did jordan belfort own a 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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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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How accurate the wolf of wall street is to the true story.

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10 Scorsese Trademarks In The Wolf Of Wall Street

What happened to the real jordan belfort after the wolf of wall street, samuel l. jackson reveals his favorite pulp fiction line (& it doesn't contain any cuss words).

• The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a con artist who became famous for his fraudulent actions.
• The movie features memorable moments from Belfort's memoir, such as smuggling money into Swiss banks and sinking a yacht.
• However, several real-life figures have disputed the accuracy of the events depicted in the movie, suggesting that Belfort may have exaggerated or fabricated certain elements to suit his own narrative.

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of the infamous rise and fall of American stockbroker and criminal Jordan Belfort. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort in the movie, exploring his outrageous lifestyle, the various figures in his life, and the crimes that led to his downfall. The dramatized version of events depicted in the movie rings mostly true to the 2007 memoir of the same name. However, there are a lot of criticisms of how Belfort depicts himself and the truth, including from people featured in The Wolf of Wall Street.

The real Jordan Belfort of The Wolf of Wall Street story has been called a manipulative conman by many, so it's plausible that his memories and anecdotes of the events depicted in the movie and book are flawed and exaggerated to suit his allegedly inflated self-image. A number of real-life sources have spoken out about the inaccurate depiction of events in Belfort's story, hinting that Belfort's fraudulent sensibilities might have fooled Hollywood as they did on Wall Street.

From voiceover narration to dark humor, The Wolf of Wall Street exhibits many of the stylistic trademarks of its director Martin Scorsese.

The Wolf Of Wall Street Is Accurate To Jordan Belfort's Memoir

Various successes and failures depicted in the movie came from belfort's own admission.

There are several key details in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street that have been confirmed to be true based on Belfort's representation of himself and his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont in his memoir. According to the memoir, Belfort actually had his in-laws smuggle money into Switzerland banks, and Stratton Oakmont really helped make the luxury shoe line Steve Madden go public. The depiction of Matthew McConaughey's The Wolf of Wall Street character Mark Hanna is also based on Belfort's description, including Hanna's crude philosophy that the key to success was masturbation, cocaine, and sex workers.

Other details in the movie that were accurate to Belfort's memoir include: Donnie Azoff (inspired by the real-life Danny Porush, played by Jonah Hill in the movie) did marry his cousin before later divorcing her, Belfort sunk a yacht in Italy that was once owned by Coco Chanel, and he did crash his helicopter trying to land while he was high. Most notably, Belfort truly did serve a reduced prison sentence after informing on his friends . He did not try to save Porush (Azoff) from incriminating himself, as is displayed in the film. He informed on Porush in real life.

Wolf Of Wall Street's Accuracy Has Been Disputed By Key Figures

The depiction of belfort's crimes has become a controversial topic for the movie.

The Wolf of Wall Street has been criticized for how much it downplays the victims of Belfort's crimes, and it largely focuses on him ripping off the wealthy. According to the New York Times , Belfort targeted people from all types of financial backgrounds to buy his worthless stocks.

One California man used his home equity line of credit to invest with Belfort and has been impacted financially ever since (via New York Times ). The depiction of Belfort in Scorsese's movie as being some type of voice of an underprivileged class who was righteous in turning the system on its head and against itself has been debated since the film's 2013 release.

The real-life Donnie and Naomi also dispute a lot of what happens in both Jordan's memoir and Scorsese's movie. Nadine Macaluso, who is represented by the character Naomi, played by Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street , claimed that the movie was mostly accurate through Jordan's perspective, but not through an objective lens or with consideration to Nadine's point of view concerning their marriage. Nadine went on to get a Ph.D. and became an expert in relational trauma ( via The Independent ).

Danny Porush told Bustle that most of the film is completely fictitious, claiming that nobody in real life ever called Belfort the "Wolf" nor was there any throwing of little persons or chimpanzees that took place in the office.

As crazy as it seems, The Wolf of Wall Street was based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, who went on to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Why Wolf Of Wall Street's Accuracy (Or Otherwise) Is Part Of Its Legacy

Does the movie glorify jordan belfort.

The glorification of the debauchery surrounding Belfort's lifestyle and business practices is suitable to the mystique around whether or not the film depicts real events. This disparity in what is actually true in the movie and memoir versus what other real-life parties have to say about fabrications is part of its reckless and dysfunctional appeal.

Even Scorsese himself came under fire for celebrating the corrupt actions of the bonafide con artist in his film, which is meant to be seen as an overarching satire of capitalism rather than a stamp of approval for Belfort . Regardless of its degree of accuracy, The Wolf of Wall Street is a wildly entertaining exercise on limitless greed.

How Jordan Belfort's Life Has Been Changed By The Movie's Legacy

Belfort has become more famous thanks to scorsese's movie.

While Jordan Belfort and his past crimes helped him make a name for himself after his time in prison, Martin Scorsese’s movie has further raised the man's profile. In the years following the release of The Wolf of Wall Street , Belfort has become more well-known as a pop culture figure and he continues to parlay the success of the movie into his own personal success .

Jordan Belfort’s net worth in 2024 might be significantly less than what he was making at the peak of his criminal activity, but he is still amassing a fortune thanks largely to his career attending speaking engagements. Much like with the movie itself, it has been debated whether Belfort’s speeches were taking responsibility for his crimes or celebrating the debaucherous lifestyle he participated in. Since the release of the movie, Belfort has released two books, 2017’s Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success and 2023’s The Wolf of Investing.

In 2020, Belfort sued producers of The Wolf of Wall Street for fraud, asking for $300 million in compensation. Belfort maintained that the producers of the company Red Granite were involved in a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme and used stolen money to buy the movie rights to his story. As of the filing of the lawsuit in 2020, there has been no news on the case.

Source: The New York Times , Time , The Independent , Bustle

The Wolf of Wall Street

Directed by Martin Scorcese, The Wolf of Wall Street tells the true story of stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), based on his memoir of the same name. It chronicles the rise of Belfort and the subsequent corruption of his firm as he engages in a wide assortment of criminal acts while amassing a staggering fortune. Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and Kyle Chandler also star alongside DiCaprio.

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Meet the Real Wolf of Wall Street Superyacht Built for Coco Chanel

The yachting disaster is one of the most dramatic scenes in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street , and like many of the tales in the Leonardo DiCaprio flick, it’s based on a true story. In real life, predatory tycoon Jordan Belfort bought a yacht in 1993 called Big Eagle and renamed her Nadine , after his English-born second wife. The vessel had been built in 1961 by Witsen & Vis in Holland for fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had undergone many transformations by the time Belfort got his mitts on it. Originally 121 feet long, in the 1970s she was extended by nearly 15 feet, and in 1988 she was cut in half and had another 29-foot section grafted on, finally totaling 167 feet.

The luxury yacht used in Scorsese’s film actually bears little resemblance to the  Nadine , being a far more modern vessel. The director hired the 148-foot  Lady M , built by Intermarine Savannah in 2002 and refit in 2011, for filming. It features luxury accommodations for 10 guests, and a marble and granite interior with gold accents.

In Coco Chanel’s day the yacht was mainly used to cruise from Monaco to Deauville for the summer horse racing season. The real  Nadine  sank in 1997 during a storm off the east coast of Sardinia while crossing from Porto Cervo to Capri, much as the movie depicts. Belfort has said that his insistence on sailing in a storm caused the yacht to capsize. Luckily, everyone on board at the time was rescued by the Italian coast guard. 

Jared Paul Stern

Jared Paul Stern, JustLuxe's Editor-at-Large, is the Executive Editor of Maxim magazine and has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the New York Times' T magazine, GQ, WWD, Vogue, New York magazine, Details, Hamptons magazine, Playboy, BlackBook, the New York Post, Man of the World, and Bergdorf Goodman magazine among others. The founding editor of the Page Six magazine, he has al... (Read More)

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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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The Wolf of Wall Street: History vs. Hollywood

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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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.

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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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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 & Kris Farrow

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 February 2024 was an estimated $115 million, according to  data  from  caknowledge . However, Medium   estimates it  at between $100 million and $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 largest stock holding

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.

Disclaimer : The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.

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 between $100 and $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​.

Is Jordan Belfort a real person?

Yes, Jordan Belfort is a real person. He is a former stockbroker and motivational speaker, best known for his involvement in financial crimes in the 1990s and for his memoir “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which was later adapted into a film.

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The True Story Behind 'The Wolf of Wall Street'

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The Big Picture

• The Wolf of Wall Street accurately reflects the true story of Jordan Belfort's illegal activities and debaucherous lifestyle on Wall Street.
• The film's depiction of Jordan Belfort's drug use, involvement with sex workers, and criminality is mostly accurate, with some embellishments for dramatic effect.
• Several characters in the film, including Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and Steve Madden (Jake Hoffman), are based on real people who were involved in Belfort's schemes and faced legal consequences.

Martin Scorsese ’s The Wolf of Wall Street is a darkly comedic portrayal of unrestrained Wall Street hedonism and greed that ranks among the maestro’s greatest works of the last decade. Scorsese clearly excels at translating true stories into film, as seen with his newest release, Killers of the Flower Moon . Like all narrative films based on true stories, The Wolf of Wall Street takes a few liberties with Jordan Belfort’s life and crimes, such as using Jonah Hill ’s Donnie Azoff character as a stand-in for multiple real-life friends of Belfort’s.

Overall, though, the film is remarkably accurate and certainly conveys the underlying truths of Belfort’s 2007 memoir, which was the primary source material for the film . Although the film is three hours long , some details and interesting subplots were unable to make the final cut. As we explore the real-life stories of some of the film’s principal characters, we’ll see where Scorsese’s film diverted from the truth, and we’ll understand the additional context that helps add complexity to this remarkable, hilarious, and tragic story.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.

Who Is the Real Jordan Belfort?

The overall story of Jordan Belfort ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) and his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, as presented in Scorsese’s film , is true to life. Belfort was violating probably hundreds of laws at any given time, most of which involved defrauding his shareholders and manipulating the stock of dozens of companies. He recruited young, mostly working-class kids from Long Island to work at Stratton and indoctrinated them into what he repeatedly calls, in his 2007 memoir, a “cult.” They were taught to worship at the altar of money and to con their clients into buying worthless stock. While all this was happening in his professional life, Belfort’s personal life was plagued by addictions to numerous illegal substances, primarily cocaine and Quaaludes. He cheated on his first wife with a woman nicknamed “The Duchess of Bay Ridge,” played by Margot Robbie in the film . He later married the Duchess, and they had a tumultuous relationship filled with deceit and abuse that ended in divorce. Eventually, Belfort was caught by the FBI and after serving 22 months in federal prison , became a writer and motivational speaker. His first memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street , was published in 2007.

Steven Spielberg Helped Martin Scorsese Direct This 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Scene

Steven Spielberg’s set visit lasted longer than expected!

Perhaps the biggest surprise to be found in Belfort’s memoir is that most of what is depicted in the film is true, at least according to Belfort’s best recollection. The copious amounts of drugs, the proliferation of sex workers, and rampant criminality are all depicted pretty accurately . Many of the more outrageous scenes in the film, such as when a female employee has her head shaved for $10,000, are true. Stratton Oakmont was notoriously depraved, but much of that depravity was inspired by existing financial institutions, some of them prestigious, others far less so. In other words, Belfort didn’t invent the practice of defrauding shareholders while snorting countless lines of cocaine, but he did engage in these illegal activities more frequently and ostentatiously than most.

Not All of 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Is Accurate, Though

One aspect of the film that accurately conveys Belfort’s mindset and perspective is its frequent use of fourth-wall-breaking narrations , in which Belfort speaks directly to the camera/audience . In his book, Belfort writes, “It was as if my life was a stage, and the Wolf of Wall Street was performing for the benefit of some imaginary audience.” Of course, that audience turned out to be real. Perhaps it was this idea of playing a character that led Belfort to dub himself the “Wolf of Wall Street.” There is scant evidence that anyone referred to him by that moniker until after the publication of his book. Belfort makes it seem throughout his memoir that people constantly called him “The Wolf” but that appears to be, at best, a creative embellishment.

In an effort to perhaps make Belfort seem a bit less crazed than his on-screen persona, it should be mentioned that despite the film citing “back pain” in air quotes as a reason for his drug habit, Belfort really did have constant back issues that required multiple surgeries. He would often use his health problems as a partial excuse for abusing various substances, but the film downplays his reliance on pharmaceuticals to alleviate his chronic pain . Belfort also wasn’t reckless or dumb enough to attempt to bribe an FBI agent, as depicted in the film. Belfort never even interacted with the FBI agent pursuing him until he was arrested.

One especially dramatic moment in Scorsese's unhinged biopic that is only partially true is when Belfort gives a speech to his employees, informing them that he is stepping down as leader and handing over the reins to Jonah Hill’s character Donnie. Then, mid-speech, he decides to reverse course and screams “ I’m not fucking leaving!” to rapturous applause. In reality, Belfort did step down but heavily implied in his speech that he would still be running Stratton from the sidelines by giving “advice” to Donnie’s real-life counterpart. Of course, once Belfort relinquished control, Stratton went on a downward spiral from which it would never recover.

Jonah Hill's Donnie Azoff Is Based on Danny Porush

Donnie Azoff is based on a real person named Danny Porush, who was Belfort’s right-hand man at Stratton and apparently an out-of-control Quaalude addict. Porush was introduced to Belfort through his wife. He was not, as the film depicts, a children’s furniture salesman who quit his job to work for Belfort when he saw one of Belfort’s pay stubs. In an interview with Mother Jones , Porush denied that several events depicted in the film ever happened, including the infamous dwarf-tossing scene (an idea that was seemingly shot down by Belfort for being too outrageous). He also confirmed to Mother Jones that nobody at the firm ever actually referred to Belfort as “The Wolf” or “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Although the film depicts Donnie as being resuscitated by Belfort after choking on food while under the influence of Quaaludes, it was actually another friend of Belfort’s whose life was saved when Belfort performed CPR on him. Porush similarly was not aboard Belfort’s yacht when it capsized and sank during a storm (that was another group of friends, all of whom were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard). Porush did, however, admit to eating an employee’s goldfish in order to send a message. Amazingly, it’s also true that Porush married his first cousin and brought Belfort to a crack den. He spent 20 months in prison after the FBI unraveled Stratton’s schemes .

'The Wolf of Wall Street's Steve Madden Turned Criminal

Steve Madden ( Jake Hoffman ), the famous shoe designer, was childhood friends with Danny Porush and was roped into his old friend’s lawlessness ( Madden would end up being sentenced to 41 months in prison ). While Madden has a relatively quick cameo in the film, he looms much larger in Belfort’s memoir. Madden was actually personally and professionally closer to Belfort than he was to Porush. According to Belfort, Madden even offered to co-run his shoe company with Belfort , with Madden focusing on designing shoes and Belfort focusing on the manufacturing and distribution side of the business. After leaving Stratton, Belfort worked for Madden for a while until their relationship soured. Then the FBI took them both down. Madden ultimately was convicted of stock manipulation, money laundering, and securities fraud.

Who Is Chester Ming's Real-Life Counterpart?

The merry band of misfits and former weed dealers that make up the core Stratton staff are mostly based on real people, but their exact work histories and relationships to Belfort are either simplified or omitted from the film. The Chester Ming ( Kenneth Choi ) character, for example, is based on a real person named Victor Wang , who had a much more interesting role to play in Belfort’s memoir than in the film . Victor wanted to start his own firm and was thus viewed with suspicion by Belfort. It turns out the suspicion was justified. Within days of forming his own business, Victor began spreading rumors that Stratton was on the verge of collapse. He later started poaching Stratton stockbrokers who preferred to work at Victor’s firm in Manhattan over Belfort’s firm on Long Island . Unbeknownst to Victor, Belfort was “waging a secret war” against him the whole time, which resulted in Victor’s new firm going belly up. It's also true that Victor assaulted Belfort’s butler and dangled him out of a window. Victor ended up being sentenced to eight years in prison.

Bo Dietl Appears in 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' 'The Irishman,' & 'Goodfellas'

Bo Dietl is a private investigator and former New York mayoral candidate with a long history of popping up in Scorsese’s films. Dietl appeared in Goodfellas as the detective who arrested Henry Hill and was cast in a memorable supporting role in The Irishman . Believe it or not, Dietl actually knew Belfort and berated him for plotting a scheme to bug the FBI. Dietl also introduced Belfort to an FBI agent, dug up some information about the FBI’s investigation into Stratton Oakmont, and helped keep alleged Mob members and other troublemakers from causing any problems at Belfort’s firm. Dietl ended up playing himself in The Wolf of Wall Street .

Tommy Chong Was Cellmates With Jordan Belfort in Prison

Perhaps the oddest fact concerning The Wolf of Wall Street is that Belfort’s cellmate in prison was none other than Tommy Chong , the legendary stoner and actor. In an interview with New York Magazine , Belfort credited Chong with inspiring him to write a memoir. Chong apparently found Belfort to be endlessly entertaining. “The Quaalude stories are my favorite,” Chong told New York Magazine .

The Wolf of Wall Street is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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Wall Street Crime And Punishment: Jordan Belfort, The Boiler Room Wolf

Does crime pay?

Wall Street Crime and Punishment is a weekly series by Benzinga's Phil Hall chronicling the bankers, brokers and financial ne’er-do-wells whose ambition and greed take them in the wrong direction.

“Making money is so easy,” said Jordan Belfort in a 2013 interview with New York magazine. “It really is. It’s not hard to do.”

Belfort’s breezy pronouncement came as part of the publicity drumming for the release of Martin Scorsese’s film version of Belfort’s autobiography “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort.

The New York article also featured input from Greg Coleman, the FBI special agent responsible for Belfort’s arrest for fraud and stock market manipulation. From Coleman’s perspective, Belfort wasn't worthy of movie star-level worship.

“From a moral perspective, he was a reprehensible human being,” Coleman said about Belfort. “Admiration would be the wrong word, but from the perspective of manipulating the market, he’s one of the best there is.”

A Kick In The Teeth: A native of New York City, Belfort was born in 1962 in the Bronx and raised in the Bayside section of Queens. Both of his parents were accountants who stressed the value of education and maturity.

Belfort received a degree in biology from American University and saw his career path in dentistry. He made money to pursue his dental studies by selling Italian ices on a beach in Queens and enrolled in the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.

He dropped out after the first day of studies when the dean of the school made the astonishing pronouncement: “The golden age of dentistry is over. If you're here simply because you're looking to make a lot of money, you're in the wrong place."

But what was the right career for making money?

Belfort returned from his day in dental school and found work as a door-to-door salesman in Long Island, where he sold meat and seafood. He started to grow a business based on this endeavor, but the effort failed to click and he wound up filing for bankruptcy by the time he was 25.

“I was pretty talented,” he would later recall about this unsuccessful venture. “But the margins were too small.”

However, a family friend pointed him to a position as a stockbroker broker trainee with the Manhattan-based firm L.F. Rothschild, but he lost that position when the firm experienced financial difficulty after the 1987 stock market crash.

He took positions with other firms including D.H. Blair and  F.D. Roberts Securities and Investors Center  — the latter was a penny stock brokerage shut down in 1989 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) one year after Belfort joined its staff.

Discouraged at working for others in unstable environments, Belfort decided to turn entrepreneur and create his own financial operations, and that’s when the would-be dentist started his career lycanthropy into becoming the Wolf of Wall Street.

The Kodak Pitch: In 1989, the 27-year-old Belfort teamed with 23-year-old Kenneth Greene, a fellow Investors Center employee who previously drove one of Belfort’s trucks during his meat selling days.

The pair opened their own brokerage in a spare office in a Queens car dealership and then arranged to set up a franchise of Stratton Securities, a small broker-dealer operation.

The duo seemed to strike gold quickly. Within five months of starting their franchise, they accumulated $250,000 and were able to buy Stratton Securities for themselves, renaming it Stratton Oakmont and establishing an operations center in Lake Success, a Long Island town which was best known as the first site of the United Nations headquarters before its Manhattan campus was constructed.

By 1991, Stratton Oakmont generated $30 million in commissions from a 150-person workforce. Many of his team members were twentysomethings from blue-collar backgrounds eager to make a maximum amount of money in a minimal amount of time.

Belfort also enjoyed his first brush with fame in 1991 via a profile in Forbes that harshly displayed his virtues and vices. On the plus side, the Forbes coverage offered insight into Belfort’s instruction on teaching his eager young employees the art of cold-calling potential investors.

Using a technique he dubbed the “Kodak pitch,” Belfort instructed his brokers to begin their telephone spiel with a blue-chip stock such as Eastman Kodak (NYSE:KODK) before doing a hard-sell on obscure penny stocks.

Belfort also insisted that his brokers refuse to take no for an answer, offering them the mantra “Whip their necks off, don't let ‘em off the phone.”

Belfort’s team took his lessons to heart: Forbes reported they were, on average, earning $85,000 a year.

Yet Forbes also highlighted Stratton Oakmont’s loosey-goosey approach to ethical operations, noting that the SEC began investigating the brokerage in its first year of operations over questionable sales and trading practices. Indeed, the magazine detailed several examples of pump-and-dump efforts by the Stratton Oakmont team that drove up prices on penny stock shares before selling them at their artificially inflated peak.

Forbes diplomatically declined to identify Stratton Oakmont as a “boiler room,” but it was obvious what was taking place.

Noting these antics, along with the SEC’s receipt of customer complaints, Forbes dubbed Belfort as “a kind of twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers.” Belfort defended his actions, claiming, “We contact high-net-worth investors. I couldn't live with myself if I was calling people who make $50,000 a year, and I'm taking their child's tuition money.”

Also cited in his media debut was Belfort’s automobile, a $175,000 Ferrari Testarossa. This lavish hedonism was the start of a trend that would shape and then disfigure Belfort’s life.

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Ain’t We Got Fun? Besides the SEC, Stratton Oakmont had been under watch by the National Association of Securities Dealers , the forerunner of today’s Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, right after its founding. Yet Stratton Oakmont was not expelled from the NASD until 1996 and Belfort was not indicted for securities fraud until 1999.

In the years between his Forbes profile and his arrest, Belfort engaged an extravagant form of slow-motion, self-immolation fueled by drug addictions and financed by his pump-and-dump business.

“I suffered from a disease called ‘more,’ he would lament in retrospect. “No matter how much I had, I wanted more. You don't lose your ethics all at once. It happens very slowly and, almost imperceptibly, you know you're doing things right and one day you step over the line.”

Well, Belfort certainly went very much over that proverbial line. Financially, he was far ahead of the average American — at the peak of his earning power, he pocketed $50 million per year.

Belfort’s wealth enabled him to purchase luxury residences and expensive toys that he had a strange habit of destroying, such as a luxury yacht once belonging to iconic designer Coco Chanel which he sank in a storm off the Sardinian coast in 1996; a Mercedes he totaled while driving high on quaaludes; and a helicopter that he somehow crash-landed on the front lawn of one of his mansions.

The damage he inflicted on his property was mirrored by the insanity his drug habit inflicted on his body. “It was just like coke, coke, coke all day and I was like, ‘Screw you I don't have a problem,’” he would recall, adding, “I was like Al Pacino in ‘Scarface’ with a pile of cocaine. That's what my life had descended to.”

The Inevitable Downfall: Belfort’s luck began to slowly fray by 1994 when he reached an agreement with the SEC that required a lifetime ban from the securities industry. But he circumvented the prohibition by continuing to conduct business through Danny Porush, his right-hand man at Stratton Oakmont.

Belfort also played fast with the rules in arranging the 1993 initial public offering for childhood friend Steve Madden’s shoe company. Madden would become entangled in Belfort’s schemes, including a deal to secretly buy and sell stock in Stratton deals on behalf of Porush, who was legally limited in trading stocks in those companies, and a secret arrangement to provide Belfort with a majority stake in his company despite the NASD’s severe restrictions on Belfort’s actions.

Despite evidence of finance chicanery, Belfort’s downfall began with the arrest of his drug dealer, a martial artist named Todd Garrett, who was caught with $200,000 in cash from Belfort and Porush destined to be secretly transported to Switzerland. One year later, a French private banker who worked for a Swiss bank was arrested in Miami as part of a money-laundering scheme. In exchange for a lighter prison sentence, he identified his clients and cited Belfort and Porush.

On Sept. 2, 1998, Belfort was arrested for conspiracy to commit money laundering and securities fraud that resulted in 1,513 investors being swindled out of more than $200 million. After a week in custody, Belfort agreed to cut a deal with law enforcement agencies and agreed to wear a wire and record conversations with business associates who were under investigation.

Belfort’s work as an informant brought dozens of financial professionals and lawyers into prison, but he was not spared from incarceration. Although sentenced to four years in prison in 2003, he only served a 22-month sentence. He was also ordered to pay a $110 million fine.

A Stellar Encore: While serving his prison sentence, Belfort shared a cell with comedian Tommy Chong, who was incarcerated on drug-related charges. Chong encouraged Belfort to write his autobiography. After his release from prison in April 2006, his memoir “The Wolf of Wall Street” was acquired by Random House for $500,000 and became a critically acclaimed best-seller upon its 2007 publication. A second book, “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” was published in 2009.

The film version of “The Wolf of Wall Street” brought Belfort a new degree of pop culture recognition and helped in his post-prison career as a motivational speaker.

These years have not been without controversy. Prosecutors have accused him of failing to compensate the victims of his crimes and pocketing lucrative speaking fees instead of channeling them to his restitution requirements. But the federal government overplayed its hand by accusing him of fleeing to Australia to hide his wealth and avoid paying taxes — Belfort received a public apology for the release of that misinformation.

Belfort filed a $300 million lawsuit against Red Granite, the production company that purchased the film rights to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” after it was exposed that the deal was financed with questionable funds from Malaysia. Belfort insisted he would never have transacted with the company if he was aware of the dirty money that financed its operations.

Last month, Belfort posted a photo on his Facebook page that found him happily engaged in a poker game on a yacht’s casino table while a half-dozen cuties in bathing suits holding champagne glasses posed behind him. The message that accompanied the photo said, “If you want to be rich, never give up... If you have persistence, you will come out ahead of most people... When you do something, you might fail... Do it differently each time... and one day, you will do it right. Failure is your friend.”

For ex-FBI agent Greg Coleman, Belfort’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of his own making represented the worst possible conclusion. Coleman considered Belfort’s ability to profit from his swindling and sourly told New York magazine ahead of “The Wolf of Wall Street” film premiere, "Crime pays."

Photo: Jordan Belfort in a screenshot from his YouTube show “The Wolf’s Den."

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Jordan Belfort

Nicknamed "the Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort made millions in the 1990s through his investment company, Stratton Oakmont. His memoir is the basis for the 2013 Martin Scorsese film 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Who Is Jordan Belfort?

Jordan Belfort had a natural talent as a salesman at an early age, operating a meat and seafood business in the 1980s. After that company went bust, Belfort began selling stocks in 1987. He was running his own investment operation, Stratton Oakmont, by 1989. The company made millions illegally, defrauding its investors. The Securities Exchange Commission began efforts to stop the company's errant ways in 1992. In 1999, Belfort pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering. He was sentenced in 2003 to four years in prison but only served 22 months. Belfort published his first memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street , in 2008. The following year, he released Catching the Wolf of Wall Street .

Early Life and Career

Born on July 9, 1962, in Queens, New York, Jordan Ross Belfort became infamous for his role in swindling millions of dollars from investors in the 1990s through his investment firm, Stratton Oakmont. The son of an accountant, Belfort grew up in a modest apartment in Queens. A natural salesman, he eventually launched a business selling meat and seafood, but the company soon went belly up.

In 1987, Belfort put his sales skills to use in a different arena. He started working for a brokerage firm, learning in the ins and outs of being a stockbroker. Two years later, Belfort was operating his own trading company, Stratton Oakmont.

'The Wolf of Wall Street'

With his partner, Danny Porush, Belfort raked in cash using a "pump and dump" scheme. His brokers pushed stocks onto their unsuspecting clients, which helped inflate the stocks' prices, then the company would sell off its own holdings in these stocks at a great profit.

Awash with cash, Belfort lived the high life. He spent lavishly, buying a mansion, sports cars and other expensive toys. He also developed a serious drug habit, becoming especially fond of Quaaludes. Belfort was involved in several accidents due to his drug use, including crashing his helicopter into his own yard and sinking his yacht—which once belonged to designer Coco Chanel—while under the influence. His addiction also contributed to the break-up of his second marriage.

Belfort encouraged reckless behavior in his employees, as well. Substance abuse, sex and horseplay were the norm at Stratton Oakmont's Long Island, New York, offices. An assistant at the firm was once paid $5,000 to allow some of the company's traders to shave her head. The employees were also urged to live by the motto, "Don't hang up until the customer buys or dies." Their hard-sell tactics paid off in the short term. As Belfort told the New York Post , "It's easier to get rich quick when you don't follow the rules."

Trouble With the Law

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sought to end Stratton Oakmont's shady stock operation in 1992, claiming that the company had defrauded investors and manipulated stock prices. Two years later, Belfort found himself out of the brokerage business. Stratton Oakmont had reached a settlement with the SEC, which included a lifelong ban from working in the securities industry for Belfort and a fine for the company.

More legal woes followed for Belfort and his company. The National Association of Securities Dealers ejected Stratton Oakmont from its association in 1996, and the company was ordered to be liquidated to pay off its numerous fines and settlements the following year. In 1999, Belfort pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering. He cooperated with authorities in an effort to shorten his prison sentence.

In 2003, Belfort was sentenced to four years in prison and personally fined $110 million. He served 22 months in jail, where he developed an interest in writing. Comedian Tommy Chong, one of Belfort's cellmates during this time, encouraged the former stockbroker to write about his experiences.

Life After Prison

In 2008, Belfort published his memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street , using one of his nicknames as the title. The book explored his meteoric rise and explosive crash in the financial world. The following year, Belfort released a second memoir, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street , which detailed his life after his arrest. In 2013, a film adaptation of The Wolf of Wall Street , directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, hit the big screen.

Belfort operates his own company, which provides sales training and markets Straight Line training programs aimed at building wealth and also does motivational speaking. Belfort claims to have straightened up his act. In an interview with the Daily Mail , he explained, "I'm a wolf who became a more benevolent character." Belfort has reportedly paid $14 million of the $110 million fine against him.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1962
• Birth date: July 9, 1962
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: Queens
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Nicknamed "the Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort made millions in the 1990s through his investment company, Stratton Oakmont. His memoir is the basis for the 2013 Martin Scorsese film 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Crime and Terrorism
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• American University
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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Jordan Belfort Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• I know some people might say, 'He is an evil guy, rotten to the core, I hope he burns at the stake.' But people are entitled to redeem themselves. I made some terrible mistakes. But a leopard can change his spots.
• I'm a wolf who became a more benevolent character.
• It's easier to get rich quick when you don't follow the rules.

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

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Jordan Belfort: The real Wolf of Wall Street and the men who brought him down

Jordan belfort scammed investors out of $200m. as martin scorsese and leonardo dicaprio bring his outrageous life to the big screen, nick harding gets the real inside story, article bookmarked.

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The pitch could have been barked by any of the "motivational-training" snake-oil salesmen who ply their wares in the corporate sector. But the man behind this particular "sales and persuasion" one-day course in Australia last year thought himself special enough to demand a US$5,000 entrance fee.

The inflated price tag may have been something to do with the quality of the after-dinner anecdotes, as the man hosting the event was Jordan Belfort - a 51-year-old American ex-con who is among the most infamous crooked businessmen in recent history. In the 1990s, Belfort was reputed to have been worth £60m, earning £600,000 a week. He owned a sprawling estate in the Hamptons, a fleet of supercars and a 167ft yacht which once belonged to Coco Chanel and which he sank in the Mediterranean. He had a supermodel wife and a drug and alcohol habit. He employed an army of young salespeople who aggressively sold stocks in questionable companies to unwitting investors. His workers were rewarded with massive bonuses and parties where prostitutes and dwarf-throwing competitions were provided as entertainment.

Today, the disgraced swindler (a term Belfort hates) has reinvented himself as a reputable businessman, with clients such as Delta and Virgin Airlines. Much to his delight, he's also being played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's new film, The Wolf of Wall Street, which portrays the lavish, drug-fuelled and illegal antics at Belfort's now-defunct East Coast stocks and shares brokerage Stratton Oakmont.

But, says Belfort, he's not letting all that glitz go to his head - he is a new man since his 2004 conviction for defrauding clients of more than $200m. "We are not the mistakes of our past," he recently said. "We're the resources and capabilities that we glean from our past. It chokes me up a little when I think about it. I was a bad guy. And it wasn't like I started that way. You can get desensitised to your own actions, it's easy on Wall Street... I shouldn't really care what people think of me. I know I'm good. But of course I do care."

Former Assistant US Attorney Joel Cohen, who helped put Belfort behind bars, couldn't agree less. "If he is trying to create the impression that he is basically an honest guy who stepped over the line a bit, that is dead wrong. This is a guy who woke up every day, seven days a week for many years, and said, What crimes can I commit today? He was looking to rip people off on a daily basis."

The yacht, the cars, the supermodel wife and the fortune have all gone. The father of three now lives in a modest three-bedroom house in a relatively inexpensive LA suburb. At his seminars, attendees are taught a technique he calls "Straight Line" selling; a set of pre-determined steps from first contact to closing a deal. It is, he has said, roughly the same system he taught his employees to use when pressuring people to buy shares in the useless firms he once promoted. He's paid around $30,000 an hour for his wisdom.

He makes a very good living, then - but his income is a fraction of the vast wealth he enjoyed, and a court order requires him to pay 50 per cent of his earnings into a compensation fund for his thousands of victims. Nevertheless, the sale of the film rights to Belfort's two memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, are estimated to have earnt him $2m. The film is up for a Golden Globe (Best Comedy) tonight and there is talk of several Oscar nominations when they are announced on Thursday.

Over the festive period, American film-goers flocked to see DiCaprio as Belfort marching hookers on to the office floor, receiving the attentions of a young lady at the wheel of his Ferrari and tearing up a sofa to find a stash of cocaine. Predictably, there has been outrage that the film glorifies these exploits. All of which, one imagines, gave Belfort his best Christmas in years - as he wrote on his blog at the end of last month: "Visit the theater and watch DiCaprio portray me as I was and remember the man I have become."

And what has Belfort, whose representatives did not answer our request for comments, become in the seven years since his release?

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By all accounts a natural raconteur, Belfort delights in recounting stories of drug-fuelled excess, and distances himself from other disgraced businessmen. He describes Bernie Madoff, the US financier convicted in 2009 of defrauding investors of $65bn, as a "complete crook who took people’s money", and defends his own actions by claiming 95 per cent of his business dealings "were totally legit".

Belfort also gives the impression that he was seduced by the financial environment of the time. The market of the early 1990s made a lot of people a lot of money and, by Belfort's reckoning, his endeavours cost no one more than they could afford. "I don’t like to come off like what I did was not wrong. But I wasn't dealing with poor people. I was dealing with very rich people. No one lost their life savings," he argues.

This revisionism, however, is not the account Belfort gave to court when he pleaded guilty to charges of international securities fraud and money-laundering in 1999. Facing 20 to 30 years in jail, he agreed to gather evidence against his friends and colleagues in a year-long undercover operation in exchange for a lighter sentence.

It is also not an account that the two key investigators behind his downfall recognise.

FBI Special Agent Greg Coleman began investigating Belfort in 1992. "I have run into individuals who were bad people doing bad things and I've run into ones who were basically good people who made a mistake and will never do it again," says Coleman. "Belfort was really bad. And while there is some attempt on his part to clean up and change, I think he is still a work in progress. There were a lot of victims who could ill afford to lose that kind of money."

Joel Cohen concurs. "My sense is that he is only half-repentant, for whatever reason - whether he thinks it sells books and movies better. He says he is sorry to his victims but on the same token he tells the world that only 5 per cent of his behaviour was criminal."

Both have mixed feelings about the movie. Says Cohen, "It's not going to be about his prosecution. It will be about his rise and dwarves being thrown out of cannons. I fear it is being marketed as a general comment of all that ails society, when in fact it is a sordid story about bad people who do not represent society at all."

While the debauchery depicted in the film is true, plenty of the Belfort story is myth. His supposed links to the mafia have never been proven and Stratton Oakmont - a name chosen as it k sounded British and reputable - was never a Wall Street firm: the Wolf of Wall Street operated from a shopping mall in suburban Long Island.

Stratton Oakmont was a so-called "boiler room"; ostensibly a call centre where young workers rang investors and random names from the telephone directory, pushing them to buy shares in companies it financed and floated on the stock exchange (in a process called Initial Public Offerings or IPOs). Stratton Oakmont practised a technique called "pump and dump": investors were first hooked with the promise of shares in stable companies and then persuaded to invest in Stratton’s IPOs. The greater the number of people who invested, the higher the share prices rose. Illegally, Belfort and a group of insiders he tipped off also bought shares in these businesses. When the prices peaked, Belfort tipped off his cohorts to sell. They all made fortunes while the share prices plummeted, leaving everyone else with worthless stocks.

Belfort says he "exited the womb an entrepreneur". At 16, he sold ice lollies, bagels and trinkets on the beach at Long Island and with the money he made he put himself through college. He enrolled in dental school, but walked out on the first day when the Dean told the new intake that they were in the wrong profession if they wanted to make money. Instead, he began selling meat off the back of lorries. He started his own firm, but it went bankrupt, owing $24,000, when he was 24. Desperate for a job, Belfort started at the bottom in a Wall Street trading firm working as a connector, making calls to potential investors whom he would patch through to the brokers. "I was pond scum."

When he finally passed his traders' exams, he began his stockbroking career on 19 October 1987: Black Wednesday, when the market plummeted 508 points in a day. The company he worked for closed, but the setback only fuelled his desire. In 1989, he set up Stratton Oakmont.

When Cohen and Coleman started investigating the firm in 1992, the brokerage was already the subject of a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As a result, the company was ordered to pay a $2.5m fine and Belfort and his partners, Daniel Porush (played by Jonah Hill in the film) and Kenneth Greene agreed to $100,000 fines apiece. None of the three admitted or denied the SEC's allegations and the penalty was peanuts compared to what the firm and its employees and bosses were earning.

Coleman and Cohen spent the following years gradually digging away to collect evidence - but the loyalty Belfort engendered in his well-paid staff made it an almost impossible task.

The breakthrough came when Belfort became desperate and began smuggling money out of the country. The funds ended up in Swiss bank accounts, where it was laundered - and money-laundering was Coleman's area of expertise.

"The crowbar we used to open them up was the tax evasion," he explains. "We were able to get some witnesses who were helping them smuggle the money to provide information about that. We used that to go to the Swiss authorities to get them to provide information about the bankers Belfort was using in Geneva. It took time because bank secrecy in Switzerland was still very robust and we had to convince the authorities that this sort of behaviour was something they should provide information to us about. Eventually we got Belfort’s Swiss banker to co-operate."

With concrete evidence, both Belfort and Porush were arrested in September 1998 and persuaded to work with the investigation. Belfort was required to post $10m security as a condition of his bail. (The security took the form of jewels which he had delivered to the courthouse in an armoured car accompanied by armed guards.) The skills that made Belfort such a good conman also made him an effective government mole: the evidence he collected was used in scores of other prosecutions.

Belfort eventually pleaded guilty. The case took years to come to trial and in 2004 he was convicted, sentenced to four years, and jailed, serving 22 months in all. He reported to a federal prison camp in California, where he shared a cell with the comedian Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame, who was serving a nine-month sentence for selling drug paraphernalia.

Chong was working on a book; after hearing Belfort's outlandish tales, he persuaded his cell-mate to put pen to paper as well. On his release in 2006, Belfort realised there was an appetite for his life story and started pitching his manuscript. Publisher Random House gave him a $1m advance. Within a year of his release, The Wolf of Wall Street was on sale.

Coleman still keeps in contact with his former prey "as a subtle reminder that I am still watching", and the FBI man admits he is curious about the film. Asked to consult on the plot, he's played by actor Kyle Chandler (who recently appeared in Argo and Zero Dark Thirty). "I want to see how I am portrayed," he says. "I hope it's done realistically, rather than the stereotypical FBI guy in a suit." As for Cohen, "I don’t think Jordan loves me. In his book, his caricature of me is unfair. He describes me as 'the bastard' about 100 times."

Belfort has realised that infamy can be lucrative. However, for the man who once boasted he made $13m in one day, crime will not necessarily pay in the end. According to a recent letter from prosecutors sent to the judge overseeing his compensation agreement, so far Belfort has paid $11.6m of the required $110.4m into the fund. The letter suggests he has been withholding payments and that he is in default of his agreement. Belfort disputes this and is currently in talks with the federal courts to resolve the situation. Whatever the outcome, the Wolf still has a long way to go before he pays his debt to society. 1

'The Wolf of Wall Street' (18) is out on Friday

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