaint [regarding the memoir] besides his inaccuracy was his using my real name," something that was remedied when the filmmakers created the composite character of Donnie Azoff. Ultimately, Porush doesn't seem to hold a grudge despite his grievances with the inaccuracies saying, "Hey, it's Hollywood ... I know they want to make a movie that sells. And Jordan wrote whatever he could to make the book sell."

Danny Porush's wife introduced Jordan Belfort to her husband

In "The Wolf of Wall Street," Donnie Azoff (Danny Porush's fictional counterpart) approaches Belfort at a restaurant about what he does for a living, after seeing Belfort's Jaguar in the parking lot. In reality, Belfort met his future business partner, Danny Porush, through Danny's wife Nancy.

Porush and Nancy lived in the same building in Queens where Belfort lived with his first wife Denise, as Nancy told Doree Lewak with The New York Post in 2013 shortly before "The Wolf of Wall Street" came out. Nancy explained how she took the same bus into the city for work as Belfort, saying, "the commute to the city each day was hard because I became pregnant right away. There was a nice boy from our building on the same bus who always gave up his seat for me. His name was Jordan Belfort, and he worked in finance ... I pushed Danny to talk to Jordan ... After just one conversation, Danny came back and announced he was taking the Series 7 exam to get his stockbroker's license."

In the New York Post article, Nancy detailed how her husband changed once he began working with Belfort and making serious cash, saying, "Up until then, Danny never seemed to care about money ... I saw him morph from a nice wholesome guy into showy narcissist whom I hardly recognized anymore." After being arrested for securities fraud, Porush left Nancy for another woman. They are now divorced, and he lives in Florida with his second wife. We can't help wondering if Nancy ever regrets introducing her ex-husband to Belfort.

Belfort's destroyed yacht once belonged to Coco Chanel

Jordan Belfort bought a yacht and named it after his second wife. In the film, the boat is named Naomi after the character played by Margot Robbie, but in real life the boat was called the Nadine . True to the film, Belfort insisted his boat's captain take the yacht into choppy waters, where the boat happened upon powerful but unpredictable mistrals, leading to the Nadine sinking into the Mediterranean Sea in an event known as Mayday In The Med . Belfort, his guests and crew, were rescued by the Italian coast guard.

What the film doesn't tell you is that Belfort's yacht had an interesting past. Belfort's vintage yacht once belonged to none other than the famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel. Chanel is known for her outspoken nature and is associated with quite a few fiercely female quotes. Chanel is quoted as saying , "As soon as you set foot on a yacht, you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom." Rather than avoid luxury yachts all together, Chanel made the boss move of buying her own in 1961, naming her the Matilda (per Boss Hunting ).

As bizarre as this interlude of the film was, it actually happened, with one major difference. In an interview with The Room Live , Belfort explained how the group waiting to be rescued had to push the helicopter off of the boat to make room for a rescue team to lower down onto the yacht. In the film, the waves knock the helicopter off of the yacht. Belfort also explains that although his private jet also crashed, it was 10 days after the yacht sunk, not at the same time, as it was depicted in the film for dramatic effect.

Steve Madden spent time in prison for stock fraud

Although they don't talk about it in the movie, Steve Madden also went to prison for stock fraud and money laundering along with Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. The New York Times reported in 2002 that Madden "was arrested in 2000 as a result of an investigation of a scheme to manipulate 23 initial public stock offerings underwritten by the companies Stratton Oakmont and Monroe Parker Securities ... It included the initial public stock offering of his own company in 1993."

True to the film, Danny Porush, Azoff's real-life counterpart, really was childhood friends with Steve Madden. Like Belfort and Porush, Madden loved debauchery and Quaaludes, so much so he didn't finish college because of how much he was partying. Although Madden wrote about his wild days in his memoir, his time partying with the Stratton Oakmont "fraternity" was not included in the film. Stratton Oakmont took Madden's company public, making him instantly rich ( per The New York Post ).

As reported by the New York Post, Madden wrote about this period of his life in his memoir "The Cobbler: How I Disrupted an Industry, Fell from Grace & Came Back Stronger Than Ever." In his book, Madden wrote, "Jordan was like no one else I have ever met before or since. He became one of the most influential people in my life ... I was pumping and dumping [stocks] right alongside them." Madden wound up serving 31 months for his financial crimes and his involvement with Stratton Oakmont's schemes. Unlike Porush and Belfort, Madden could continue working at his company after being released from prison.

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

When Belfort was convicted of money laundering and stock fraud in 2003 for Stratton Oakmont's "pump and dump" schemes, he was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay over $110.4 million in restitution (per Crime Museum ). Belfort only served 22 months for his crimes and a judge ordered him to pay half of his income once he was released from prison.

In 2013, just after the film was released, CNN reported Belfort had only contributed a little over $11 million to the fund for victims, much obtained from confiscated possessions. At the time the film came out, Belfort allegedly stated he would hand over all of his royalties from the film and the book. But in 2018, Fortune Magazine reported government officials claimed Belfort still owed $97 million, meaning that over the previous 5 years, Belfort only contributed an additional $2 million dollars to the victims' fund. $2 million dollars is more than most of us will ever see, but Belfort is still making good money as a motivational speaker.

As reported by Fortune Magazine, there is a disagreement between Belfort's attorneys and prosecutors over what income can be garnished for restitution. Belfort reportedly earned around $9 million dollars between 2013 and 2015, but neglected to pay half of those earnings to the victims' fund. Although Belfort claims he will feel better after he has paid the money back, he doesn't seem to be fulfilling his end of the court order. Belfort obviously still enjoys a life of luxury and it is hard to reconcile his claims of being reformed with his reluctance to pay the restitution to his victims. In her New York Post article Nancy Porush reminded us, "Greed is not good — it's ugly."

Tommy Chong was Belfort's cellmate in prison

"The Wolf of Wall Street" ends with Jordan Belfort in a cushy white-collar prison with tennis courts, but the film didn't tell us who Belfort's cellmate was. Belfort and Tommy Chong of the comedy duo "Cheech & Chong" were cellmates before Chong was released. In 2014, Belfort spoke to Stephen Galloway with The Hollywood Reporter about his time in prison. He explained, "[Chong] was in the process of writing his book. We used to tell each other stories at night, and I had him rolling hysterically on the floor. The third night he goes, 'You've got to write a book.' So I started writing, and I knew it was bad. It was terrible. I was about to call it quits and then I went into the prison library and stumbled upon 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe, and I was like, 'That's how I want to write!'"

In 2014 Chong spoke with Adrian Lee at Maclean's about how he met Belfort in prison and giving Belfort feed back on his pages, saying "After a while he showed me what he had written, and it was the only time I had critiqued someone really heavy — usually when someone writes something, you say, 'Oh yeah, that's great, keep going.' But I knew instinctively he had a lot more to offer than what he showed me ... I told him ... 'No, you've got to write those stories you've been telling me at night. Your real life is much more exciting than any kind of imaginary story you could come up with.'"

Stratton Oakmont was never on Wall Street

Although the memoir and film are titled "The Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort only worked on Wall Street for several months in 1987 at L. F. Rothschild. Black Monday put an end to his days at a Manhattan based brokerage firm. As we see in the film, it was on Long Island that Belfort got a job at the Investor's Center selling penny stocks from the pink sheets and found his calling: his get-rich-quick scheme, selling nearly worthless stocks for a 50 percent commission to people who couldn't afford to lose the money (per NY Times ).

Belfort soon went out on his own, founding Stratton Oakmont with Danny Porush, where they began targeting rich investors using a persuasive script and "pump and dump" tactics — making Belfort, Porush and their brokers rich, while leaving their clients broke. As reported by the Washington Post in 1996, Stratton Oakmont was disciplined for securities violations as early as 1989, and continued to be disciplined almost annually.

Jimmy So with The Daily Beast, maintains, "The problem with 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is that the self-fashioned wolf was nowhere near the real Wall Street." The memoir and film made the brokerage firm seem like a much bigger deal than they really were, despite the financial ruin they left in their wake. Stratton Oakmont's offices were on Long Island, not Wall Street.

Jordan Belfort was never called 'The Wolf of Wall Street'

Scorsese's film makes it seem like Forbes gave Jordan Belfort the nickname, "The Wolf of Wall Street" when they published a takedown about Stratton Oakmont's questionable business practices. Forbes wrote an article about Stratton Oakmont's dirty deeds in 1991, but the article did not call Belfort "the wolf of wall street." In 2013, Forbes revisited Roula Khalaf's original article, where she called Belfort a "twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers." 

Danny Porush, Belfort's former partner and one-time friend, told Mother Jones  that nobody at the firm ever used the "wolf" moniker. As reported by CNN , Belfort came up with the nickname himself for his memoir. As Porush told Mother Jones, Belfort's "greatest gift was always that of a self-promoter." But as Joe Nocera with the NY Times said, "who would ever buy a ticket to a movie called 'The Wolf of Long Island'?"

Belfort had a head-on collision while driving under the influence of Quaaludes

When the real Jordan Belfort crashed his car while on Quaaludes, he was in a Mercedes Benz rather than a Lamborghini, and someone was actually injured. Belfort had a head-on collision while driving home from the country club where he used the pay phone, sending the woman he collided with to the hospital (per The Daily Beast ). None of Belfort's crimes are victimless.

This type of discrepancy is central to the complaints about both Belfort's memoir and the film. Although Belfort says he regrets his crimes, he is too busy boasting about the parties, the riches, the drugs, and the sex to sound like he regrets anything except getting caught. Belfort's memoir and the film it inspired might seem like a celebration of greed and excess, but they are also a depiction of the ostentatious behavior that eventually drew the attention of the authorities.

Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" might not tell you everything about the true story, but what it does is reveal how audiences love watching someone else's destructive behavior. We get all the thrills and none of the consequences. As screenwriter Terence Winter told Esquire, "I'd much rather watch somebody who isn't responsible, who makes all the wrong decisions and hangs out with the wrong people. That's more satisfying. We may live like saints, but when it comes to our fantasy life, everybody's got a little larceny in their soul."

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Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

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The true Jordan Belfort yacht story is as strange and unbelievable as the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street depicts it to be. There are several insider stories behind the sinking of the mighty yacht that are not widely known but are quite interesting and different from the reel version in several ways.

Nadine yacht model

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine? As the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street shows, the superyacht Nadine sank close to the coast of Sardinia in 1997 while battling what many calls “the storm of the century”. Jordan Belfort narrates the event in detail in the memoir describing his life in the 90s, which is what the Martin Scorsese movie is about.

Jordan belfort yacht sailing

Did the yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street actually happen? The Jordan Belfort yacht sinking scene in The Wolf of Wall Street was heavily inspired by a real-life event, though the movie did take some creative liberties. For one, the yacht was called Naomi in the reel version since the name of Belfort’s wife (played by Margot Robbie) was changed in the movie. In reality, the yacht was named Nadine.

Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The movie captured each passenger’s fear and stress when the yacht got caught up in the 70-knot storm. There is some hilarity when Belfort starts yelling for his drugs to avoid the horror of dying sober. Several rescue attempts were made, but each was called off due to rising risks. By some twist of luck, the yacht’s engine room remained undamaged primarily for a while, because of which they were able to make their way through the sea.

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

The 167 ft Nadine, as its former passengers claim, was beautiful. When owned by Coco Chanel under the name Matilda, the yacht had five staterooms, large dining areas, and a helipad. The interiors were furnished with dark teak paneling. Each new owner customized the yacht’s name and interiors based on their tastes.

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

Martin Scorsese got the yacht Lady M to represent Nadine onscreen. While Nadine had a luxuriously vintage charm, Lady M is a modern vessel with contemporary features. Lady M was manufactured in 2022 by Intermarine Savannah, while Nadine was built in 1961 by Witsen & Wis. The 147 ft Lady M is currently worth $12 million and is similar to Benetti yachts in its glamorous design.

Jordan Belfort’s life today

The entrepreneur and speaker Jordan Belfort’s shenanigans are well-known thanks to his detailed memoir and the hit movie based on some parts of his life. He spent 2 years in prison and now has practically negative net worth at 59 years of age. Yet, his extraordinary motivational speaking skills continue to attract and inspire people even today. It is easy for anyone watching the movie to wonder if many of the incidents are exaggerated. But considering Belfort’s eccentric life, even the Nadine sinking incident remains another regular anecdote shared in the movie.

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How Accurate Is The Wolf of Wall Street ?

For  The Wolf of Wall Street , his latest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese forewent his signature voiceover style in favor of more direct address: Throughout the movie, DiCaprio, playing the lupine financial huckster Jordan Belfort, looks into the camera and speaks right to the audience. Terence Winter, who wrote the screenplay, explains the use of the technique thusly: “ You are being sold the Jordan Belfort story by Jordan Belfort , and he is a very unreliable narrator.”

It’s important to keep that in mind if you decide to dig into the fact and fiction of the film.  The Wolf of Wall Street  is quite faithful to the book by Belfort that it’s based on —though there are differences; the key ones are enumerated below. But how faithful is that book to reality?

It can be hard to tell, especially since some of its more outlandish tales turn out to be true. Nonetheless, below is an attempt to suss out the true-to-life from the merely true-to-Belfort in the film version of his story.

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio)

Leonardo DiCaprio, left, as Jordan Belfort, right

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures / Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

The broad outlines of Belfort’s story are faithfully rendered by the film: A talented but struggling salesman from Long Island, he got a job at venerable investment firm L.F. Rothschild, then was laid off after Black Monday . He went to work at Investors Center, a penny stock house, and a year later opened “ a franchise of Stratton Securities , a minor league broker-dealer,” in “a friend’s car dealership in Queens.” He and his partner earned enough to buy out Stratton and form Stratton Oakmont, which he built into one of the largest over-the-counter brokerage firms in the country. (As in the movie, he hired some old friends .) He did an enormous amount of drugs—including, yes, Lemmon 714s —employed the services of countless prostitutes, and eventually went to prison for the pump-and-dump schemes that made him rich.

Much of DiCaprio’s dialogue comes straight from Belfort’s book, as do nearly all of the hard-to-believe misadventures: landing the helicopter on his lawn while stoned, crashing his car while severely high on Quaaludes, insisting that the captain of his massive yacht sail through choppy waters only to have the boat capsize and then get rescued by the Italian navy. Some of these stories are difficult to verify, but, for what it’s worth, the FBI agent who investigated Belfort told the New York Times , “I tracked this guy for ten years, and everything he wrote is true .” (Even  the yacht story checks out .) As for the much discussed tossing of little people, shown at the beginning of the movie: Belfort’s second-in-command says “ we never abused [or threw] the midgets in the office ; we were friendly to them.” That same former exec says there were never any animals in the office, let alone a chimpanzee, and he says that no one called Belfort “the Wolf.” We know, at least, that the nickname was not coined by a Forbes writer . But, for the most part, it’s  Belfort’s word  against his. 

As far as I can tell, Belfort is not a particular advocate of “ sell me this pen ,” a bit of sales interview role-playing that has been around for years . Another minor but notable difference between movie and reality: Belfort, unlike DiCaprio, is a short man, and multiple acquaintances have suggested that his lust for money, power, and attention are evidence of a Napoleon complex . As for the fidelity of DiCaprio’s portrayal otherwise, there are many videos of Belfort you can watch online, including one or two of Stratton Oakmont company parties .

Danny Porush/Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill)

Photo courtesy Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures; Photo courtesy DannyPorush.com

The case of Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is more complicated. For one thing, Azoff is a fictional name, and the character is sometimes described as a composite. His story closely matches that of Danny Porush—but Porush himself has disputed some of the details . Here are the basic facts: Porush lived in Belfort’s building, and he went to work as a trainee under Belfort before Stratton Oakmont. As History vs. Hollywood notes, he did not meet Belfort in a restaurant ; they were introduced by Porush’s wife (and yes,  she was his cousin ; they have since divorced). He has admitted to eating a live goldfish that belonged to a Stratton employee, as depicted in the memoir and the movie, but denies the  three-way with Belfort and a teenaged employee .

Porush was indeed a childhood friend of Steve Madden’s, and the initial public offering for that women’s shoe company was the biggest bit of business Stratton Oakmont ever did. Madden, like Porush and Belfort, served time in prison for participating in the Stratton scheme.

Nadine/Naomi (Margot Robbie)

Photo courtesy Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures; Home video still/CNN/YouTube

The names of Belfort’s wives were also changed for the film. Belfort divorced Denise Lombardo, called Teresa in the movie, after meeting Nadine Caridi at a Stratton Oakmont party . Caridi, called Naomi and played by Margot Robbie, was a model who had appeared in beer commercials; in the book, Befort calls her “the Miller Lite girl.” (You can see one of her ads below.) In both the book and the movie Belfort calls her the Duchess of Bay Ridge (or just the Duchess, for short), because she was born in England but grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She really did have an English aunt (named Patricia, not Emma) who smuggled money into Switzerland on Belfort’s behalf, and who died while Belfort’s money was still in Swiss banks. (Belfort also had a drug-dealing friend with Swiss in-laws who did much of the smuggling—and that friend was later arrested after a botched money hand-off with Porush , just as we see in the movie.)

The scene in which Naomi spreads her legs open and tells Jordan he won’t be getting sex any time soon , only to learn that she is in full view of a security camera, is taken right from the book—as is the fight in which she throws water at her husband repeatedly. Belfort acknowledges hitting his wife in the memoir; he says he kicked her down the stairs. He also threatened to take their daughter away, putting her in the car with him and then crashing it into a pillar on their property. He was high.

Belfort and Caridi have since divorced.

Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey)

Graphic by Slate. Images courtesy courtesy of YouTube, Paramount Pictures.

The L.F. Rothschild trader who takes Jordan to lunch and tells him that cocaine and masturbation are the keys to success as a stockbroker is based on a real person whose name is not changed in the movie or the book. Mark Hanna has told his own version of the story on YouTube , and he does not seem to dispute the substance of Belfort’s account. (The lunch scene in the film combines two conversations from the memoir, using nearly identical dialogue.) Hanna himself was later convicted of stock fraud . He did not pound his chest and hum rhythmically, as McConaughey does so memorably in the movie; that flourish is based on an acting exercise that McConaughey likes to do , and was, according to the movie’s press notes, incorporated into the film after DiCaprio and Scorsese noticed the actor doing it on set.

Special Agent Gregory Coleman/Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler)

Courtesy WolfofWallStreet.com/Photo courtesy Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures

Patrick Denham is another made-up name, but there really was an FBI agent who followed Belfort closely for years: Gregory Coleman. He told CNBC in 2007 that he was struck by the “ blatantness ” of Belfort’s financial crimes. As far as I can tell, they did not meet on Belfort’s yacht, as the movie suggests ; in the book, Belfort first meets Coleman when the FBI arrives to arrest Belfort at his home. (The arrest did not take place while Belfort filmed an infomercial—that’s a bit of poetic license on Scorsese’s part.)

The Aftermath After his arrest and indictment, Belfort cooperated with the FBI. In the film, Jordan, while wearing a wire, passes a note to Donnie telling him not to incriminate himself. Belfort did not pass such a note to Porush, but, in his second book, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street , he claims to have done just this for his friend Dave Beall . He ultimately served 22 months in prison and was ordered to pay over $100 million in restitution to his victims ( which he has apparently failed to do ). As the film depicts, he became a motivational speaker after leaving prison; at the seminar in the movie, DiCaprio as Jordan is introduced by the real Jordan Belfort (and, in real life, the actor has filmed a testimonial for Belfort ). Belfort is not the only real-life participant to show up in the movie: A private investigator that Belfort employed, Richard “Bo” Dietl, is also in the film; he plays himself.

Previously How Much of American Hustle Actually Happened? The People Who Inspired Inside Llewyn Davis How True Is Saving Mr. Banks ? How Accurate Is 12 Years a Slave ? How Accurate Is Captain Phillips ? How Accurate Is Dallas Buyers Club ?

Who is Jordan Belfort? True Story of “The Wolf of Wall Street”

The guide will examine the life and fraudulent activities of  Jordan Belfort , whose real-life events inspired the movie “ Wolf of Wall Street “. It will delve into Belfort’s career, particularly his time at Stratton Oakmont and the financial schemes that eventually led to his downfall.

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Who is Jordan Belfort?

Belfort spent 22 months in prison, during which he found his passion for writing. Soon after his release, he published his first memoir, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” recounting his time as a stockbroker, later popularized in the 2013 Martin Scorsese film, in which he is depicted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

After various scandals and a term in prison for fraud, Jordan Belfort has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker, his primary topic being the distinction between greed, ambition, and passion on Wall Street.

Jordan Belfort’s early life 

Jordan Belfort was born in 1962 in the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish parents, who were both accountants. Around 16, Belfort and his close childhood friend earned $20,000 selling Italian ice from styrofoam coolers at a local beach. 

After graduating from American University with a degree in biology, Belfort planned on using the money earned selling ice cream to pay for dental school, subsequently enrolling himself at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. However, he dropped out on the first day after the school dean warned the students saying: “The golden age of dentistry is over. If you’re here to make a lot of money, you’re in the wrong place.”

Jordan Belfort’s personal life

While Jordan Belfort had a tumultuous business life and a flair for corrupt practices, his personal life wasn’t far from it. While running his company Stratton Oakmont, Belfort was already divorced from his first wife, Denise Lombardo. Jordan Belfort’s first wife, Denise Lombardo, whose movie character in “Wolf of Wall Street,” was played by Cristin Milioti.

You may also recognize the name Naomi, Jordan Belfort’s wife, portrayed by Margot Robbie in the movie “Wolf of Wall Street.” In real life, Naomi’s name is Nadine Caridi, Belfort’s second wife . Nadine and Jordan Belfort had two kids together (or Belfort and Naomi in the movie), but ultimately divorced in 2015 after domestic violence accusations.

Belfort’s ex-wife Nadine now goes by the name of Nadine Macaluso and works as a therapist, using her experience to help other women in abusive relationships via social media. Nadine has said she “ walked away from my marriage with absolutely nothing ,” reasoning “ it was the right thing to do ,” after realizing Belfort’s money was all “blood money.”

@drnaelmft I left my marriage from The Wolf of Wall Street with my kids and my curtains. #wolfofwallstreet #wolfofwallstreetmovie #wallstreet #nadinemacaluso #drnadinemacaluso #drnae #drnadine #marriedtothewolfofwallstreet #margotrobbie #margotrobbieofficial #tiktok #tiktokviral #tiktoker #tiktoknews #tiktokcelebsnews #tiktokfamous #naomiwolfofwallstreet #wolfofwallstreetnaomi #leonardodicaprio #leonardodicaprioedit #martinscorsese #martinscorsesefilms #martinscorsesemoviesbelike #icon #tiktoktherapist #tiktoktherapy #therapy #therapist #90s #longisland #wallstreet #wallstreet90s #goldcoast ♬ You Found Me – Instrumental Pop Songs

Jordan Belfort’s yacht was named after his second wife Nadine (or Naomi in the “Wolf of Wall Street” movie), which was previously built for Coco Chanel in 1961. It ultimately sank off the Sardinian east coast in 1996 after Belfort insisted on sailing out in high winds against the captain’s advice. 

Jordan Belfort’s net worth

It is estimated that Jordan Belfort’s net worth peak was around  $400 million  in 1998; however, the exact figures are unknown. Despite his fraudulent past, Jordan Belfort has leveraged his years working in the financial industry, engaging in different ventures.

Motivational speaking, book sales, movie rights, as well as various real estate, stocks, and crypto investments, have accumulated Jordan Belfort a sizeable fortune, which as of March 2023, was estimated to be around an impressive  $134 million .

A large chunk of Belfort’s annual income of $18 million comes from book sales (a book titled “The Wolf of Wall Street”) and motivational speaking events worldwide, where he shares his story of triumph and failure. He also makes an impressive $50 million by selling the movie rights to his story.  

Furthermore, Belfort has invested roughly $27 in luxury real estate, owns multiple high-end cars worth $4 million, has an estimated cash reserve of over $32 million, and has an investment portfolio valued at around $15 million, adding crypto-related products.

Jordan Belfort’s podcast

Besides working as a motivational speaker and earning money through books and movies, Belfort keeps sharing his doings through a personal YouTube channel called The Wolf of Wall Street, where he posts monthly episodes of a podcast, “The Wolf’s Den,” where he shares his business ventures, motivational speaking events, life events, and new partnerships.

For example, in his session from January 13th with Robert Beadles, speaking to the founder of the Monarch crypto wallet, he shared his outlook on Bitcoin and the current crypto market and discussed the new regulations surrounding Bitcoin outlook for 2023 and the likely events that would follow.

Jordan Belfort’s career

Early endeavours.

At 23, Jordan Belfort became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman on New York’s Long Island, dreaming of getting rich. He grew his business to a string of trucks and several employees, moving 5,000 pounds of beef and fish a week. But as he expanded too fast, the lack of capital ultimately failed the business, and he filed for bankruptcy at 25.

Wall Street

After the meat and seafood business went bust, Belfort’s interest turned to Wall Street, where he got a position as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild. However, he was later let go after the company experienced financial difficulties due to the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 .

Stratton Oakmont

Jordan Belfort eventually ended up at Investor Center, a small brokerage firm on Long Island, in 1988. There, he was introduced to penny stocks (high-risk securities with small market caps that typically trade for a low price over-the-counter (OTC) and are therefore less regulated than stocks traded on a major market exchange), which would later propel him to success. 

A year later (1989), Belfort started an over-the-counter brokerage house in the franchise “Stratton Securities” with partner Danny Porush. Within five months, the two had earned enough to buy the whole Stratton franchise, renaming the company Stratton Oakmont. The company essentially functioned as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with pump-and-dump stock sales.

Stratton Oakmont did astonishingly well over the next several years, at one point employing over 1,000 stock brokers, and was linked to the IPOs of nearly three dozen companies. However, during his years at Stratton, Jordan Belfort led a life of lavish parties and intensive recreational drugs (especially methaqualone under the brand name “Quaalude”), which resulted in addiction.

Jordan Belfort’s famous sales pitch 

Part of Belfort’s strategy was to teach his brokers his infamous sales pitch, the “ Kodak pitch ,” by which they were directed to cold-call clients and entice them with a trusted blue-chip company, only to then recommend stocks with higher margins for the seller, such as penny stocks.

The name came from using the blue-chip company Eastman Kodak as the bait. The goal of the pitch was solely to gain the client’s confidence in the trustworthiness of their firm by recommending a familiar household name that larger brokerage houses such as Merrill Lynch might recommend. 

From there, the client would receive future updates on Eastman Kodak and new stock pitches involving a penny stock that Jordan Belfort was illegally manipulating and funneling money through. Unfortunately, the penny stocks often had little or no actual fundamental value and later crashed, obliterating the client’s investment while Belfort and his company pocketed millions. Naturally, during these events, Belfort claimed that he only tried to help his clients invest in the future of America.

Recommended video : “Don’t hang up until the client buys or dies”

Steven Madden, Jordan Belfort, and Stratton Oakmont

Steven Madden was introduced to Stratton by Danny Porush (the key partner at Stratton) and welcomed into the firm with a $500,000 early investment . Next, Stratton organized an IPO that gave themselves up to 85% (illegal as the underwriter of the public offering) of the company, subsequently dumping the shares almost right after the company went public to their clients, banking $20 million . 

Madden eventually paid millions to the government and spent considerably more time (30 months) locked up in federal prison than Belfort (22 months).

The irony here is, however, though Steve Madden was taken public at a ludicrous valuation at the time (3 million shares worth $15 million), yet, as Madden writes in his memoir: “if you bought Steve Madden stock that day, even at the inflated price, and held onto it, you would be very rich today.”

Meanwhile, Eastman Kodak, the original blue chip company that served as bait to potential investors, has since filed for bankruptcy. Interestingly, in a twist of fate, the bait stock went bust, and the scam penny stock could have turned relatively small retail investors into millionaires today.

Jordan Belfort’s legal troubles 

Law enforcement officials targeted Stratton Oakmont throughout its lifetime. Finally, in December 1996, the National Association of Securities Dealers (now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) expelled Stratton Oakmont, forcing it out of business. Jordan Belfort was subsequently indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

Belfort’s demise can largely be attributed to his private attempts to move his money out of the U.S., smuggling it to Swiss bank accounts to be laundered. Eventually, however, the FBI agents (led by Greg Coleman and Joel Cohen) investigating Stratton and Belfort convinced witnesses to give them information about the move and were ultimately successful at also getting notoriously secretive Swiss banks to cooperate. 

With solid evidence, both Belfort and Porush were arrested in September 1998 and convinced to collaborate with the investigation. Eventually, Belfort pleaded guilty, and after the case had taken years to come to trial, in 2004, he was convicted. However, Belfort ultimately served only 22 months of a four-year sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in California in exchange for a plea deal with the FBI.

Jordan Belfort was ordered through his restitution agreement to pay 50% of his income until 2009 towards restitution to the 1,513 clients he had defrauded (totaling approximately $200 million in investor losses), with a total of $110 million in restitution further mandated. As late as 2013, complaints had been filed by federal prosecutors regarding his payments, leading to Belfort making a separate deal with federal authorities to complete the restitution payments.

During his time in prison, he shared a cell with comedian Tommy Chong, who encouraged him to tell the story of his experiences as a stockbroker. On his release in 2006, Belfort realized there was interest in his life story and so began pitching his manuscript, which eventually got picked up by Random House, who rewarded him with a $500,000 advance. “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the book that inspired the Jordan Belfort movie, was on bookshelves within a year of his release.

Chong and Belfort remained friends after their release from prison, with Belfort crediting him for his new career path as a motivational speaker and writer. Belfort commented on his wrong-doings in his memoir, stating:

“I got greedy. … Greed is not good. Ambition is good, passion is good. Passion prospers. My goal is to give more than I get, that’s a sustainable form of success. … Ninety-five percent of the business was legitimate. {…} It was all brokerage firm issues. It was all legitimate, nothing to do with liquidating stocks.”

Yet federal prosecutors and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials involved in the case maintain : “Stratton Oakmont was not a real Wall Street firm, either literally or figuratively.”

Jordan Belfort’s books 

Belfort published two memoirs: “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” also issued in approximately 40 countries and translated into 18 languages. In 2017, Jordan Belfort released a self-help book, “Way of the Wolf.” 

The former Federal prosecutor who led the investigation of Belfort has insisted that much in his memoirs is a fabrication embellished by aggrandization of his own persona and adoration by others and that “the real Jordan Belfort story still includes thousands of victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars that they never will be repaid.”

Motivational speaking and sales training

Ultimately Belfort reinvented himself as a motivational speaker. When he first began speaking, he focused mainly on motivation and ethics in the financial world but then moved his focus to practical sales skills and entrepreneurship.

Recommended video: Jordan Belfort Reveals How To Sell Anything To Anyone At Anytime

The primary subject matter of his seminars is what he has referred to as the “Straight Line System,” a system of sales advice and persuasion skills, boldly stating : “You’re either a victim of circumstance or you’re a creator of circumstance.” 

What is Jordan Belfort’s sales training about?

Jordan Belfort’s schemes explained

Let’s now briefly explain the various financial schemes, Jordan Belfort, together with Stratton Oakmont, partook in, including a boiler room and pump-and-dump operation, as well as money laundering.

Boiler room

A boiler room is an operation in which brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade investors to purchase securities with false or misleading premises. Most boiler room salespeople contact potential investors by cold calls. While this means the potential client has no reason to trust the caller, it also means they have no background information to refute their claims.

Part of the pressure sales approach includes making exaggerated assertions about the investment opportunity that the client cannot verify, encouraging the investor to buy the stock immediately. In addition, the salesperson might insist on immediate payment, including taking an aggressive approach and threatening the prospect to act, lest they “lose an opportunity of a lifetime.” In fact, promises of high returns and no risk are essential to pressuring clients to invest.

Boiler room scams typically sell fraudulent, speculative securities, typically penny stocks, i.e., small companies that trade for less than $5 per share. Penny stocks are too small for major stock exchanges and are only traded over-the-counter, meaning that a relatively small amount of buyers can cause a significant price rise. 

In a typical penny stock scam, fraudsters would first accumulate a small-cap stock at a low price and then use boiler-room methods to gather buyers for an inflated price. In such a scam, victims may think they are buying on the open market when in reality, they are purchasing the shares directly from the scammers. The commission and the stock’s easy manipulation are the primary incentives for brokers to trade penny stocks.

Boiler room operations, if not illegal, unquestionably violate the rules of fair practice set forth by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). 

Pump and dump

Much like a boiler room operation, a pump-and-dump is a manipulative scheme to boost the price of a security through false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements. In a typical pump-and-dump, fraudsters use cold-calling, message boards, or social media to reach potential investors and convince them to buy the asset, with promises of guaranteed profits. Then, as the price rises, the scammers sell their shares, leaving investors holding the bag.

These schemes generally target micro- and small-cap stocks on over-the-counter exchanges that are less regulated than traditional exchanges as well as easier to manipulate. The practice is illegal based on securities law and can lead to heavy fines. 

Money laundering

Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities, i.e., making “dirty” money appear legitimate. The method of laundering money typically involves three steps: 

• Placement: Injecting the “dirty money” into a legitimate (cash-based) financial institution;
• Layering: Concealing the source of the funds through a series of transactions and bookkeeping tricks;
• Integration: Withdrawal of the “clean” money as needed.

For example, Belfort attempted a money laundering method known as “bulk cash smuggling,” based on moving “dirty” money, in its physical form, over the border to another country (in this case, Switzerland), where the bank secrecy laws are much more stringent. 

Jordan Belfort’s boiler room

Ronald L. Rubin, the SEC enforcement attorney assigned to put together the case against Steven Madden, got a first-hand account from Jordan Belfort and Porush as “cooperating witnesses,” in which they explained the finer points of how they used their brokerage firm to steal millions of dollars from investors. 

Rubin breaks Belfort’s signature fraud technique into five steps:

“1. Create IPO Stock;

2. Line Up the Victims;

3. Bait and Switch;

4. Market Manipulation;

5. Sell High and Shut the Door”.

Let’s summarize his findings outlined in the WSJ article. 

1. Create IPO Stock

First, they needed a business to sell, and the definition of business, in this case, was very loose. What was required was not an actual business but rather a business entity with a story that could be transformed into publicly traded stock through a Stratton IPO. 

Notably, the Stratton IPO stock was not actually sold to the public but to Stratton. To avoid securities laws that forbid underwriters from buying more than a small percentage of the IPO stock they issue, Stratton sold all of its IPO stock to friends (flippers), who immediately sold the stock back to Stratton for a small profit. 

The IPO stock was typically issued to flippers at $4 per share and then sold back to Stratton for $4.25 per share – a lucrative deal for the flippers, who could pocket $50,000 from an IPO without risking a loss.

2. Line Up the Victims

Stratton’s brokers would first gain investors’ confidence by letting them make a small profit on one or two Stratton IPOs. Then, once trust had been established, the Stratton salesmen would inform these customers of a new hot IPO with a $4 issue price and wait for them to take the bait.

Like all Stratton IPOs, the stock’s price was expected to skyrocket after its release. So, for example, an eager customer with $100,000 of savings allocates the Stratton broker to purchase 25,000 shares of that IPO stock (with a $4 issue price) and then transfers the $100,000 to his Stratton account, offering Jordan Belfort and his cronies an exact picture of how much buying power they have.

3. Bait and Switch

Shortly before an IPO, the Stratton broker would call these customers and inform them that the IPO was so desirable that they could offer only a few shares at the $4 IPO price. However, the promise was still that they create purchase orders to be executed as soon as the stock began trading on the market, resulting in many customers assuming that such orders would result in stock purchases near the issue price ($4).

The pressure put on these investors was immense, especially since they had already consented to buy the same stock at the issue price, so they agreed to whatever was being shoved at them. 

4. Market Manipulation

The company could have made millions just by selling its customers penny stocks for $4 per share, but after a few such IPOs, investors and regulators would have grown suspicious. So instead, Jordan Belfort used the stock market to disguise his fraud.

Let’s imagine Stratton issued one million shares of the IPO stock, but its customers had already pledged to purchase $12 million of the stock in the aftermarket. 

The goal was thus to have the stock price rise from $4 to $12 per share before selling it to them. Then, having repurchased all of the IPO stock from the flippers, Belfort and Porush could cause the stock to trade in the aftermarket at any value. The simplest way to achieve that would have been to trade shares between Stratton accounts at increasing prices, but that would have been too conspicuous. 

So instead, they had their flippers buy small amounts of stock using “market orders,” which buy shares at the lowest price offered by any seller. Of course, the only seller was Stratton Oakmont. 

Flippers began placing these small market orders right when aftermarket trading kicked off on IPO day. At the same time, Stratton would sell its stock using “limit orders,” which offer stock for sale only above a fixed minimum price. After each of these sales, the firm would place another limit order with a slightly raised minimum price, resulting in the market orders executing at a higher price.

The market recorded a steady progression of trades at $4.25, $4.50, and $4.75, up to the $12 target price (all accomplished in mere minutes). And since this was the typical first-day trading pattern for legitimate hot IPO stocks during the 1990s, the manipulation wasn’t blatant.

5. Sell High and Shut the Door

When the IPO share price reached the $12 target, Stratton executed its customers’ buy orders. Had investors holding the inflated stock attempted to resell it quickly on the market, they would have found almost no genuine buyers, the stock price having nosedived about as fast as it had risen. 

However, such an early price crash was rare for legitimate IPO stocks and would have drawn regulatory scrutiny and scared away future Stratton customers. To combat this, Stratton sustained the high price, typically for a month, by purchasing any of its IPO stock for sale on the open market.

Still, letting customers sell their stock for $12 while Stratton Oakmont was almost the only buyer would defeat the purpose of the scheme. So, investors had to be discouraged from selling too soon. This was done by showering more hyperbole onto customers who called to place sell orders (Stratton operated before online brokers, which enable investors to place their own orders).

Most sinister of all, if customers couldn’t be persuaded into holding on to their stock, their sell orders would simply be lost and their phone calls ignored. Or, when the sell orders were finally executed, the lack of buyers would cause the stock to crash, resulting in the customers’ funds being totally wiped out. But, of course, by that time, Belfort had the following IPO ready and was lining up new prey for his schemes. 

Jordan Belfort in the “Wolf of Wall Street” movie

Based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir of the same name, “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) is a biographical black comedy crime movie directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Terence Winter, recounting Belfort’s perspective on his career as a broker in New York City. 

In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Bros. won a bidding war for the rights to Belfort’s memoir, with Belfort banking $1 million from the deal.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” synopsis

After trying out a few entry-level jobs on Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, still in his 20s, decides to establish his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. With his trusted right-hand man and a motley crew of brokers, Belfort and his brokerage make an immense fortune by defrauding investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies indulge in a hedonistic concoction of sex and drugs, the SEC and the FBI gather evidence for his eventual comeuppance.

Recommended video: “ The Wolf of Wall Street” trailer

In conclusion 

All in all, Belfort’s infamy has proved lucrative. He has picked himself up from the ruins of his fraudulent empire and built a brand new one by utilizing the media’s glorification and obsession with him as the embodiment of Wall Street greed.

FAQs about Jordan Belfort

Jordan Belfort is a former Wall Street stockbroker who, in 1999, was indicted for fraud and money laundering concerning his firm Stratton Oakmont’s market manipulation schemes that evaporated millions of investor dollars. Following his prison stint, Belfort transformed his image, becoming an acclaimed author and motivational speaker. His most notable work, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” chronicled his experiences and was subsequently adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role.

What did Jordan Belfort do?

Stratton Oakmount ran a boiler room to pump the value of penny stocks. Belfort’s brokers were trained to pressure inexperienced retail investors to buy shares of companies that Belfort owned, artificially inflating those stock prices and allowing Belfort to sell his shares at a high profit.

What Is a pump and dump scam?

A pump-and-dump is an illegal market manipulation scheme in which scammers artificially raise the price of their own shares to sell them at a profit. In a typical pump-and-dump, fraudsters use cold-calling, message boards, or social media to reach potential investors and convince them to buy the asset, with promises of guaranteed profits. Then, as the price rises, the fraudsters put in sell orders, leaving investors scrambling.

What is a boiler room?

A boiler room is an operation in which brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade customers to purchase securities. Most boiler room salespeople contact potential investors by cold calls. Notable boiler room tactics include making extravagant unverifiable claims on the stock, demanding immediate payment, or threatening non-compliance.

What are similar films to "The Wolf of Wall Street"?

There are various films that are both entertaining and educational that depict the greed and excess of Wall Street, such as:

• “Boiler Room”;
• “Wall Street” and its 2010 sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”; 
• “The Big Short”;
• “Margin Call.”

How did Jordan Belfort get rich?

Jordan Belfort got rich by starting an over-the-counter brokerage called Stratton Oakmont. The company earned money by functioning as a boiler room (a business where brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade investors to buy securities), selling and marketing worthless penny stocks, and defrauding investors via pump-and-dump schemes.

How long was Jordan Belfort in jail?

Jordan Belfort was in jail for nearly two years – a total of 22 months, despite pleading guilty and being sentenced to 4 years. Belfort and his associate Danny Porush were arrested in 1999 for money laundering and securities fraud.

Is Wolf of Wall Street a true story?

Yes, Wolf of Wall Street is based on a true story inspired by the real-life events of Jordan Belfort, who used to work as a stockbroker on Wall Street in the 1990s. Jordan Belfort defrauded thousands of investors of millions through his company Stratton Oakmont and was sentenced to jail for money laundering and market manipulation schemes.

How much is Jordan Belfort worth?

Jordan Belfort’s net worth is an estimated $134 million.

Who is Jordan Belfort's wife?

Jordan Belfort has been married four times. His first wife was Denise Lombardo, followed by Nadine Caridi (played by Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street”), whom he married in the 1990s. He then tied the knot with Anne Koppe in 2008. Most recently, in 2021, he married Cristina Invernizzi, who remains his wife to this day.

Where is Jordan Belfort now?

Jordan Belfort has transitioned from his controversial past to become a motivational speaker, author, and sales trainer. He’s penned memoirs such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” with the former adapted into a hit movie by Martin Scorsese. Belfort’s recent endeavors center on delivering seminars and online courses where he teaches sales techniques and emphasizes ethical business practices. Drawing from his personal missteps, he often speaks about the importance of integrity in business.

Is Jordan Belfort alive?

Yes, as of December 2023, Jordan Belfort is still alive.

What are some famous Jordan Belfort quotes?

Some of Jordan Belfort’s most famous quotes include, “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.” Another notable quote is, “There’s no nobility in poverty,” reflecting his controversial perspective on wealth and success. Belfort’s quotes often combine elements of ambition, the psychology of success, and a no-nonsense approach to achieving one’s goals, despite his notorious past.

Are Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush still friends?

The current state of the relationship between Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush is not publicly known. After their release from prison, both have attempted to rebuild their lives separately. Belfort has become a motivational speaker and author, while Porush has kept a lower profile, staying away from the public eye. Since their conviction and release, they have not publicly acknowledged each other’s presence. While they had a close partnership during their careers, it is unclear whether this relationship has continued or not after their legal troubles and subsequent life changes​.

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Did jordan belfort really meet his future business partner in a restaurant.

What was the name of Belfort's brokerage house?

The Wolf of Wall Street true story confirms that, like in the movie, Stratton Oakmont was the name of the real Jordan Belfort's Long Island, New York brokerage house. Belfort and co-founder Danny Porush (played by Jonah Hill in the movie) chose the name because it sounded prestigious ( NYTimes.com ). The firm would later be accused of manipulating the IPOs of at least 34 companies, including Steve Madden Ltd. (their biggest deal), Dualstar Technologies, Paramount Financial, D.V.I. Financial, M. H. Meyerson & Co., Czech Industries, M.V.S.I. Technology, Questron Technologies, and Etel Communications.

What exactly did Jordan Belfort do that was illegal?

Belfort's Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm ran a classic "pump and dump" operation. Belfort and several of his executives would buy up a particular company's stock and then have an army of brokers (following a script he had prepared) sell it to unsuspecting investors. This would cause the stock to rise, pretty much guaranteeing Belfort and his associates a substantial profit. Soon, the stock would fall back to reality, with the investors bearing a significant loss. -NYTimes.com

How many employees worked for Jordan Belfort's brokerage firm?

At its peak in the 1990s, Stratton Oakmont, Belfort's firm that he co-founded with Danny Porush, employed more than 1,000 brokers. -TheDailyBeast.com

Danny Porush says the movie's dwarf-tossing scene (above) never happened. Even Belfort's book only discusses it as a possibility. Did Jordan Belfort really host an in-office dwarf-tossing competition?

No. "We never abused [or threw] the midgets in the office; we were friendly to them," Danny Porush (the real Donnie Azoff) says. "There was no physical abuse." Porush does admit that the firm hired little people to attend at least one party. Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street only discusses the tossing of little people as a possibility, not something that actually happened. -MotherJones.com

During what years did the events in the movie take place?

The events in The Wolf of Wall Street movie took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush founded the brokerage firm of Stratton Oakmont in the late 1980s. The securities fraud and money laundering charges brought against the firm involved companies that Stratton Oakmont helped raise money for in public stock offerings from 1990 through 1997. In 1996, Stratton Oakmont was banned from the brokerage industry, which eventually forced the company to close its doors. -NYTimes.com

Was Jordan Belfort really known as the "wolf" of Wall Street?

No, at least not according to the former co-founder and president of the Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm, Danny Porush (portrayed by Jonah Hill in the movie). The real Porush says that he is not aware of anyone at the firm calling Jordan the "wolf." Porush says that it's just one of a number of exaggerations and inventions in both Belfort's book and the movie. -MotherJones.com

Is Matthew McConaughey's character, Mark Hanna, based on a real person?

Yes. In exploring The Wolf of Wall Street true story, we learned that Jordan Belfort claims to have met Matthew McConaughey's character's real-life counterpart, Mark Hanna, in 1987 when he was working at the old-money trading firm of L.F. Rothschild. His new acquaintance was an uproarious senior broker at the firm and introduced Belfort to the excess and debauchery that Belfort would later make a daily staple at Stratton Oakmont. Like in the movie, the real Mark Hanna behind McConaughey's character told Belfort that the key to success was masturbation, cocaine and hookers, in addition to making your customers reinvest their winnings so you can collect the commissions. -TheDailyBeast.com

Did Jordan Belfort really abuse cocaine and other drugs?

Yes. In The Wolf of Wall Street movie, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is shown snorting cocaine off a prostitute's backside and nearly crashing his private helicopter while high on a cocktail of prescription drugs, including Quaaludes, morphine and Xanax. In researching The Wolf of Wall Street true story, it quickly became clear that Belfort used drugs heavily in real life too. In his memoir, he states that at times he had enough "running through my circulatory system to sedate Guatemala."

Jordan Belfort did give speeches like DiCaprio in the movie (left). Right: The real Belfort speaks at a 1994 Stratton Oakmont Christmas party (right). Did Belfort really stand in front of his employees and give riling speeches with a microphone?

Yes. Belfort was known to stir his troops into action by belting out words of motivation through a microphone. However, his speeches were often filled with more self-adulation than DiCaprio's speeches in the movie.

Did a female employee really let them shave her head for $10,000 to pay for breast implants?

The real Jordan Belfort claims this is true in his memoir. The female employee let them shave off her blonde hair for $10,000, which she used to pay for D-cup breast implants. Co-founder Danny Porush also says that the shaving took place, "...the worst we ever did was shave somebody's head and then pay 'em ten grand for it," says Porush. -MotherJones.com

Was Jordan Belfort's Quaalude dealer in the movie, Brad Bodnick (Jon Bernthal), based on a real person?

Yes. The character in the movie, Brad Bodnick, who has a goatee and is portrayed by The Walking Dead 's Jon Bernthal, is based on Jordan Belfort's real-life Quaalude supplier, Todd Garret. In his memoir, the real Jordan Belfort claims that Garret sold him approximately 10,000 Quaaludes.

Was there ever a chimpanzee in the office?

No. According to co-founder Danny Porush (played by Jonah Hill in the movie), the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio's character pals around with a chimp is pure monkey business. "There was never a chimpanzee in the office," says Porush. "There were no animals in the office...I would also never abuse an animal in any way" (though he does admit to eating the goldfish, see below). -MotherJones.com

Did he really almost crash his helicopter in his yard?

Did Danny Porush really marry his own first cousin?

Yes. According to Jordan Belfort's memoir, the real Donnie Azoff (whose actual name is Danny Porush) did marry his first cousin Nancy "because she was a real piece of ass." After twelve years of marriage, the couple divorced in 1998 after Danny told Nancy that he was in love with another woman ( NYPost.com ). Danny and his ex-wife share three children together.

Did Belfort and his colleagues really have drug-addled nights and sexcapades with prostitutes on a near daily basis?

Though the movie and Belfort's memoir might seem like gross exaggerations of the truth, depicting heavy drug use and sexcapades in the office during trading hours, they're not exaggerations at all says the F.B.I. agent who finally took Belfort into custody, "I tracked this guy for ten years, and everything he wrote is true." Kyle Chandler portrays the agent in the Martin Scorsese movie. -NYTimes.com

Was Belfort really arrested for crashing his Lamborghini while high on expired Quaaludes?

Yes, but according to Belfort the car wasn't a Lamborghini like in the movie, it was a Mercedes. He was so high in a drug daze that he couldn't remember causing several different accidents as he tried to make his way home. In real life, one of the accidents was a head-on collision that actually sent a woman to the hospital. -TheDailyBeast.com

The real Donnie Azoff, Daniel Porush, says that he really did swallow a goldfish like Jonah Hill (pictured). Did Danny Porush really swallow a goldfish?

Yes. According to the real Donnie Azoff, whose actual name is Danny Porush, the scene where Jonah Hill's character eats a goldfish is based on a true story. "I said to one of the brokers, 'If you don't do more business, I'm gonna eat your goldfish!'" Porush recalls. "So I did." -MotherJones.com

Did they really tape money to a woman's body?

In one scene of The Wolf of Wall Street movie, bricks of cash are taped to a Swiss woman's body. "[I] never taped money to boobs," the real Danny Porush says (played by Jonah Hill in the movie). According to Jordan Belfort's memoir, the event did happen but his partner Porush wasn't there. -MotherJones.com

Was footwear mogul Steve Madden really involved in Belfort's scheme?

Yes. As shown in The Wolf of Wall Street movie, Steve Madden had been a childhood friend of Belfort's partner Danny Porush (renamed Donnie Azoff in the movie and portrayed by actor Jonah Hill). Their fondness for drugs and alcohol reunited the two of them. During the initial public offering of his footwear company, Steve Madden Ltd., Madden acquired a large number of shares of his company, which were actually being controlled by Belfort and his firm, Stratton Oakmont. Once shares became available to the public, Stratton Oakmont got down to the business of selling them to unsuspecting suckers. Billing Madden's company as the hottest issue on Wall Street, Belfort's brokers in turn drove up the price. Eventually, Steve Madden was to sell off his shares when the hype was at its peak, just before the stock began its inevitable decline. Similar to what is seen in the movie, Belfort still maintains that Steve Madden tried to steal his Steve Madden shares from him. However, Jordan Belfort did make approximately $23 million in two hours as part of the deal with Steve Madden, who would later be charged as an accomplice to Belfort's scheme. -NYTimes.com For his part, Steve Madden was sentenced to 41 months in prison and was forced to resign as CEO of Steve Madden Ltd. He also resigned from the company's board of directors. However, he did not leave the company entirely. He kept his foot (or shoe) in the door by giving himself the title of creative consultant, for which he was well-compensated even while he was in prison. -Slate.com

Did Jordan Belfort really name his yacht after his wife?

Did Belfort's yacht really sink in a Mediterranean storm?

Yes. In real life, Belfort's 167-foot yacht, which was originally owned by Coco Chanel, sunk off the coast of Italy when Belfort, who was high on drugs at the time, insisted that the captain take the boat through a storm ( TheDailyBeast.com ). Listen to Belfort tell the story during The Room Live 's Jordan Belfort interview . As he states in the interview, his helicopter didn't fall off the boat during the storm like in the movie. Instead, they had to push the helicopter off of the top deck of the boat to make room for the rescue chopper to drop down an Italian Navy commando.

How long did FBI agent Gregory Coleman spend tracking Jordan Belfort and his firm?

FBI agent Gregory Coleman, renamed Patrick Denham for the film and portrayed by actor Kyle Chandler, made tracking Belfort and his firm, Stratton Oakmont, a top priority for six years. In an interview ( watch here ), Coleman says that the factors that drew his attention to the firm were "the flashiness, the brashness of their activities, the blatantness of the way they were soliciting people and cold calling people, and the number of victims that were complaining on a daily basis." -CNBC

Did Jordan really strike his wife?

Yes. The Wolf of Wall Street movie shows Jordan (Leonardo DiCaprio) hitting his wife (Margot Robbie) with his hand and fist. According to his memoir, he actually kicked his wife Nadine down the stairs while he was holding his daughter. She landed on her right side with "tremendous force."

Did Belfort really endanger his 3-year-old daughter's life by crashing his car through the garage door?

Yes. In real life, he put his daughter Chandler in the front seat of the car without a seat belt on, before crashing it through the garage door and then driving full speed into a six-foot-high limestone pillar at the edge of the driveway. Like in the movie, he was high at the time.

Tommy Chong was Jordan Belfort's cellmate in prison and encouraged him to write the book. What was Jordan Belfort's punishment?

When he was finally arrested in 1998 for money laundering and securities fraud, Jordan Belfort was sentenced to four years in prison. This was after agreeing to wear a wire and provide the FBI with information to help prosecute various friends and associates. In the end, the true story reveals that he served only 22 months in a California federal prison. His cellmate in prison was Tommy Chong of "Cheech and Chong" fame, who was serving a nine month sentence for selling bongs. -TheDailyBeast.com

What inspired Jordan Belfort to write his memoir?

It wasn't so much a what as it was a who. Tommy Chong (one half of "Cheech and Chong") was Jordan Belfort's cellmate in prison. After laughing at some of Belfort's stories from his days running the firm, Chong encouraged him to write a book. -TheDailyBeast.com

Why is Jordan Belfort's memoir filled with so many exclamations?

Jordan Belfort attempted to model his writing after Hunter S. Thompson ( Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ), who was known for using plenty of exclamation points.

What happened to Belfort's partner, Danny Porush, portrayed by Jonah Hill in the movie?

Danny Porush, renamed Donnie Azoff for the movie and played by actor Jonah Hill, served 39 months in prison for his part in the corrupt dealings of Stratton Oakmont, the firm that he co-founded with Jordan Belfort. Porush currently runs a medical supply business in Florida, where he lives with his second wife Lisa in a $4 million mansion. A 2008 Forbes article pointed out his company's fraudulent tactics, which included trying to persuade people to order diabetic supplies and getting them to provide information about their physicians that could be used to bill Medicare. A number of complaints surfaced accusing Porush's company of sending unsolicited packages that were accompanied by unexpected Medicare charges. Back in 2001, Porush was arrested in connection to a fraud scheme surrounding Noble & Perrault Collectibles, a company that sold commemorative coins over the phone. Victims saw their credit cards charged repeatedly, at times for thousands of dollars, while often never receiving any merchandise for purchases that were largely unauthorized to begin with. -Sun Sentinel Enjoying a well-to-do life in Florida, Daniel Porush and his wife drive matching Rolls-Royce Corniche convertibles. With regard to The Wolf of Wall Street movie, Porush said, "I really have no comment other than to say I would never try to profit from a crime I'm so remorseful for." -NYPost.com

I heard that Jordan Belfort is a motivational speaker, is that true?

How much did Jordan Belfort earn from his books and the movie?

Catching the Wolf of Wall Street includes more of Belfort's outrageous stories that were not included in his first book. As we investigated The Wolf of Wall Street true story, we discovered that Jordan's books, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street , netted him a $1 million advance from Random House. He also earned $1 million for the film rights to his story ( TheDailyBeast.com ). In a response to criticism over these profits and future profits from the movie, Jordan Belfort said the following via his Facebook page, "I am not turning over 50% of the profits of the books and the movie, which was what the government had wanted me to do. Instead, I insisted on turning over 100% of the profits of both books and the movie, which is to say, I am not making a single dime on any of this." According to Jordan, the money is being used to pay back the millions still owed to those who were scammed by his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont.

Does Jordan Belfort have a cameo in The Wolf of Wall Street movie?

Yes, the real Jordan Belfort appears at the end of the movie as the person who introduces Leonardo DiCaprio's character before he takes the stage at his Straight Line seminar.

Have any other movies been based on Jordan Belfort's story?

Yes, but only loosely. The brokerage firm in the movie Boiler Room , released in 2000, was inspired by the illegal practices of Jordan Belfort's Stratton Oakmont firm. In the movie, actor Ben Affleck portrays Jim Young, the Belfort-esque co-founder of the firm, who, like Jordan Belfort, trains his brokers in the "pump and dump" scheme. -NYTimes.com

Watch The Wolf of Wall Street movie trailer. Also, view Jordan Belfort interviews and home video footage of him speaking at a Stratton Oakmont party in the 1990s.

• Jordan Belfort's Website
• Danny Porush's Website (played by Jonah Hill)
• Mark Hanna's Website (played by Matthew McConaughey)
• The Wolf of Wall Street Official Paramount Movie Site

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He Grew Up in the Shadow of the ‘Wolf of Wall Street.’ Then He Got Into Debt Settlement.

Ryan Sasson built a business that reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for helping people negotiate down their debts. But former clients — and prosecutors — say it was exploitative.

Credit... Illustration by Richard Borge

Supported by

By Stacy Cowley and Emma Goldberg

The reporters spoke with more than two dozen current and former employees and customers at Strategic Financial Services over the past five months.

• Feb. 10, 2024

In the early 1980s, 19-year-old Jordan Belfort — who would go on to become known as the Wolf of Wall Street, a title he bestowed on himself in a tell-all memoir — had a fortuitous encounter on Jones Beach, on Long Island, with another teenager selling ice cream named Stephen Drescher.

The two became friends. Prosecutors would later note their shared hustling spirit, a drive for entrepreneurialism that curdled into a drive for grift. Within a few years, Mr. Belfort started building a pump-and-dump stock-scam empire . He took Mr. Drescher under his wing as he built a boiler room brokerage that would go on to defraud more than 1,000 investors, later memorialized in Martin Scorsese’s box office hit “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Mr. Belfort’s enterprise collapsed in the late 1990s, when he was arrested and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering. Mr. Drescher went down not long after, convicted of securities fraud and sent to federal prison for nearly four years.

He, too, had a spiritual successor of sorts: his stepson Ryan Sasson.

Bronzed, athletic and self-assured, Mr. Sasson is chief executive of Strategic Financial Solutions, a large employer in Buffalo often hailed by politicians and business publications as a fast-growing exemplar of corporate citizenship. Its call center, packed at its peak with hundreds of workers, offers well-paying jobs in a region eager for economic expansion. Strategic regularly makes four- and five-figure philanthropic donations to local causes; New York’s lieutenant governor cut the ribbon at its Buffalo office opening . On its website, the company, which also has a Manhattan office, boasts of luxe perks like massage therapy rooms and bonus trips.

The company’s primary business is debt settlement, helping consumers buried in credit card bills negotiate down what they owe and extract themselves from financial turmoil. Strategic has more than 75,000 clients and has saved them $1 billion over the last three years through its negotiated debt deals, the company’s president said in January in a legal filing .

But state and federal prosecutors, former clients and former employees cast Strategic in a very different light.

The company’s business is predatory, they say, and uses a nationwide network of accomplice law firms to exploit clients — many of them struggling, low-income people — and extract fees that often total tens of thousands of dollars for services that can sometimes leave customers financially worse off than when they started. Clients think that they’re paying those fees to law firms to represent them in the high-risk process of debt settlement. Instead, the clients are funneled mainly toward workers with no legal training, and frequently find themselves unrepresented in legal proceedings.

Some manage to get the debt relief they seek, but others are left with tattered credit scores and legal judgments against them that have led to wage garnishments and debts even larger than when they started.

In January, government regulators pounced.

After an investigation that started more than four years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — along with the attorneys general of New York, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina and Wisconsin — sued Strategic and its operators , including Mr. Sasson, on civil fraud charges. They asked a Federal District Court judge in Buffalo to immediately freeze the company’s assets and hand over its operations to a receiver. Citing the case’s strength — the government prosecutors are “likely to prevail on the merits of this action,” the judge wrote — he granted their request within 24 hours.

Strategic has asked the court to reverse that decision. “We continue to believe this case is really targeting the law firms,” said Dennis Vacco, a lawyer representing Strategic. “They don’t have authority over the law firms so they are squeezing their administrative service provider.”

Strategic took in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from clients in the last seven years, according to the regulators’ January complaint. The company transferred at least $72 million to private companies controlled by Mr. Sasson and his business partners, prosecutors said. Another $36 million flowed from the network of Strategic-affiliated law firms to the private family trust of Mr. Sasson’s longtime business associate, Jason Blust.

As federal regulators closed in on his business, a yacht Mr. Sasson co-owns went up for sale: the $2.6 million “ Strategic Dreams .”

Former clients highlight the financial and psychological toll that the program took on them. More than 40 percent drop out before their debts are resolved, according to Strategic’s own legal filings . In one-third of the client cases examined by the suing regulators, customers paid Strategic’s affiliated law firms but never received any debt relief. In other cases, the debts eliminated were eclipsed by the fees they paid.

Americans have a lot of debt — to the tune of $1.1 trillion on credit cards — and there’s a huge business in helping people manage it. Many of those debt holders say they feel like they’re drowning. When they’re promised help, they don’t necessarily ask questions about what they’re paying for, and why.

The Cockroach Theory

Mr. Sasson, who is 45, was born in New York City to Ginjer and Joseph Sasson, who divorced when he was young. His mother, who died 11 years ago, was introduced by Mr. Belfort to Mr. Drescher.

After college at Tulane University, Mr. Sasson worked on a retail clothing venture. His post-college career played out amid his stepfather’s trial, 2001 conviction and imprisonment for securities fraud.

Mr. Drescher’s crimes involved manipulating the market prices of small companies’ initial public offerings. The trades netted millions for Mr. Drescher’s employer, the now defunct brokerage Monroe Parker Securities , and earned him six-figure bonuses. The family lived large, with tens of thousands of dollars in limousine charges, according to court records, often for travel to the family’s $70,000-a-summer Hamptons rental.

The sprawling scheme’s many participants included the shoe designer Steve Madden, who pleaded guilty to stock fraud . Mr. Drescher’s indictment details events that seem drawn from a caper movie, like the hours he and an accomplice spent buying gambling chips at Caesars Palace and the Mirage in Las Vegas in what prosectors said was a scheme to launder illicit cash.

The casino move was one of many tactics Mr. Drescher learned from his infamous mentor, government lawyers claimed. “What Belfort taught Drescher was enough to give him a Ph.D. in securities fraud,” William Johnson, a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told the jury during Mr. Drescher’s trial.

Prosecutors also introduced to the courtroom a notion that Mr. Belfort had often discussed with colleagues, called “the cockroach theory.”

“When the regulators would squash a firm, sort of like stepping on a firm, all the roaches would scatter,” one of Mr. Drescher’s associates, Bryan Herman, said in his testimony. “So when the regulators would squash a penny stock firm, the brokers would scatter and then reappear in other firms somewhere else.”

In 2006, the same year his stepfather left prison, Mr. Sasson set up the company that became an anchor for some of his many enterprises over the next decade: Timberline Capital, which made short-term loans to retailers. Mr. Sasson invested in dry cleaners and restaurants, including My Belly’s Playlist, a sandwich shop that was sued for wage theft and settled. (In many of his pursuits, he found himself entangled in lawsuits.)

Debt settlement was a market that Mr. Sasson gravitated toward early and returned to repeatedly. It is also where his own business dealings intersected with those of his stepfather, Mr. Drescher, who had been disbarred and stripped of his broker’s license . (Mr. Drescher did not respond to a request for comment.)

“I am deeply offended that you attempt to tar me with the personal history of my stepfather, who married my mother when I was a teenager,” Mr. Sasson told The New York Times. “If you want to know the biggest influences on my life, you can start with my parents. They are of strong character and values, which I like to believe they instilled in me.”

In 2009, both men were named in one complaint in a handful of lawsuits against Elimadebt. This was a company managed by Mr. Sasson that used a business model he later incorporated into Strategic’s: handling sales for debt settlement lawyers. The lawsuits, filed by a disgruntled partner law firm, accused the company of contract violations.

Federal court filings in Miami by the angry business partner described Mr. Sasson as a “straw man” for his stepfather. Elimadebt ceased operations soon after the lawsuit was settled in 2011. (Lawyers representing Strategic and Mr. Sasson called the straw-man allegation “completely false.”)

Mr. Sasson had by then moved on to a new company , Legal Helpers Debt Resolution, which was sued by four state attorneys general for defrauding consumers by charging hefty upfront fees, then doing very little to negotiate down the consumers’ debts. (Mr. Drescher and Mr. Sasson’s mother were also tangentially involved. They ran a services business that did work for Legal Helpers.) To settle those lawsuits, Legal Helpers and some of its leaders agreed, over several years, to pay more than $14 million in penalties and consumer restitution and to cease operations, according to government prosecutors’ legal filings.

Mr. Sasson was not personally named as a defendant in the Legal Helpers lawsuits.

Legal Helpers started winding down its business in 2012. That’s the same year that Strategic appeared to start operating, though it lists its founding date as 2007.

“If you look back at the detritus of Legal Helpers after it was dismantled, the same names show up,” said Lucy Prather, an attorney for the City of Chicago, which filed suit in 2022 against Strategic and an affiliated law firm.

Strategic would become the biggest moneymaker of Mr. Sasson’s career.

A High-Stakes Game of Chicken

Christopher Elkins, 49, has been cited by Strategic as a success story .

Mr. Elkins enrolled with Canyon Legal Group, a Strategic affiliate, in 2019, after receiving a mailed advertisement. He dropped out of the program in late 2023. In those four years, he had debts totaling $85,000 settled for $42,000. He paid $26,000 in fees to Canyon, leaving him with a net savings of $17,000. Had his debt lingered, his interest alone — 28 percent or higher on each of his credit cards — would, in just one year, have eclipsed what he paid Canyon in fees.

But Mr. Elkins found the experience of working with the company miserable. By around the 20-month mark, he recalled, he had paid some $20,000 to have only a few relatively small debts resolved, and his credit score had nose-dived from around 740 to 520. In the following months, he faced four lawsuits from creditors; Canyon represented him in at least two, according to Strategic’s legal filings. As he tried to reach an attorney, he was continually directed to customer service.

Mr. Elkins fired Canyon. He said he and his wife then, on their own, negotiated settlements to all four of the lawsuits.

“They are vultures,” Mr. Elkins said in an interview to The New York Times. “They are preying on people who find themselves in dire need of support.”

Rick Gustafson, a lawyer who runs Canyon, said that “at trial, Mr. Elkins testified that he was ‘drowning’ in debt before he retained Canyon,” adding, “Thanks to Canyon, he is no longer drowning.”

Consumers typically heard about Strategic through advertisements — the company sent some 2 million direct mail solicitations a week — that told them they had prequalified for a low-interest loan. When they called to find out more, sales representatives often told them they weren’t actually eligible for a loan, but encouraged them to instead enroll, through one of Strategic’s partner law firms, in the debt settlement program.

Debt settlement is essentially a high-stakes game of chicken. The first thing companies tell their clients to do is stop paying their monthly debt bill. Instead, the client puts money each month into an escrow account — generally less than they would have owed for their credit cards’ minimum payments. The goal is to force the debt into default.

Once a customer fails to pay for an extended period, many creditors will write off the loan as a soured debt and sell it to a collection firm for pennies on the dollar. That’s the sweet spot for settlement: The new buyer will usually accept far less than the debt’s face value. Debt settlement negotiators use the funds their client has stashed away in escrow to pay off the reduced debt. A $30,000 credit card bill, for example, might get settled for $15,000 or less.

The maneuver causes significant collateral damage to the client. Customers’ credit scores plunge once they stop paying their bills, and many creditors will sue to pursue what they’re owed. (Strategic warns potential clients that this is part of the process.)

At that point, clients need to have lawyers who are responsive to incoming lawsuits if they want to avoid default judgments, which typically seek the debtor’s full owed tab plus additional fees. Some settlement companies make it clear that they will not provide legal aid. If a client gets sued, they refer the client to outside lawyers or tell them to go find their own.

Strategic, though, makes its legal help the centerpiece of its pitch. Sales employees’ scripts, according to a legal filing by the receiver now controlling the company, instructed them to tell prospects that they would be connected to an “established law firm that specializes in helping clients resolve their own personal debt.”

What that arrangement allowed Strategic to do is to begin billing right away. Under federal and many state laws, debt-settlement companies generally cannot charge clients until they actually deliver a settlement deal. But attorneys can.

It’s enticing for clients who are drowning in debt to feel like they can pay, albeit heavily, for a legal team to guide them through the process of negotiating down their debts.

But that’s not exactly what they’re getting, according to interviews with former employees and clients, as well as legal filings from prosectors. Cases are handed over to negotiators with no legal training. The lawyers don’t even consistently show up for the clients in court, though Strategic-affiliated firms say that they do sign off on final settlements.

By the time clients are halfway through the program, some have paid tens of thousands to Strategic and face lawsuits from creditors — with very little of their debt resolved.

“No system operated by a human being is going to be perfect, but we aimed for perfection,” Mr. Sasson said in an email. “We have helped more than 100,000 people over the years get back on their feet by saving them a lot of money. That is the definition of consumer protection.”

A Network of Law Firms

Strategic relies on a network of at least 20 law firms, which take on an average of 5,000 to 10,000 clients each — extremely high loads for firms that generally had five to 20 employees.

Mr. Blust, who worked with Mr. Sasson at Legal Helpers, oversees this network of firms. Mr. Blust’s firms keep roughly 20 percent of client fees, and the other 80 percent go to Strategic, emails filed in court show.

“With the exception of Pioneer (a law firm that hasn’t taken a new client in many years), the law firms Blust consults with (including those in this case) are owned and independently operated by the attorney owners,” said Rodney Personius, an attorney for Mr. Blust.

The lawyers who own these firms take on risks. One lawyer, Daniel Rufty, a recent law school graduate from a for-profit and now-shuttered school, paid $10 for ownership of a Strategic-affiliated firm — then, months into his tenure, found out he was under investigation by his state’s bar association for misleading clients and “criminal debt adjusting.”

Mr. Rufty was suspended from the practice of law for five years. He declined to comment through his lawyer. Strategic emerged unscathed.

Strategic’s complicated structure has come under legal scrutiny before. In 2020 — after lawyers in Florida sued Strategic and accused it of skirting the law by portraying its own employees as law firm workers — debt negotiators were abruptly reclassified by Strategic as employees of the law firms instead of Strategic or its subsidiaries. (The Florida case was settled, on undisclosed terms.)

But current and former employees, and legal filings from Strategic’s receiver, said that the new arrangement was largely illusory. While the negotiators now technically worked for the law firms, they still reported to Strategic staff. The negotiators used Strategic’s systems and in some cases, when they weren’t remote, worked from Strategic’s offices, according to interviews with former negotiators and legal filings. Some said they didn’t know the names of the people who operated the firms and were supposedly their bosses.

Lawyers for Strategic and its affiliated law firms have insisted, in court filings and in interviews, that the arrangement is valid and transparent.

“The firms’ attorneys are involved in every settlement,” said Terrence Connors, a lawyer representing the firms.

‘To Have No Money for a Week Was Terrifying’

When Anne Barsch, 48, first learned about a Strategic-affiliated law firm, Monarch Legal Group, she felt a wave of relief. She had roughly $60,000 in debt from making home improvements and supporting her young children. She thought Monarch could negotiate down those debts and represent her when creditors sued. She and her husband agreed to pay $818 monthly into an escrow account for the program.

Ms. Barsch said in interviews, and testified at the trial in Buffalo, that she lost trust in Monarch when she learned that a judgment had been entered against her by a creditor — after she’d stopped paying bills, at the firm’s instruction — and her lawyer hadn’t shown up in court to represent her. Her bank account was frozen for a week.

“To have no money for a week was terrifying,” she recalled, adding that she then started reading about Monarch online and learned the firm was being sued by the City of Chicago.

She sent letters to her creditors saying she had been “scammed” and asking to negotiate with them on her own. She learned that Monarch had sent lawyers to represent her for just 30 percent of her court dates, according to her testimony.

A spokesman for the law firms said they settled six of Ms. Barsch’s 10 debts. Ms. Barsch said they settled two, and she and her husband did the others on their own.

Another Monarch client, Julia Briggs, 43, who had been sued by a creditor, showed up at her own court date and discovered that no attorney had come to represent her. Leading up to the hearing, she said in interviews, she was told she couldn’t get her attorney’s direct contact information, leaving her to wonder: What exactly were all her legal fees going toward? She then reached out to a new lawyer, Scott Priz, to file suit against Strategic in 2022.

A spokesman for the law firms said Ms. Briggs signed up for a 24-month program and left roughly halfway through.

While customers like Ms. Briggs and Ms. Barsch said they were unfairly served by the firms, the federal prosecutors’ case rests on a narrower legal issue.

Debt collection laws are a patchwork mostly governed by state statutes. But a federal law requires debt settlement companies that promote their services by phone to close the deal for legal services in person, through a face-to-face meeting with the customer.

Rather than sending sales representatives, Strategic, on behalf of its affiliated law firms, hired gig worker notaries — who effectively came into each meeting cold — to handle those meetings and finalize paperwork. The crux of the government’s case hinges on whether those notaries qualified as sales representatives of the law firms.

A Lavish Corporate Culture

When Ben Kopp, 35, started at Strategic in 2018, the job at first seemed like run-of-the-mill sales. He made 150 to 200 calls a day, seated among rows of other headset-wearing salespeople, pitching customers on the debt settlement program.

But just hours into his employment, Mr. Kopp was cautioned not to tell customers that he was calling from Strategic and to instead say he was calling from one of the law firms associated with Strategic, or from one of the law firms’ support organizations. He recalled looking across the table and catching another new hire’s gaze.

“We kind of met eyes and were like, ‘All right, what did we get hired to do?’” he said. “‘Why wouldn’t we tell them what we’re calling from?’”

Many of the salespeople who worked at Strategic believed, at least in their early months at the company, the clients were actually getting good legal representation, Mr. Kopp said. He had a clearer view into what was happening because he had a college friend who worked on Strategic’s negotiations team.

After a few months, he began searching for a way out, realizing that many customers felt they were being exploited. “It affected me from a moral perspective,” he said.

Some of his colleagues also came to realize — over break room conversations with colleagues in customer service — the potential harms of the program. He heard one sales consultant announce proudly to her teammates that she had enrolled her mother in Strategic’s program. Many in earshot were alarmed, he recalled. “We couldn’t come out and say, ‘Don’t do that’ but we were trying to hint toward, ‘Why would you do that?’”

Still, there were perks. The money clients paid fueled a corporate culture with lavish touches. High performers were presented with Rolex watches and steakhouse dinners. The top salespeople were flown to Las Vegas. Office parties featured beer kegs; celebrations were held at restaurants, with cocktails and D.J. music.

Mr. Sasson’s business, at its prepandemic height, was bringing in tens of millions of dollars each year, according to former employees and legal filings from prosectors.

In 2017, the company sold itself to its employees, through a financial transaction known as an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). The deal valued the company at $242 million . Mr. Sasson described the transaction as something of a gift to the employees — “our Strategic family,” he called them — who had built the company.

Mr. Sasson had, effectively, cashed out. His employees now owed 100 percent of Strategic.

A Surprise Federal Lawsuit

On Friday, Jan. 12, in the middle of the afternoon, Strategic’s nearly 1,000 employees — all working remotely, as the staff typically did on Fridays — were abruptly shut out of their company systems. Some were cut off right in the middle of calls with customers.

Three days later, workers learned over group chats with managers that there had been a lawsuit filed against the company. They were told they’d be put on paid leave while the company’s lawyers fought back. On Friday, Jan. 19, the federal court in Buffalo unsealed the regulators’ complaint .

Former employees said they had been drawn to the firm because of its pitch about helping struggling people get back on their feet.

“It’s that fantasy job that you see in television and movies — like at the beginning of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’” said David Briggs, who worked as a litigation negotiator for Strategic until 2022, and did not know about Mr. Sasson’s family connection to Jordan Belfort when he drew the comparison. “They really kept you hyped up; they kept you feeling like you were part of a family, a team, and that you were doing good in the world.”

The fate of Strategic — and its work force — is now in the hands of the federal court. If the company remains in receivership, it will soon be out of business, Strategic’s lawyers have told the court.

And the ESOP — the vehicle that turned over ownership of Strategic to the company’s employees — will be wiped out if Strategic folds. Mr. Briggs’s shares were valued on his last statement at $6,090. He anticipates that by his next statement, that number may fall to zero.

Kitty Bennett and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

Stacy Cowley is a business reporter who writes about a broad array of topics related to consumer finance, including student debt, the banking industry and small business. More about Stacy Cowley

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter covering workplace culture and the ways work is evolving in a time of social and technological change. More about Emma Goldberg

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The Fascinating True Story Behind The Wolf Of Wall Street

Even before Hollywood came calling, the real-life Jordan Belfort was equating himself to movie villains. Once a stockbroker, then a convict, then a motivational speaker, Belfort wrote of his experiences in his bestselling 2007 memoir , "The Wolf of Wall Street." It contains the line, "I had lots of nicknames. Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Keyser Soze; they even called me the King. But my favorite was the Wolf of Wall Street."

Cross-reference those first three alleged nicknames with the films "Wall Street," "The Godfather," and "The Usual Suspects." It soon becomes clear that Belfort, the born salesman, was all too ready to peddle himself as someone who belonged in the pantheon of great movie villains. Luckily for him (less so for the unseen victims of his financial crimes), director Martin Scorsese was happy to oblige him with a star-studded movie adaptation.

Belfort's memoir is filled with many wild stories, but some have questioned the veracity of its self-serving claims. By the time Scorsese came along and turned it into an Oscar-nominated 2013 film , audiences would be one more layer removed from the truth of what happened. The book cover reads, "I partied like a rock star, lived like a king," and inside its pages, Belfort, the "former member of the middle class," speaks in passing of "chaos capitalism."

"The Wolf of Wall Street," the movie, makes good on that dubious vision with a three-hour ode to excess, wealth, and skullduggery that's all the more unbelievable because some of it really occurred.

A conman's sworn (and swearing) testimony

Martin Scorsese, working for the fifth time with Leonardo DiCaprio as his leading man, broke his own Guinness World Record for cinematic use of the f-word with "The Wolf of Wall Street." His film "Casino" had previously set the record in 1995, but "The Wolf of Wall Street" eclipsed its 422 f-bombs with a whopping 506 of them.

That's just one interesting bit of trivia related to the movie. When you sift through all the swearing to get at the facts, though, just how much of "The Wolf of Wall Street" was true, and how much of it was embellishment — or straight fibs of the kind Keyser Soze might tell?

Jordan Belfort is not what you'd call a credible witness; in fact, the whole movie is arguably told from the perspective of a master of deceit, who scammed investors out of millions. Scorsese leveraged all his cinematic powers in service of what DiCaprio called "a modern-day Caligula" story, but he was also adapting a criminal's autobiography. That's a little different than what he did with "Goodfellas" and the aforementioned "Casino," both adapted from a nonfiction book where the gangster's tale came filtered through author Nicholas Pileggi.

"The Irishman," too, was based on a Charles Brandt book about the life of mob enforcer Frank Sheeran, whose confession was later discredited . In "The Wolf of Wall Street," the bad guy tells his own story, sometimes giving the camera a suitably wolfish grin as he does so.

Jonah Hill's character was based on Danny Porush

Terence Winter handled the screenwriting chores for "The Wolf of Wall Street," and he and Martin Scorsese framed an entire HBO series, "Boardwalk Empire," around another gangster named Nucky Thompson. Actor Bobby Cannavale – who won an Emmy Award for "Boardwalk Empire" the same year "The Wolf of Wall Street" hit theaters — narrated the original, abridged audiobook version of Jordan Belfort's memoir.

In the book, Jonah Hill's character, Donnie Azoff, is referred to by the name Danny Porush. Donnie was loosely based on the real Danny, who was Belfort's business partner and the co-founder of Stratton Oakmont, the Long Island brokerage house that becomes a circus of sex, drugs, dwarf-tossing, and pump-and-dump fraud in "The Wolf of Wall Street."

Though Porush has called Belfort's book "a distant relative of the truth," he himself married a not-so-distant relative: his own first cousin. In the movie, Belfort broaches the subject of these "rumors" over beers at a bar, eliciting Donnie's bug-eyed, toothy admission, "Yeah, my wife is my cousin or whatever." That part of Porush's personal background is true, according to Time , though he and his cousin are now divorced.

Unlike Belfort, Porush was not involved in the making of "The Wolf of Wall Street." Changing his character's name helped remove any liability the filmmakers might face for damaging his reputation. Porush reportedly threatened to sue them beforehand, so the name change was a practical decision meant to cover their bases.

What really happened at the office?

On the testosterone-filled office floor in "The Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort psyches up his stockbrokers with the words, "This right here is the land of opportunity. Stratton Oakmont is America!" It's true he used to give speeches to his employees with a microphone, which prepared him for his later life of motivational speaking. Substitute "country" for "company" in his movie speeches, and it lays bare the cultural subtext of "The Wolf of Wall Street."

In Belfort's America, money can buy anything and everyone. Sex workers were indeed charged to the company credit card, his book indicates, and Danny Porush says it's true they paid an employee $10,000 to shave her head. The movie makes a spectacle out of her doing it to get breast implants, with Belfort shouting, "This is the greatest country company in the world!"

It's not long before a half-dressed band comes marching in, followed by champagne waiters and strippers. Martin Scorsese dials everything up to 11, combining Belfort's book description of multiple parties into one hedonistic scene.

In an interview with Mother Jones (by way of History vs. Hollywood ), Porush disputed that the office ever brought in a chimpanzee on roller skates or did any dwarf-tossing at its parties. Little people are said to have attended one party, but Belfort's memoir only depicts the meeting where he and his associates discuss the hypothetical specifics of tossing them. Porush admitted, however, that the part where he/Donnie swallows a broker's pet goldfish was true.

Forbes really did profile Belfort

In "The Wolf of Wall Street," there's a scene where a journalist for Forbes magazine visits the offices of Stratton Oakmont. She's doing a profile on Jordan Belfort, which winds up being "a total f***ing hatchet job" in his eyes. The article appears onscreen with Leonardo DiCaprio in his tan-faced movie poster pose below the headline "The Wolf of Wall Street." All the while, Belfort rails against the journalist labeling him that, as if she was the one who coined his nickname and the movie's title.

You can read the real 1991 article on the official Forbes site (and see a larger scanned image of it here ). The headline was actually "Steaks, Stocks — What's The Difference?" This is one of the more interesting "Wolf of Wall Street" artifacts out there, showing how the movie partially overlaps with reality. It's a "prop" anyone can access online, and it offers a real view of how someone other than Jordan Belfort viewed Jordan Belfort.

The true journalist was Roula Khalaf, not Aliyah Farran (the fictitious byline shown in the movie), though her article does contain the highlighted movie phrase "pushing dicey stocks." It also contains a line that DiCaprio performs almost verbatim about Belfort "sounding like a kind of twisted Robin Hood, who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers." Yet if it wasn't Forbes that coined the "Wolf of Wall Street" nickname, that immediately opens up the question of who did.

Was Belfort ever actually called The Wolf of Wall Street?

According to CNN , Jordan Belfort himself came up with the "Wolf of Wall Street" name. Before Martin Scorsese's film premiered, Danny Porush disputed that anyone at Stratton Oakmont ever called Belfort that. In 2013, a prosecutor in the Belfort case, former assistant U.S. attorney Joel M. Cohen, likewise told The New York Times , "In all the years that we investigated him, the hundreds of hours I spent with him and his cohorts, I never heard anyone call him 'The Wolf of Wall Street.'"

Circling back to Belfort's sketchy book claim that "Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Keyser Soze" were among his many nicknames, he had already lumped himself together with several cinematic bad boys. By linking his name to famous movie villains, it's as if Belfort aimed to set himself up as a sort of prepackaged Hollywood deal. "I was the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing," he writes.

There's a part in the book where Belfort's apoplectic father, played by Rob Reiner in the movie, rattles off a whole paragraph of dialogue, which begins with, "And you, the so-called Wolf of Wall Street — the demented young Wolf!" Unless he was running a tape recorder in his office back in the 1990s, it seems unlikely Belfort would have been able to perfectly recollect such dialogue. It would appear that, rather than being incensed at his lupine nickname, Belfort anointed himself the Wolf of Wall Street as a bit of self-promotion.

What Belfort did before becoming a stockbroker

"The Wolf of Wall Street" begins with Jordan Belfort already relishing a rich and famous lifestyle. It then flashes back to him at 22, getting off the bus on Wall Street, "the one place on earth that befit [his] high-minded ambitions."

The truth is, Wall Street came a little later for Belfort. In the movie, he mentions being "raised by two accountants." Yet there's no mention of him dropping out of dentistry school (per The Independent ) or selling meat and seafood door-to-door. The latter is what prompted the wordplay in the  Forbes headline, "Steaks, Stocks — What's The Difference?" Belfort's beefy business soon went under, leaving him a failed businessman at 25. It was only then that he became a stockbroker-in-training at the firm L.F. Rothschild.

Matthew McConaughey's character, Mark Hanna, was a real senior broker at L.F. Rothschild who did advise masturbation and cocaine as keys to success, according to Belfort's memoir. In a video on his verified Twitter account, McConaughey said that the character's chest-thumping chant was born of a warm-up ritual that he himself did before every take, just to get in the zone as an actor.

Biography.com reveals that Belfort started selling stocks in 1987. That was the same year future president Donald Trump published his memoir, "The Art of the Deal," while Oliver Stone's aforementioned "Wall Street," with its famous movie quote, "Greed is good," hit theaters nationwide.

Fashion designer Steve Madden was involved

Actor Jake Hoffman, who also appears in "The Irishman" and is Dustin Hoffman's son, plays designer Steve Madden in "The Wolf of Wall Street." Madden and Danny Porush were childhood friends, just as the movie depicts. The company Madden founded (and continues to design for) is still a leading name in women's shoes. In the 2021 fiscal year, its revenue jumped up to $1.9 billion.  

The real-life Madden thought Hoffman's portrayal of him was "too nerdy." Though the movie implies he stabbed Jordan Belfort in the back by unloading shares after Stratton Oakmont took his company public, Madden told Page Six , "He ratted me out to save himself."

Madden wouldn't cooperate with the FBI as Belfort did, and wound up serving a longer 41-month sentence in prison (compared to Belfort's 22-month stretch). However, his life rebounded, and he's called "The Wolf of Wall Street" "a great movie." In his autobiography, "The Cobbler," Madden  wrote , "The movie also raised our brand awareness with young men and increased our name recognition."

Coco Chanel's yacht went down with Belfort's marriage

When Jordan Belfort is touting Steve Madden's once-in-a-decade genius in "The Wolf of Wall Street," he compares him to other well-known fashion designers. Coco Chanel's name is sandwiched between Gianni Versace and Yves St. Laurent without further comment, but Belfort had a greater real-life connection to Chanel, as he was the last person to own her yacht.

Between the publication and filming of "The Wolf of Wall Street," Chanel's image was tarnished by revelations that she was a Nazi agent . This may be why her previous ownership of the yacht was left out, despite being included in Belfort's memoir. As seen in the movie, he did sink the yacht in a storm, and he did sink his marriage by hitting his wife and driving his car through the garage door with his 3-year-old child in front.

The yacht was named the Nadine, not the Naomi, and the same goes for Belfort's wife. Margot Robbie landed the Naomi part by going off-script and slapping DiCaprio in her improvised audition . She regretted filming their love scene on a cash bed because of all the paper cuts it left her.

The real Nadine, who went on to become a Ph.D. and TikTok-powered therapist after their divorce, said it's not true Belfort bought her the yacht as a wedding present. His abuse of her and his rough helicopter landing on their front lawn was partially fueled by a real drug problem.

Fall of the new Rome

After Jordan Belfort is caught and becomes the Rat of Wall Street, the movie portrays him heroically tipping off Donnie Azoff about him wearing a wire via a napkin message. Belfort never tipped off Danny Porush, but in his sequel book, "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street," he related a similar incident involving another friend.

By likening Belfort to Caligula, Leonardo DiCaprio somewhat aligns "The Wolf of Wall Street" with the idea that America is the new Roman Empire. His decline and fall is its decline and fall. FBI agent Patrick Denham, seen on Belfort's yacht with the American flag almost flowing out of his head, can only try and plug the dam. Kyle Chandler's all-American image as Eric Taylor in "Friday Night Lights" thus underpins Denham's character, who was based on agent Gregory Lockwood.

Former Stratton Oakmont exec Andrew Greene, the inspiration for the toupee-wearing character "Wigwam" in the book and "Rugrat" (P.J. Byrne) in the movie, unsuccessfully sued the studios behind "The Wolf of Wall Street" for libel, losing in part because of the credits disclaimer:

"While this story is based on actual events, certain characters, characterizations, incidents, locations and dialogue were fictionalized or invented for purposes of dramatization. With respect to such fictionalization or invention, any similarity to the name or to the actual character or history of any person, living or dead, or any product or entity or actual incident, is entirely for dramatic purpose and not intended to reflect on an actual character, history, product or entity."

Tommy Chong was Belfort's 'cube mate'

Tommy Chong has dozens of movie and TV credits to his name, some through his collaboration with Cheech Marin in the stoner comedy duo Cheech & Chong. He had a recurring role on "That '70s Show" and has also done activism for marijuana legalization.

As chance would have it, a nine-month sentence for selling bongs online landed Chong in the same federal prison as Jordan Belfort. The prison was so nice that it didn't even have cells, but the two men apparently shared a cubicle. New York Magazine reports that they were "cube mates" or "cubies."

In 2014, Yahoo News further reported that Chong — as Belfort's cube mate — was instrumental in convincing him to turn his life story into a memoir. At the time, Chong was writing his own book, and though Belfort would regale him with stories of his stockbroker misadventures, he had been wiling away his days in prison by playing tennis.

The movie shows Belfort on the tennis court at the end, where he brags about how being rich and living in a country "where everything was for sale" helped soften the blow when he eventually had to face the consequences of his actions.

In prison, Chong gave Belfort some writing advice after the fictionalized first draft of "The Wolf of Wall Street" read like a John Grisham knockoff. "I told him a few tricks of the trade, how to articulate the story," Chong said.

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

While Belfort was on parole, 50% of his income went toward restitution for his victims. That ended in 2009, but for the rest of his life, Jordan Belfort has to continue paying at least $10,000 a month into a $110 million restitution fund. In 2018, a judge made a ruling to garnish more of his funds since Belfort had only paid a "fraction" of what he owed. He, therefore, has a deep incentive to continue making money.

In the film, Belfort boasts of "selling garbage to garbage men." A pivotal moment comes when his first wife, Leah (Christine Ebersole), suggests that he rethink his penny stock scheme, marketing it to "rich people who can, like, afford to lose a lot of money."

From there, Belfort's off to the races, but among his real-world victims were retirees and small-business owners, not just fabulously wealthy individuals. Some people he duped lost their life savings or the money for their children's college tuition.

What's Jordan Belfort up to today?

In 2022, The New York Times reported that Jordan Belfort was investing in NFT start-ups and other ventures, while offering his services as a consultant, sales coach, and cryptocurrency guru. For the price of one $40,000 Bitcoin, guests could attend a workshop at his luxurious Miami Beach home.

The image that emerges in the Times via words and photos is one of Belfort drinking a morning Red Bull and lounging on his couch, surrounded by blockchain disciples — all men — whose bible for the day would be Belfort's 2017 sales manual, "The Way of the Wolf." One of the guests confessed to having already stolen a copy of "The Wolf of Wall Street" from the library.

Despite his continuing prosperity, 2021 saw Belfort himself become the victim of a crypto hacker, who robbed him of $300,000 in Ohm tokens. In 2020, Belfort also made headlines for filing a $300 million lawsuit against Red Granite Pictures, one of the production companies behind the "Wolf of Wall Street" film. The suit alleged that Red Granite and its CEO had co-financed the movie with a Belfort-like bundle of dirty money , stolen from the Malaysian government.

Belfort seemed to acknowledge that his own ill-gotten gains were the result of misdirected energy, and he could have profited better off legitimate business pursuits. "I missed the internet boom," he lamented. "I would've made 100x more money."

A Lamborghini of lies mixed with the truth

At the beginning of the "Wolf of Wall Street" movie, there's a moment where Jordan Belfort is speeding down the freeway in his red Ferrari as Naomi performs fellatio on him. Through voiceover narration, he offers a quick correction: "My Ferrari was white, like Don Johnson's in 'Miami Vice,' not red." The car then spontaneously changes colors onscreen, as if to illustrate the mutability of memory and malleability of the truth.

Later, during the infamous Quaaludes scene, Belfort drives his white Lamborghini under the influence and believes he's "made it home alive, not a scratch on me or the car." Two cops subsequently drag him outside, where he sees that the car is, in fact, wrecked.

In his drug-fueled state, he had misremembered the details. The irony is, in real life (per Time ), it was a Mercedes that Belfort drove home that night, not a Lamborghini.

If cars are interchangeable in "The Wolf of Wall Street," it leaves the viewer to wonder what other facts might have been changed for artistic purposes. For some things, all we have to go on is a game of he-said, he-said between Belfort and Danny Porush.

These are the same two men whose film analogs, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, are shown smoking crack together. In 2014, Porush denied moments like that or Donnie's impromptu public masturbation ever happened, telling The Sun , "I never smoked crack and I never pulled out my penis at a party."

Are you buying it?

As a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese took creative license with Jordan Belfort's book, just as Belfort may have taken license with some of the facts of his own biography. In "The Wolf of Wall Street," Belfort self-mythologizes. It's even possible there are things he believes happened that didn't, like how we see the movie Lamborghini making it home undamaged.

As he cold-calls strangers, reads from his script on how to fleece them, and coaches Stratton Oakmont trainees on how to do the same, the film version of Belfort puts one of his victims on speakerphone. With the guys around him snickering like hyenas, Belfort pantomimes reeling in a fish before flicking off the voice on the other end of the line. He openly mocks and shows his contempt for this sucker, who we never see, because we're always in Belfort's perspective. The other person's not important to him.

By the end, Belfort has reinvented himself as a respectable citizen, someone people will pay to see and learn sales psychology from at business seminars. For the final image, Scorsese points the camera at Belfort's audience, which includes the people onscreen and the ones watching the movie.

The real Belfort cameos as the host who introduces DiCaprio onstage. The Wolf is in Auckland now, asking guys with Kiwi accents to sell him a pen, but it's the same self-reflexive pitch-me pitch that he gave his "hometown boys" earlier in the movie.

The question is, are you buying what he's selling?

Iconic Scenes: The Wolf of Wall Street – The Yacht Bribe

I love The Wolf of Wall Street . I think it is a spectacular film that seems to grow more relevant as time passes. I also think that the central character and narrator, Jordan Belfort, is not the most important or key character – that is Agent Denham. So I’m looking at the brilliant scene where Belfort and Denham first meet.

What Happens

Multi-millionaire and thoroughly corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort invites two FBI agents to his luxury yacht after he learns that they are investigating him. Agent Denham, and a virtually silent partner, arrive for what starts as a very friendly meeting. Belfort hands over some of the information the FBI has been trying to get while constantly trying to impress them with his wealth and insisting he’s done nothing wrong. Belfort draws Denham into a conversation and it seems the FBI agent is not happy at being given the case and would be willing to play ball with Belfort. At which point, Belfort tries to bribe Denham, and then the tone changes. It’s immediately obvious that Denham is not willing to play ball and is determined to bring Belfort down. The conversation gets increasingly acrimonious and ends with Belfort literally throwing lobsters and handfuls of cash at the departing FBI agents.

When you sail on a yacht fit for a Bond villain, sometimes you gotta act the part

DiCaprio is sensational in this scene. Despite getting very good advice not to contact the FBI and try some scheming, this is exactly what Belfort does. They meet on his insanely luxurious yacht, where Belfort has beautiful women lounging on chairs, he is dressed in bright white “yacht clothes” and constantly turning on his beaming smile. He offers them lobsters and drinks. It does not seem to occur to Belfort that showing off his immense, and ill-gotten wealth, might not be the best idea when you’re being investigated for crimes in the stock market.

Belfort’s attempt at bribery is fantastic. Basically detailing a story where he advised someone in need of money in what stocks to invest in and that person making a fortune and how Belfort “would be willing to do that for anyone”. When challenged about this being a bribe Belfort reveals he researched what legally constitutes a bribe and that wouldn’t count. Again, it’s a little suspicious for someone to be able to recite the criminal code of a crime if they’re not a lawyer.

Good for you, Little Man

Oh, Agent Denham, you film stealing hero. Denham is played by Kyle Chandler who, and this is important for the Denham role, is your go-to guy for American decency (if you need someone younger than Tom Hanks), he is probably best known for his role in Friday Night Lights where he played an honourable, upstanding and inspirational football coach. Denham’s casual chatting with Belfort seems to suggest he is not interested in the case and possibly dissatisfied with his job, the attempted bribe being when he flips to his real character.

As Belfort becomes more aggressive Denham responds in kind and leads to one of the all-time best deliveries, “Good for you, little man,” when sarcastically congratulating Belfort on becoming a Wall Street douchebag without any help from anyone else. Belfort is stunned by this comment but mainly in that he can’t understand it…he’s rich, really rich, how can he be a “little man”, he’s a giant. A colossus. The embodiment of the American Dream. The thing is, of course, Denham is right.

Fun Coupons

A lot of this scene is purely about status. Of all the places Belfort could have met with the FBI agents he chooses his insanely expensive yacht. He is obsessed with money and how much the FBI agents make, originally pretending to be sympathetic but quickly changing to just mocking them. Belfort assumes that because Denham works for the FBI for what to him is an insignificant amount of money he is a loser. The idea that Denham might believe in what he’s doing is either inconceivable or at best a pitiable weakness. To me, this is the best and most interesting scene in the whole film – not the drug-filled hedonistic parties, not the cult-like team talks Belfort gives his employees, not the incredibly charismatic phone calls Belfort makes when selling stocks but this scene where Denham sizes up Belfort and sees right through him.

Years ago David Cross and Bob Odenkirk made a sketch show called Mr. Show , which contained a sketch based on the premise “someone who makes more money than you is better than you”, so Van Gogh, Einstein and Galileo are actually pretty unsuccessful people. This is Jordan Belfort’s philosophy – he is better than just about everyone he meets because he is richer.

The Hero I’m Going To Be Back At The Office, When The Bureau seizes this boat!

All Belfort manages to do in this scene is upset the FBI and probably convince them that yes, he is absolutely breaking the law. It’s an interesting look at the dynamic of power in America (and indeed the whole world) – who is the more powerful person? Belfort with his huge personal wealth or Denham as a federal officer, a representative of the most powerful country on Earth. There was a lot of discussion at the time about if people actually saw Belfort as the hero of this film, that people liked him and wanted him to win. I saw this as Goodfellas but for white-collar crime. In this scene Belfort helps further his own downfall, antagonising the FBI. In the final moments of this scene, Belfort has just finished throwing money at Denham and his arrogance and deluded grandeur fade as he realises he has just made a terrible mistake.

Also Read: Iconic Scenes: American Psycho – Business Card Scene

Richard Norton

Gentleman, podcaster and pop culture nerd, I love talking and writing about pretty much all pop culture.

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The wolf of wall street: 10 most memorable jordan belfort quotes, ranked.

Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort wasn't a great guy, but the controversial Wolf Of Wall Street character left us with plenty of memorable quotes.

A good number of Leonardo DiCaprio fans still feel that his performance in The Wolf Of Wall Street is what should have won him his first Best Actor Oscar. Audiences did indeed get to see peak DiCaprio in the Martin Scorsese movie about the controversial millionaire Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort.

RELATED:  10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Wolf Of Wall Street

Belfort—who engaged in corruption and fraud via his company Stratton Oakmont—lived life on the fast lane. The portrayal of his life made for great viewing, but also for a cautionary tale. What also made the movie so enjoyable was the dialogue. Though most of the characters had memorable quotes, Belfort's words stood out the most.

"I've Been A Poor Man And I've Been A Rich Man... And I Choose Rich Every Time!"

Belfort's numerous addresses to his hundreds of employees at the Stratton Oakmont office are all captivating. In one of them, he goes on and on about the importance of being rich. He urges the stockbrokers to be flamboyant and hedonistic like him . And if they think that's a problem, they should go work at a diner.

He also reminds them that there is no nobility in being poor. He knows this because he once had nothing. Now that he is extremely rich, he knows which is better. He also adds a braggadocious statement, saying that at least as a rich man, he shows up to deal with his problems while wearing a $40,000 gold watch and a $2000 suit.

"I Will Not Die Sober!"

Easily one of the craziest moments in the movie, Belfort forces his yacht captain to sail through a deadly storm because he has just been informed about a major problem in his company. Prior to that, he had been running things from his yacht to avoid running into the feds all the time.

At that point, audiences have already seen how much of a risk-taker Belfort is, but the moment further emphasizes it. The storm becomes too intense, so Belfort declares he is not going to die sober. He tells his buddy and VP Donnie to go and get the quaaludes so that they can get high one last time before they die.

"Was All This Legal? Absolutely Not, But We Were Making More Money Than We Knew What To Do With."

Dozens of minutes into the movie, it becomes clear that nothing that's happening at Stratton Oakmont is legal. Belfort and his team have perfected the art of making ordinary citizens invest all their money, thinking they are going to get high returns. Instead, it's the stockbrokers who get all the juicy returns.

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Belfort makes sure to remind viewers that nothing that was happening at his company was legal. And that didn't matter because they were having the time of their lives. Clearly, not the best role model.

"I Think It's Time You Both Get The F*** Off My Boat. Whaddya Say?"

When the FBI Agent Denham shows up at Belfort's boat together with his partner, the millionaire stockbroker welcomes him with open arms. He tries to bribe Denham, telling him he can make him rich on Wall Street if he quits his job in the bureau. Belfort says this because he has found out that Denham once tried to be a stockbroker.

Denham acts like he is interested at first, telling Belfort that he feels miserable every time he has to ride the subway home. But in a twist that Belfort doesn't see coming. Denham tells his partner to come close so that he can hear how Belfort is trying to bribe him. An angry Belfort kicks them off his boat and even throws money at them.

"I Made $49 Million, Which Really P****d Me Off Because It Was Three Shy Of A Million A Week."

In one of the opening scenes , Belfort introduces himself in quite a grandiose manner. Speaking to the camera, he recalls being a member of the middle class and being raised by two accountants in a small apartment in Bayside, Queens.

He lets viewers know that he was the owner of a brokerage firm by the time he was 26. At that time, he made a total of $49 million,  but that made him angry because if he had $3 million more, then it would mean he had made a million a week. Well, one has to admire the man's ambition.

"Get Off The Phone, FBI!"

In one of the voiceovers, Belfort claims that he takes enough drugs to sedate the whole of Manhattan. Well, his and Donnie's drug binge gets the better off them one night. Jordan briefly leaves Donnie at his house and when he's away, he is informed that the FBI has tapped his phone. That's a big problem because Donnie is busy using Belfort's phone to make a call.

RELATED:  The Wolf Of Wall Street: 5 Reasons It's A Great Satire (& 5 Why It Glorifies Jordan Belfort's Lifestyle)

Belfort tries to call home to ask his wife to warn Donnie but she shuts him down because his speech is slurred. Despite the fact that he can barely even move, he crawls like a snake to his white Ferarri before driving off. During the short drive home, he knocks several things and badly damages his car. He then crawls to the house and literally wrestles the phone off Donnie .

"I'm Not Leaving... I'm Not F****** Leaving."

Belfort eventually starts to feel the weight of the FBI investigation. He considers quitting so that Stratton Oakmont can survive. The FBI wants him to do exactly that. However, when he gathers his employees to tell them goodbye , he changes his mind.

He declares that he built the company from the ground up and no one can make him leave it. Not one to dance to other people's tunes, Belfort adds that if the feds want him out, they will have to send the National Guard to yank him out of the building.

"I'm Gonna Let You In On A Little Secret About These Telephones. They're Not Gonna Dial Themselves."

Stockbrokers seal deals by having long phone conversations with clients. This is a fact that Belfort makes sure to remind the rookies he hires when he starts Stratton Oakmont. Most of them are his former friends who have never been in the world of finance before. In fact, he mentions that they are all good at just selling weed.

The fact that they can sell something is good enough for Belfort. But now they'll need to learn how to use those plastic things called telephones. That's a skill that they master within no time.

"It Was Obscene, In The Normal World, But Who The F*** Wanted To Live There?"

Belfort and his buddies at the office begin to enjoy themselves a bit too much, thanks to the millions they are making. This concerns his father Max who tries to put him on a leash. He is shocked that the company spent over $40,000 on an escort service and thousands of dollars on drinks.

RELATED: The Wolf Of Wall Street: 10 Hidden Details You Completely Missed In The Film

He tries to advise his son as a father should but Belfort isn't one to listen. He even declares that what Belfort is doing is obscene. In a voice-over, Belfort agrees that it was indeed obscene in the ordinary world . That didn't matter because he didn't want to be an ordinary man.

"I Had Forgotten I Lived In A World Where Everything Was For Sale."

The chickens do indeed come home to roost as Belfort is arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. He admits that he was worried about life in prison at first but then he remembered that he was still rich.

He had nothing to fear in prison because he could buy all the protection and favors he needed. Unfortunately for him, life is never really the same. Even after getting out of jail, Belfort has to settle for being a middle-class American once again. Nevertheless, he had quite the ride.

NEXT:  Martin Scorsese: 5 Best Book-To-Movie Adaptations (& 5 That Didn't Impress)

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Martin Scorsese ‘Kept Fighting’ for ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Yacht Scene to Be in Final Cut

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Martin Scorsese was determined that “ The Wolf of Wall Street ” would have a sinking ship onscreen.

The blockbuster, Oscar-nominated 2013 film which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort, was originally a whopping four hours long. While the film was eventually trimmed down to 180 minutes, screenwriter Terence Winter revealed that Scorsese refused to cut an expensive yacht sequence.

“Because [the script] was so long, you know, the fear was there were going be things that we were gonna have to cut — like the sequence where the boat sinks and they get rescued at sea,” Winter told The Hollywood Reporter . “It was on the chopping block for the longest time because it was so wild and so expensive. To his credit, Marty just kept fighting and said, ‘We have to have that. I have to have that.'”

The scene involves Belfort (DiCaprio) and his wife Naomi ( Margot Robbie ) having to be rescued by helicopter when sailing from Italy to Monaco in a desperate attempt to stop federal investigators from accessing bank accounts.

“There was actually a four-hour cut of that movie initially and it was just a lot more insanity — if you can believe there was room for any,” Emmy winner Winter continued. “But I was absolutely thrilled that everything got in there. Every possible thing… including the kitchen sink… is in that movie. I could not have been more happy with it.”

Acclaimed editor and longtime Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker previously told IndieWire that the four-hour cut is beloved by those who had seen it, and Scorsese even considered releasing it in two parts. “Well, we thought about it,” Schoonmaker said. “But the film doesn’t work split in half. It has to have a certain arc.”

Actress Robbie recently revealed that the overnight success of “The Wolf of Wall Street” was overwhelming at times, saying, “Something was happening in those early stages and it was all pretty awful. I remember saying to my mom, ‘I don’t think I want to do this.’ And she just looked at me, completely straight-faced, and was like, ‘Darling, I think it’s too late not to.’ That’s when I realized the only way was forward.”

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Wolf of Wall Street's Jordan Belfort: 'The lessons of the crash have been forgotten'

The convicted fraudster who inspired Martin Scorsese’s film of Wall Street excess is back with a new book and a warning that a big market correction is on the way

T he Wolf of Wall Street forgives but he never forgets. Ten years ago when I last met Jordan Belfort, convicted criminal, aspiring author and shortly to be a man at the center of a fierce bidding war for his biography, I suggested his hair was “the sort of dark brown that only passes for natural in LA”. Also his skin was a little too taut and maybe he wore lifts.

A decade on the 55-year-old still looks 10 years younger than his age. And his hair is still a rich mahogany. But he’s keen to point out it’s all natural. “I swear to God,” he says. “Do I dye my hair?” he asks Anne Koppe, his partner, as they sit in their Manhattan hotel suite.

Koppe – the sort of blonde who probably gets described as “willowy” and spends part of the interview curled round Belfort like a cat – points at his chest hair, peaking out from his polo shirt. That’s definitely brown. “It’s all an expensive dye job,” I say. The couple laugh. “You’re killing me,” he says.

Back in his native New York for a family visit Belfort seems very happy. It’s over 11 years since he was released from jail having served four years for running a “pump and dump” share selling scheme at his broker, Stratton Oakmont, that prosecutors said led to losses of approximately $200m. Life has moved on for him, and how.

His drug-fueled crime spree, in which he crashed a helicopter (while high on quaaludes), sank a yacht and arranged midget-tossing in his office, was turned into a film by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio , that became an international box office hit.

He remains friends with DiCaprio. He taught the actor, who has never done drugs, how to act when he was portraying the scenes of Belfort out of his mind on his usual cocktails of narcotics. It was: “Valium for breakfast, marijuana for lunch and quaaludes for dinner,” one of his associates said.

Now he has another book out, Way of the Wolf , that promises to teach anyone how to be an ace – and ethical – salesman, and is in the early stages of turning his life story into a Broadway musical. Crime does pay!

Belfort, 20 years sober, lives a charmed life. It took almost seven years for the film to be made after it was optioned and even that delay worked in his favor. The script originally ended with Belfort in jail. By the time it was made, Belfort had rebuilt his business, giving seminars about his “straight line” sales techniques and the film ended with him giving one of those talks. It was “amazing” he says. “In a way the fact it was so late really worked.”

Now living in Los Angeles, Belfort says he leads a quiet life. “We are very boring,” he says. “All these delivery services, Doordash, Grubhub. They make it too easy to stay home and have bed picnics. That’s our favorite thing to do.”

But the bizarro world of the Wolf continues. The US government now owns the TV rights to his story (but not the Broadway ones) after the film’s producers, Red Granite Pictures, reached an agreement with federal prosecutors looking to recoup some of the billions they claim were stolen from the Malaysian government and used, in part, to finance the film.

Belfort says he had a strange feeling about those investors from the start. “The way they spent money, I have never seen anything like it,” he says. The Malaysian investors flew Kanye West out for the film’s launch party. When you steal money, he says, you just want to spend it. “It’s like a weird compulsion,” says a man who should know.

For his own part, Belfort says the high-spending days are over. He wants to pay back Stratton’s investors (he’s already paid about $20m) and get on with his life. But his celebrity – and his past – do get in the way.

All the harping on the past can be a bit annoying. “The movie came out a few years back but it depicts events from my life almost 30 years ago. I’m not the same Jordan Belfort. I continue to pay back money and I am hopeful that I will pay back all the money. It’s frustrating because you want to reinvent yourself and you feel you have. And he knows your past is always there.”

The book, he says smoothly moving into sales pitch mode, is about that. “It’s really about a strategy for coming back from failure,” he says.

“I should have written this book a long time ago,” he says. The problem is he hates writing. Anne shows me a video of him typing away in bed (they clearly spend a lot of time there). He holds the laptop in one hand and types one finger at a time. “Even better,” he says out loud in the video. “Better yet. Better though.” He pauses. “Once you’ve been. Once you HAVE been …” It goes on and on and looks excruciating. Anne says it helped him sleep. A lot.

But the result is fun, with more insights from the world of Stratton Oakmont and allusions to The Italian Job and Forrest Gump. It’s the sort of easy read that will no doubt fly off the bookshelves at airports around the world. It’s not just for sales people, he says. Everyone is always selling themselves. “There are so many people out there who are brilliant, hardworking and industrious but lack the art of persuasion,” he says. “And because of that they end up dying with their music on their lips. It’s crazy.”

If he wants to make the switch from villain to hero, there are others to take his place. In the pantheon of Wall Street villains Belfort has been eclipsed by Martin Shkreli, the “pharma bro” who hiked the price of a lifesaving drug 5,000% and is now in jail after calling on his Facebook fans to steal a lock of Hillary Clinton’s hair . “There has got to be something wrong with that guy,” says Belfort. “Is he crazy?”

But it’s not the players, it’s the bigger picture on Wall Street that worries him these days. He says bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst. “It’s artificially created scarcity,” he says. “The problem I have with bitcoin right now is that it’s very much like at the tail end of of 2007, 2008 right before the mortgage market blew up. You’d be getting your haircut and he’d be like: ‘Oh yeah I also do mortgages on the side.’ Everybody was a broker. Everyone’s flipping houses. Now everyone’s buying bitcoin. I promise you the end is near.”

He also thinks that the stock markets – which seem to reach record highs on a daily basis – are in for a fall. “I think the lessons of the crash have been forgotten,” he says. “It feels like we are going back into a cycle of irrational exuberance. Like with Trump. How can the country be that unsure of him, how can we be that unsure of him and the markets be so high? If there is that much uncertainty then there is risk,” he says. “The market itself might not be linked to reality any more,” he says. “It’s the ‘greater fool theory’. If there is a greater fool that will buy it from me at a greater price then I did good.”

Something is off and there is going to be a big correction, he says. “There is North Korea and yet … What are they going to do with the national debt? Something is going to happen.” Whatever it is, you get the feeling it’s going to work out just fine for the Wolf of Wall Street.

• Martin Scorsese
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Stock markets

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• November 7, 2016
• Movies , Narration

25: The Wolf of Wall Street

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Note: This transcript is automatically generated. There will be mistakes, so please don’t use them for quotes. It is provided for reference use to find things better in the audio.

The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort, who is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. We’re introduced to Leonardo DiCaprio’s version of Jordan as he explains a bit about his life:

His wife, Naomi, played by Margot Robbie. His 170-foot yacht. The fact that he has sex with hookers five or six times a week and does a ton of drugs.

After this rather stunning introduction that sets the pace of the film, we go back to learn about how Jordan broke into, well, the broker business. According to the movie, Jordan didn’t grow up with wealth, but at the age of 22, Jordan got a job at the investment firm L.F. Rothschild on Wall Street. That’s where he got hooked on money.

This background is mostly true, with the exception of his age.

Jordan was born in 1962 in New York City and, just like the movie says, both of his parents were accountants. After dropping out of dentistry school when the dean of the University of Maryland School of Dentistry told him dentistry is the wrong place to make a lot of money, Jordan moved to Long Island where he started selling meat and seafood. For a short while things were going well, but the business ended up forcing Jordan to file for bankruptcy at the age of 25.

So it was at the age of 25 that a family friend helped him get back on his feet by finding a job for him as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild.

In the movie, it’s while at L.F. Rothschild that Jordan’s boss, Mark Hanna as played by Matthew McConaughey, that Jordan learns the real secret to Wall Street: Cocaine and hookers. Well, that and the stockbroker’s ability to convince their clients to re-invest any earnings they have into a new stock, along with a bit more. Each time, the client is getting rich on paper while the stockbroker makes bank on the commissions.

According to the real Jordan Belfort’s memoirs, this actually happened. Mark Hanna gave him advice early on about how to make money on Wall Street—and the drugs and hookers.

For a while this works. Then, just like in the movie, Black Monday hits. The movie glosses over this, but Black Monday was on October 19th, 1987. Stock markets around the world crashed. In the United States, the Dow Jones fell 508 points. Millions of dollars were lost overnight.

And again, according to the real Jordan, this was the catalyst for his getting canned at L.F. Rothschild. It wasn’t anything personal, a lot of people lost their jobs as a result of the market crash.

On the hunt for a job again, the next part of the movie is also correct. Jordan returned to Long Island where he started working for a company called Investor Center. What the movie doesn’t mention, though, is this little company was owned by a larger company called Stratton Securities. So while the movie does mention Jordan going off on his own to form Stratton Oakmont, it wasn’t quite the startup like the movie implies. Instead, after a year of working at Investor Center, Jordan earned enough to buy out Stratton Securities and that’s how Stratton Oakmont was formed.

Just like in the movie, Jordan hired a bunch of his friends to be his first stockbrokers. Although the whole “sell me this pen” stereotypical salesman technique wasn’t something Jordan did—that was added for the movie.

In the movie, one of those friends is Donnie Azoff, played by Jonah Hill. The two meet in a diner after Donnie noticed Jordan’s nice car and asks him how much money he makes. Donnie was so impressed by Jordan’s making $72,000 in the last month that he immediately quit his job and went to go to work for Jordan.

That didn’t happen. In fact, Donnie Azoff isn’t a real person. Donnie is a composite character, but the majority of his character in the film was based on Danny Porush. In real life Danny met Jordan through his wife.

Oh, but Danny’s wife was his cousin—just like Donnie’s wife in the movie.

Stratton Oakmont grew fast, just like the movie indicated. In the movie, there’s a moment where Forbes does a profile on Stratton Oakmont. Leo’s version of Jordan is upset that Forbes calls him “a twisted Robin Hood” and they come up with the nickname, “the wolf of Wall Street.”

Forbes did do a profile on Jordan. The Forbes article came out on October 14th, 1991. And Forbes staff writer Roula Khalaf did call him “twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers.” But the article didn’t come up with the wolf of Wall Street moniker. According to the Forbes article, Stratton, pushed dicey stocks on gullible investors.

Back in the movie, it’s about this point that Leo’s version of Jordan meets Naomi, played by Margot Robbie. And it’s about this point that Leo starts thinking of divorcing his then-wife, Teresa. In the movie Teresa is played by Cristin Milioti.

That’s true, although the names were different in the movie than real life. Jordan’s first wife was named Denise Lombardo, and Jordan was married to her from 1985 to 1991. Jordan divorced Denise after he met Nadine Caridi at a Stratton Oakmont party and that same year Jordan and Nadine were married.

In the movie, Jordan’s wedding present for Naomi is a 170-foot yacht named the Naomi after her. This is true, although since Jordan’s second wife was named Nadine the boat was also called The Nadine . But their marriage was far from a happy one. After the honeymoon phase, the movie shows Jordan’s typical morning ritual:

Fight with Naomi about whatever he did the night before. Go in the steam room to get the drugs out from the day before. Finally, assess the damage and seek to make up with Naomi.

These specifics were taken straight from the real Jordan’s book. The scene where Naomi spreads her legs open and tells Jordan he won’t be getting sex for a long time, only to find out she’s in full view of the security tape. So, according to Jordan at least, that’s true.

Back at the office in the movie, one of the craziest scenes for Donnie is when he eats the pet fish from the Silicon Valley guy. Thomas Middleditch. He plays Hooli’s founder Richard Hendricks in Silicon Valley. Okay, so The Wolf of Wall Street was released the year before Silicon Valley came out and in the movie Thomas obviously isn’t playing Richard Hendricks. In the movie he’s actually credited as “Stratton Broker in a Bowtie.” But he’ll always be the Silicon Valley guy to me.

Anyway, Jonah Hill’s version of Donnie swallows the Silicon Valley guy’s pet fish and then fires him. Amazingly, this is true. Well, at least Danny Porush claims it’s true. We don’t really have any other proof of this other than Danny’s word, so I guess we’ll have to take him for it. And considering how much drugs and alcohol was common in the Stratton Oakmont offices, it’s not surprising that some crazy things happened.

This fish-eating moment happened on, according to Leo’s version of Jordan, the biggest day in Stratton’s history. They’re launching Steve Madden’s IPO. In the movie Steve Madden is played by Jake Hoffman.

Just like in the movie, the real Stratton Oakmont was the firm who launched Steve Madden, Inc.’s initial public offering for his women’s shoe company. And just like in the movie, Steve was a childhood friend of Danny Porush, the guy who Jonah Hill’s character was primarily based on. The movie doesn’t really mention this, but the real Steve Madden was tangled up in Stratton Oakmont’s scheme. In 2002, he was convicted of stock manipulation, money and securities fraud. Before he went to prison, though, Steve resigned as CEO of Steve Madden, Ltd., and then accepted a position at Steve Madden, Ltd., as a creative consultant for a handsome salary of $700,000 a year. He was sentenced to 31 months, and still drew that salary while he was in prison.

But that’s after the events in the movie.

Back in the movie’s timeline, after the IPO of Steve Madden’s company, the FBI is starting to put things together. Agent Denham, played by Kyle Chandler, starts to catch on to the illegal behavior going on at Stratton Oakmont. He even meets with Leo’s version of Jordan on his yacht, the Naomi .

That didn’t happen, and as you can probably guess Agent Patrick Denham is another fake name. In truth the agent at the FBI who was tracking Jordan Belfort was FBI Special Agent Gregory Coleman.

Knowing the FBI is investigating him, in the movie Jordan decides to start hiding his money. He’s going to do this by moving it to a Swiss bank account. To get the cash to Switzerland, he needs someone with a European passport. And he finds someone in Naomi’s Aunt Emma, who is played by Joanna Lumley. But there’s way too much cash for one person to take. So they go with Jordan’s drug dealer’s wife, Chantalle, a stripper born in Switzerland.

The drug dealer’s name is Brad, and he’s played by Jon Bernthal and Chantalle is played by Katarina Cas.

The names are changed, for example Brad is based on the real Todd Garret, a drug dealer who provided Jordan with Quaaludes. But the basic gist of this is pretty accurate. Aunt Emma was actually named Patricia, but this is how the real Jordan moved his money to Switzerland. And while the details of the argument in the exchange are fictionalized, just like in the movie, Jordan’s drug-dealer friend, Brad in the movie, botched a money hand-off with Danny Porush.

The FBI was getting closer.

As a quick side note, the private investigator in the movie, Bo Dietl, is actually playing himself. That’s the real P.I. that the real Jordan Belfort hired to try to find out what the FBI was investigating.

In the movie, Bo warns Jordan that his home is tapped and after taking an obscene amount of Lemmon 714 pills, he drives his Lamborghini Countach from a country club to his home. Then Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill proceed to have the slowest fight in movie history. It’s pretty funny to see.

And again, the details weren’t quite that way but the basic gist of this was true. For example, according to the real Jordan Belfort it wasn’t a Lamborghini but a Mercedes that he drove while high on expired Quaaludes.

Oh, and if you’re like me and you’re not familiar with what Quaaludes are, that’s a brand name of the methaqualone drug. It’s a sedative drug that’s used to treat anxiety. It’s also incredibly addictive. While not related to this at all, in 2015 comedian Bill Cosby admitted to drugging women he wanted to have sex with using Quaaludes.

Leo’s version of Jordan in the movie is shocked when he sees the banged up Lamborghini. He’s amazed he didn’t get hurt. He’s amazed he didn’t hurt anyone else.

That’s not true. He did hurt someone else. While the real Jordan couldn’t recall this happening because he was so high, while he was driving his Mercedes he caused a head-on collision that sent the driver of the other car to the hospital. Fortunately, she ended up being okay.

In the movie, while Leo’s version of Jordan has taken the yacht to Italy they find out Aunt Emma has passed away. Naomi is grief-stricken, and you can tell Jordan is also sad—but for a different reason. What about the $20 million Aunt Emma has in her Swiss bank accounts for him?

This actually happened. Patricia passed away while Jordan’s money was still in her name in Swiss banks. And just like in the movie, the real Jordan convinced the boat’s captain to go through a storm in the Mediterranean Sea. And again, just like in the movie, the storm won. The Nadine sank off the coast of Italy and the passengers and crew had to be rescued by an Italian Navy helicopter.

According to the real Jordan Belfort, there was one thing the movie got wrong here, though. The helicopter on the yacht didn’t fall off on its own. They had to push it off to make room for the Italian Navy chopper to lower a commando to come rescue them.

Why was it an Italian Navy commando rescuing them? Jordan didn’t ever say.

In the movie, things started to fall apart for Jordan when he gets arrested while filming an infomercial. That didn’t really happen. Well, not during the filming of an infomercial. But Jordan did get arrested. It was FBI Special Agent Gregory Coleman who had been tracking Jordan for over six years before he finally made his move. While the movie made it seem like Jordan had met FBI Agent Denham, in truth Jordan didn’t meet the FBI agent after him until Agent Coleman showed up at Jordan’s home to arrest him.

Faced with decades in prison, Jordan is offered the chance to cooperate in the movie. And in real life, he agreed to cooperate.

In the movie, when Jordan tells Naomi he’s agreed to cooperate with the FBI in exchange for a reduced sentence, she says, “I’m happy for you.” They have sex and then she tells Jordan that’s the last time—she wants a divorce. Enraged, Jordan punches Naomi in the gut and runs to grab his daughter, Skylar, and rushes out to the car. With Naomi yelling at him, Jordan backs the car through the garage door and wrecks it.

This happened. Jordan, while high, crashed his car into a six-foot pillar at the edge of his driveway. He never admitting to gut-punching Nadine, though. But he did admit to kicking her down the stairs while he was holding their daughter. Oh, and Nadine and Jordan didn’t have just the one child. They had two children together and the couple divorced in 2005. That’s years after Jordan was indicted in 1998.

Back at the office, there’s a moment where Leo’s Jordan is wearing a wire and he walks into the office with Donnie.

While they’re chatting, Jordan passes Donnie a note that says, “Don’t incriminate yourself. I’m wearing a wire.”

In truth, Jordan passed that note for another of his friends, Dave Beall, not the character Jonah Hill’s version of Donnie was based on—Danny Porush. According to the movie, thanks to his cooperation in helping bring down some of his friends, Jordan was sentenced to 36 months, or three years, in prison and fined $110 million.

That’s true, although the movie doesn’t mention how much of that he actually served. In truth, Jordan Belfort served 22 months. As for the $110 million, that was supposed to go to the victims of his scams. And just like Jordan didn’t serve the full 36 months, he also apparently hasn’t paid the money he owes. According to a report by Brooklyn federal prosecutors that was released just before the 2013 movie hit theaters, Jordan had only paid about $11.6 million of the $110 million he was ordered to pay to the 1,513 victims identified in his 2003 court case. And $10.4 million of that was money from court-ordered property forfeiture.

Oh, and the same report indicated Jordan had made over $700,000 from the book deal for The Wolf of Wall Street , the book that the movie was based on. He wrote the book while he was in prison and after his cellmate, the comedian Tommy Chong, encouraged him to write about his crazy stories. Then he made another $125,000 from the movie producers for rights to turn the book into a movie.

But according to Jordan’s lawyers, he’s “made repeated efforts over the last two-plus years to pay 100% of the profits of the movie and the two books.” The last two years being the two years before the report came out in 2013.

So, I don’t know how Jordan’s been trying to pay but maybe the payment system for the government wasn’t working? This is a perfect example of a story where it’s one side saying one thing and another saying something else. The tricky part here is you have the government on one side and Jordan Belfort on the other. Neither one of them are known for being very honest.

In the meantime, while Jordan and the U.S. Government can’t agree on whatever it is they’re arguing over these days, the victims of Jordan’s scams aren’t seeing any of what they’ve lost while Jordan lives a life of comfort.

Jordan has replied to the accusation that he hasn’t paid his debts. In an article on the New York Daily News website, Jordan is quoted as saying, “When I saw the deadbeat accusation, I almost started crying. I can’t believe something like this is happening in America.”

Today, Jordan Belfort runs a motivational speaking company just like you see at the end of the movie. In fact, the guy who introduces Leo’s version of Jordan at the very end? That’s the real Jordan Belfort. Leonardo DiCaprio has a video testimonial in which he says, “Jordan stands as a shining example of the transformative qualities of ambition and hard work, and in that regard, he is a true motivator.” 

In the end, The Wolf of Wall Street was incredibly accurate to Jordan’s book of the same name. A lot of what was said we can only rely on the word of those who were there, people like Jordan and Danny. And since those people made their millions by lying, it’s hard to know if they’re telling the truth. Or are they just stretching the truth to get a better story and, by extension, sell more books?

Perhaps our most convincing piece of evidence comes from an interview with FBI Special Agent Gregory Coleman who told The New York Times , “I tracked this guy for ten years, and everything he wrote is true.”

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Living the High Life: Jordan Belfort’s Epic Yacht Adventure

Welcome aboard the luxurious realm of Jordan Belfort’s yacht, where opulence and extravagance merge to create an unparalleled experience on the open seas. Inspired by the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” himself, this floating masterpiece embodies the epitome of indulgence and grandeur. From its sleek design to its state-of-the-art amenities, Belfort’s yacht is a testament to the high-flying lifestyle he once enjoyed. Join us as we delve into the real-life world of Jordan Belfort’s yacht, exploring its lavish features, breathtaking destinations, and the untold stories of the man who once ruled the financial world. Prepare to be captivated by the allure of this floating paradise and discover the fascinating tale of a man who effortlessly transformed his dreams into reality, one yacht at a time.

• Jordan Belfort, the infamous former stockbroker and subject of the film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” owned a luxury yacht named “Nadine” in real life.
• The yacht “Nadine” was a 167-foot vessel built by Feadship in 1991 and was one of the most impressive yachts of its time.
• Belfort’s yacht was known for its opulent interior, featuring a spacious master suite, multiple guest cabins, a jacuzzi, and a deck with a swimming pool. It was often used for lavish parties and entertaining guests.
• Has Jordan Belfort’s yacht really sunk?

What is true about The Wolf of Wall Street?

What is jordan belfort doing now, exploring the extravagant lifestyle: a glimpse into jordan belfort’s lavish yacht.

Beyond the Silver Screen: Unveiling Jordan Belfort’s Real-Life Yacht

Sailing in Style: A Closer Look at Jordan Belfort’s Luxurious Yacht

From wall street to open waters: discovering jordan belfort’s opulent yacht.

In the night of June 22nd to June 23rd, 1996, Jordan Belfort orchestrated a risky maneuver involving his yacht, Nadine, off the coast of Sardinia. The captain deliberately steered the vessel into a storm, resulting in its sinking. Fortunately, Belfort and the other individuals on board were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard. This incident raises questions about whether the sinking was intentional or a desperate attempt to escape something. The truth behind the sinking of Jordan Belfort’s yacht remains shrouded in mystery.

In the dark hours of June 22nd to June 23rd, 1996, Jordan Belfort executed a daring maneuver with his yacht, Nadine, near Sardinia. The captain deliberately navigated the vessel into a furious storm, resulting in its submersion. Fortunately, Belfort and the others were saved by the Italian Coast Guard. This incident leaves unanswered questions about the true intentions behind the sinking, adding an air of intrigue to the mystery surrounding Jordan Belfort’s ill-fated yacht.

“The Wolf of Wall Street,” directed by acclaimed filmmaker Martin Scorsese, is indeed based on true events. Inspired by the best-selling book of the same name by Jordan Belfort, the film delves into Belfort’s real-life experiences as a stockbroker at L.F. While the movie may have taken some creative liberties, it remains grounded in the intriguing and scandalous world of Wall Street during the 1990s.

In the captivating realm of Wall Street during the 1990s, director Martin Scorsese brings to life the true story of Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Drawing inspiration from Belfort’s best-selling book, the film offers a glimpse into the scandalous world of a stockbroker at L.F., with some creative liberties taken for added intrigue.

Jordan Belfort, famously known as the “Wolf of Wall Street,” has come a long way since his infamous days as a stockbroker. After serving time for securities fraud and money laundering, Belfort has transformed his life. Now, he is a renowned motivational speaker, author, and sales trainer. Drawing from his past experiences, Belfort educates and inspires others to achieve success and ethical business practices. Through his Straight Line System, he continues to assist individuals and organizations in enhancing their sales skills and overcoming obstacles. Belfort’s story serves as a powerful reminder that redemption and personal growth are possible, even after a tumultuous past.

Jordan Belfort, the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street,” has turned his life around after his conviction for securities fraud and money laundering. Now a respected author, motivational speaker, and sales trainer, Belfort uses his past experiences to inspire others and teach ethical business practices. Through his Straight Line System, he helps individuals and organizations improve their sales skills and overcome obstacles, proving that redemption and personal growth are attainable even after a troubled past.

Jordan Belfort, famously known as the “Wolf of Wall Street,” is known for his extravagant lifestyle. One aspect of his opulent existence is his lavish yacht, which offers a glimpse into his world of excess. This luxurious vessel is a masterpiece of design and engineering, boasting state-of-the-art amenities and breathtaking views. From the moment you step on board, you are enveloped in a world of luxury, with plush interiors, a private cinema, and a stunning pool area. Belfort’s yacht is a symbol of his success and a testament to the extravagant lifestyle he leads.

Jordan Belfort’s extravagant lifestyle is epitomized by his luxurious yacht, a testament to his opulent existence. With its state-of-the-art amenities, plush interiors, private cinema, and stunning pool area, stepping on board offers a glimpse into a world of excess and success.

Jordan Belfort, the infamous Wall Street tycoon and subject of the hit movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” was known for his extravagant lifestyle. One of the most iconic symbols of his lavish existence was his yacht, named “Nadine.” While the film showcased a replica, the real-life vessel remains a fascinating piece of maritime history. Measuring over 162 feet in length, the yacht boasts luxurious amenities like a helipad, jacuzzi, and multiple lounges. Today, we delve into the captivating story of this yacht, exploring its opulent features and the extravagant world it once sailed in.

Jordan Belfort’s real-life yacht, “Nadine,” was a symbol of his extravagant lifestyle. Measuring over 162 feet, it featured luxurious amenities like a helipad, jacuzzi, and multiple lounges. Today, we explore the captivating story of this opulent vessel and the extravagant world it once sailed in.

Jordan Belfort, the infamous Wall Street stockbroker and subject of the hit movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” is no stranger to a life of luxury. One of his most prized possessions is his extravagant yacht, a symbol of his success and opulence. This magnificent vessel, named “The Duchess,” boasts a sleek and stylish exterior, with a sophisticated interior design that exudes elegance. Complete with lavish amenities such as a Jacuzzi, a fully equipped gym, and multiple lavish cabins, this yacht truly embodies the essence of sailing in style.

Jordan Belfort’s luxurious yacht, “The Duchess,” is a stunning display of opulence and success. With its sleek exterior, elegant interior design, and lavish amenities, it epitomizes the epitome of sailing in style.

Jordan Belfort, the infamous former stockbroker and subject of the hit film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” is known for his extravagant lifestyle. One of the highlights of his lavish life was his opulent yacht, which became a symbol of his excesses. Named “Nadine,” the 167-foot vessel was a floating palace equipped with luxurious amenities, including a helipad and a Jacuzzi. From hosting wild parties to cruising the open waters, Belfort’s yacht was a testament to his rise and fall on Wall Street, showcasing both the allure and consequences of a life lived in excess.

Jordan Belfort’s extravagant lifestyle was epitomized by his opulent yacht, “Nadine.” This 167-foot floating palace boasted a helipad and a Jacuzzi, symbolizing the allure and consequences of a life lived in excess. From wild parties to cruising the open waters, Belfort’s yacht was a testament to his rise and fall on Wall Street.

In conclusion, exploring the real-life journey of Jordan Belfort’s yacht provides a fascinating insight into the opulent and extravagant lifestyle of the notorious Wall Street tycoon. From its lavish interior design to its state-of-the-art amenities, the yacht symbolizes the excesses and indulgences that characterized Belfort’s rise to power. However, beyond the superficial allure, it also serves as a reminder of the consequences of unchecked greed and unethical practices. Belfort’s yacht serves as a cautionary tale, a symbol of a man who allowed his insatiable appetite for wealth and success to overshadow his moral compass. By delving into the world of this yacht, we are given a glimpse into the darker side of success and a reminder that true fulfillment and happiness cannot be found in material possessions alone. Ultimately, the story of Jordan Belfort’s yacht teaches us the importance of integrity, responsibility, and the dangers of succumbing to the temptations that money and power can bring.

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'Wolf of Wall Street' Jordan Belfort Lost a Fortune After His Scam Was Exposed; Here's His Net Worth

The Wolf's Den: Jordan Belfort's net worth chronicles

Jordan belfort's early life, motivational speaking and writing career, jordan belfort's luxurious yacht and its specifications, jordan belfort's rise to success, legal troubles, and the eventual downfall, what are jordan belfort's sources of income, jordan belfort's residence in new york, jordan belfort's financial journey and successful stock trading, lessons from jordan belfort's journey and impact of his story, buying and selling penny stocks, pump and dump scheme, earnings by year , social media following , personal life.

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Jordan Belfort's net worth is currently negative $100 million due to his involvement in fraudulent activities, particularly pump-and-dump schemes conducted through his financial firm, Stratton Oakmont, from 1989 to 1996. Belfort, a former stockbroker and author, defrauded victims of hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to his indictment for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999. Despite his negative net worth, he has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker, charging substantial fees for speaking engagements and seminars.

Jordan Ross Belfort was born in The Bronx, New York, on July 9, 1962. Raised in Bayside, Queens, he initially pursued a career in dentistry but left after one day of classes. Belfort entered the finance world and, after facing setbacks, founded Stratton Oakmont in the early 1990s. Convicted of securities fraud and money laundering in 1999, he served 22 months in prison.

Post-release, Belfort became a motivational speaker through his company, Global Motivation, Inc. He emphasizes the importance of ethics and learning from mistakes in business. Additionally, Belfort is a published author, with memoirs like "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street," the former adapted into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

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Belfort owned the luxury yacht "Nadine," built in 1961 for Coco Chanel. Renamed after his second wife, the yacht sank off the coast of Sardinia in June 1996. Belfort admitted to insisting on sailing in high winds against the captain's advice, leading to the vessel's demise. The Italian Navy's special forces rescued all aboard.

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Belfort's rise to success involved founding Stratton Oakmont in the early 1990s, orchestrating pump-and-dump schemes that defrauded investors of hundreds of millions. Legal troubles ensued, and in 1999, he was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering. Belfort's cooperation with the FBI led to a reduced sentence of 22 months in prison. His firm was expelled from the National Association of Securities Dealers in 1996, marking its downfall.

Jordan Belfort's notorious journey towards financial crime started when he founded the firm Stratton Oakmont in 1989. This firm orchestrated elaborate pump-and-dump schemes, through which it defrauded unsuspecting victims of hundreds of millions of dollars. Belfort's primary source of income during this period were the ill-gotten gains from these schemes, which he used to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Belfort's former residence in Long Island, New York, was seized by the federal government in 2001 and sold to compensate fraud victims. The property, initially listed for $3.4 million in 2017, faced price reductions, with the latest known price at $2.89 million in August 2018.

Jordan Belfort's financial journey involved early ventures, including door-to-door meat and seafood sales. Despite bankruptcy at 25, he became a stockbroker, eventually founding Stratton Oakmont. His success was marred by fraudulent practices, resulting in legal consequences and a negative net worth. Belfort has written about his experiences and developed a system of sales advice called the "Straight Line System."

Jordan Belfort's story serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of financial fraud. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from his mistakes, emphasizing the importance of ethical business practices. Belfort's transformation into a motivational speaker and author reflects the possibility of redemption and personal growth after facing legal and financial setbacks.

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Jordan Belfort (@wolfofwallst)

Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker, was involved in fraudulent activities related to penny stocks through his financial firm, Stratton Oakmont. The firm engaged in pump-and-dump schemes, defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. Belfort's involvement in such schemes led to his indictment for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

Stratton Oakmont, founded by Jordan Belfort, orchestrated pump-and-dump schemes as part of its fraudulent activities. The firm manipulated stock prices, leading to inflated values that benefited Belfort and his associates. This scheme defrauded investors, and Belfort eventually faced legal consequences, serving 22 months in prison and being ordered to pay $110 million in restitution.

Jordan Belfort's personal life has been marked by turmoil. He married Denise Lombardo in 1985, but their marriage ended in 1991. His second marriage, to British-born model Nadine Caridi in 1991, produced two children but ended in divorce in 2005 after allegations of domestic violence. Belfort later married Anne Koppe in 2008, divorced her in 2020, and began dating Cristina Invernizzi in 2021.

Jordan Belfort graduated from American University with a degree in biology. Initially planning to attend dental school, he changed his path after a discouraging speech by the dental school dean. Belfort's career took a different turn when he became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman before entering the world of finance.

Why is Jordan Belfort's net worth in minus?

Jordan Belfort's net worth is negative $100 million because of his involvement in fraudulent activities.

How accurate is Wolf Of Wall Street?

While "The Wolf of Wall Street" is based on Jordan Belfort's memoir, it takes creative liberties and exaggerates some events.

Did Jordan Belfort lose his money?

Yes, Jordan Belfort lost a significant amount of money due to legal consequences from his fraudulent activities. He was ordered to pay $110 million in restitution to his victims.

How did Jordan Belfort build his net worth?

Jordan Belfort initially built his net worth through fraudulent activities as the founder of Stratton Oakmont, a financial firm engaged in pump-and-dump scheme.

How has Jordan Belfort spent his money?

Jordan Belfort spent his money on a lavish lifestyle, including buying a white Ferrari with his first Wall Street bonus, sinking a 167-foot yacht in a Mediterranean storm, running up a $700,000 hotel bill, and engaging in extravagant activities.

How do people live with a negative net worth?

Individuals with a negative net worth, like Jordan Belfort, may face financial challenges, including difficulties in repaying debts and meeting financial obligations.

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