Jordan Ross Belfort is an American author, motivational speaker, and former stockbroker. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation and running a boiler room as part of a penny-stock scam. Belfort spent 22 months in prison as part of an agreement under which he gave testimony against numerous partners and subordinates in his fraud scheme. He published the memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, which was adapted into a film and released in 2013.
Belfort was born in 1962 in the Bronx[3] borough of New York City to a Jewish family. His parents Leah and Max Belfort are both accountants. He was raised in Bayside, Queens. Between completing high school and starting college, Belfort and his close childhood friend Elliot Loewenstern earned $20,000 selling Italian ice from styrofoam coolers to people at a local beach. Belfort went on to graduate from American University with a degree in biology. Belfort planned on using the money earned with Loewenstern to pay for dental school, and he enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, the oldest dental school in the United States; however, he left after the dean of the school said to him on his first day at the college: "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.
Belfort became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman on Long Island, New York. He claims in interviews and his memoirs that the business was an initial success; he grew his meat-selling business to employ several workers and sold 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of beef and fish a week. However, the business ultimately failed, as he filed for bankruptcy at 25. According to his memoirs and interviews, a family friend helped him find a job as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild. Belfort says he was laid off after that firm experienced financial difficulties related to the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987.
Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont as a franchise of Stratton Securities, then later bought out the original founder. Stratton Oakmont functioned as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with the "pump and dump" type of stock sales. During his years at Stratton, Belfort developed a lifestyle that consisted of lavish parties and intensive recreational use of drugs, especially methaqualone—sold to him under the brand name "Quaalude"—that resulted in an addiction.Stratton Oakmont at one point employed over 1,000 stock brokers and was involved in stock issues totaling more than US$1 billion, including being behind the initial public offering for footwear company Steve Madden Ltd. The firm was targeted by law enforcement officials throughout nearly its entire history, and its notoriety inspired the film Boiler Room (2000),\ as well as the 2013 biopic The Wolf of Wall Street.
The National Association of Securities Dealers (now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) began pursuing disciplinary actions against Stratton Oakmont in 1989, culminating in its permanent shutdown in 1996. Belfort was then indicted for securities fraud and money laundering.
Belfort served 22 months of a four-year sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, California in exchange for a plea deal with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the pump-and-dump scams which he ran that led to investor losses of approximately US$200 million. Belfort was ordered to pay back $110.4 million that he swindled from stock buyers. Belfort shared a cell with Tommy Chong while serving his sentence, and Chong encouraged him to write about his experiences as a stockbroker.\ The pair remained friends after their release from prison, with Belfort crediting Chong for his new career direction as a motivational speaker and writer.At a motivational talk that he delivered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on May 19, 2014, Belfort stated to the audience:
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.
Federal prosecutors and SEC officials involved in the case, however, have said, "Stratton Oakmont was not a real Wall Street firm, either literally or figuratively."
