Jordan Belfort

Belfort was born on July 9, 1962, the second son of Max and Leah Belfort, both accountants. The year before he was born, the family moved from the Bronx into a two-bedroom apartment in a newly built co-op building in Bay Terrace, Queens, where he grew up.⁠[1][1][2]

He has said that at 11 or 12 he wanted to buy a dirt bike, but his parents refused, citing the family budget and walking him through the household’s income and expenses; from this he concluded that being brilliant, educated and hard-working does not necessarily translate into money. As a youth he ran a lemonade stand, shoveled driveways, and sold ice cream at Jones Beach in New York, using the money to pay for college.⁠[3][3][3][4]

He studied biology as an undergraduate at American University and, after graduating in 1984, entered the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. As he describes in his memoir, on the first day the dean told the new students that “the golden age of dentistry is over” and that anyone there to make a lot of money was in the wrong place; he gave up dental school that same day.⁠[5][6][6][6][7]

After leaving dental school he worked as a meat and seafood salesman for a distributor before branching out on his own, selling frozen lobsters and steaks door to door. He has said that his ability to train and motivate salespeople let him grow the business from one truck to 26 within a year, but that he did not know how to run a business and went bankrupt at 23 or 24; another account says the business went bankrupt owing $24,000 when he was 24.⁠[6][2][3][3][7]

Having heard that an acquaintance was making a lot of money on Wall Street, he got started at the investment bank L.F. Rothschild through a family friend; he has said he sold himself to the firm despite a résumé that showed a dental school dropout who had just declared bankruptcy. He began as a “connector,” calling potential investors and patching them through to brokers. After finishing his training and becoming licensed, his first day as a stockbroker was October 19, 1987, “Black Monday,” when the Dow fell more than 500 points; L.F. Rothschild later folded.⁠[3][6][3][3][7][6][6]

He then moved to a penny-stock brokerage on Long Island. He has said he soon realized that most such stocks “are not designed to work” but are designed to make money for the firms that take them public; disheartened, he went in only two days a week yet still made $80,000 a month.⁠[6][3][3]

He struck a deal with the struggling brokerage Stratton Securities to open as its Long Island branch and soon took control; in 1989 he and Daniel Porush founded Stratton Oakmont, based in Lake Success on Long Island. By his own account, the firm underwrote the initial public offerings of 35 companies, the best known being the footwear company Steve Madden.⁠[6][8][9][4]

Stratton Oakmont was a “boiler room” brokerage built on telephone sales: large numbers of young employees cold-called investors from the phone directory, first hooking them with shares of stable companies and then persuading them to buy the new issues the firm underwrote; Belfort and insiders he tipped off secretly held these shares and sold once prices had been pushed up, leaving other investors with losses when the prices collapsed. He later recalled that brokers were trained not to “hang up the phone until the customer buys or dies.”⁠[7][7][7][10]

He deliberately recruited inexperienced people in their twenties and gave them two boardroom pep talks a day. During this period he was addicted to Quaaludes and other drugs and lived lavishly: he bought a helicopter and owned a yacht originally built for Coco Chanel; under the influence of drugs he took the yacht into the Mediterranean during a gale, the yacht sank, and he was rescued.⁠[2][2][2][2][10]

He later described his crossing of the line as a moral drift that happened “step-by-step, imperceptible steps,” and has claimed that 95 percent of the firm’s business was “totally legit.” Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Cohen, who prosecuted him, disagreed, saying that for many years Belfort woke up every day asking what crimes he could commit that day.⁠[3][7][7]

On June 10, 1991, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) said it was reviewing trading in the stocks of three companies in Irvine, California, whose recent public offerings had all been underwritten by Stratton Oakmont; unusual trading volume and price swings had drawn regulators’ attention. Belfort, then the firm’s president, acknowledged that the company had been “under investigation for some time” but denied rumors of an FBI search of its offices, blamed the price declines on aggressive short-sellers, and said the firm did not control stock prices.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought a civil action (Civil Action No. 92-1993) against Stratton Oakmont, Belfort, Kenneth Greene and Porush, alleging fraudulent sales practices in the operation of a boiler-room broker-dealer and manipulation of the share price of Nova Capital. In 1992, FBI Special Agent Greg Coleman and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Cohen began investigating the firm, by which time the SEC case was already under way.⁠[12][12][7]

In March 1994, the SEC accepted the defendants’ offers of settlement. Stratton Oakmont was to pay disgorgement of $1,537,146 plus prejudgment interest of $518,622 (to compensate customers) and civil penalties of $500,000, and was censured; Belfort was permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud provisions, paid a $100,000 civil penalty, and consented to an order barring him from association with certain SEC-regulated entities. Greene was likewise barred (with a right to reapply after five years) and paid a $100,000 penalty; Porush was suspended from supervisory roles for 12 months and paid a $100,000 penalty. None of the three admitted or denied the SEC’s allegations.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][7]

Belfort later said that he then sold his stake and left the firm, but, unable to let go of the company he had built, continued to run it from behind the scenes through Porush for another year.⁠[13][13][13]

In one disciplinary proceeding, the NASD found that Stratton Oakmont’s settlement agreements with complaining customers contained confidentiality provisions restricting customers from discussing their complaints with the NASD, and that the firm had refused, despite repeated NASD requests, to release one customer from his confidentiality obligation; it censured the firm and fined it $20,000. The firm sought SEC review on May 15, 1996.⁠[14][14][14][14]

On December 5, 1996, the NASD issued a decision in another case, finding that Stratton Oakmont had charged excessive and fraudulent markups in selling warrants of Master Glazier’s Karate International (conduct that occurred in 1993) and that the firm and its president Porush had failed to establish and enforce reasonable supervisory procedures. The NASD expelled the firm from membership, fined it $500,000 and ordered restitution of $416,528.77 plus interest; Porush was barred from association with any member firm in any capacity and fined $250,000. Porush denied having supervisory responsibility for markup compliance during the period, saying the firm’s former chief executive officer had been responsible for supervising pricing.⁠[9][15][15][15][15][15][15]

The firm and Porush sought a stay. On December 6 the SEC denied it, citing the seriousness of the misconduct and the applicants’ failure to present compelling justification, and allowed the firm to remain in operation for only five business days after the order, solely to effect unsolicited liquidating transactions for customers on an agency basis. In its application the firm said it had paid $18 million under settlements with various state regulators and was committed to paying another $10 million.⁠[15][9][9][15]

In late January 1997, Stratton Oakmont filed for Chapter 11 protection in federal bankruptcy court, and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) successfully petitioned in federal court for the firm’s liquidation under the Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970. On March 12 of that year, the SEC sustained the NASD’s findings in the confidentiality case and, in view of the firm’s bankruptcy, provided that collection of the fine and costs be pursued as a claim in the liquidation proceeding.⁠[14][14][14][14]

On September 1, 1998, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted Belfort and Porush (case 1:98-cr-00859) on 27 counts; FBI agents arrested Belfort outside his Long Island mansion. On September 3 the indictment was unsealed and Belfort was arraigned before a magistrate judge, with bail set at $10 million; Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel M. Cohen appeared for the government, and the case was assigned to U.S. District Judge John Gleeson.⁠[16][10][10][16][16][16][16]

The investigation’s breakthrough came through money laundering: Belfort had smuggled money out of the country into Swiss bank accounts, where it was laundered, and had used a relative’s name for an account. Using information from witnesses who had helped smuggle the money, the FBI persuaded Swiss authorities to provide information and eventually obtained the cooperation of his banker in Geneva.⁠[7][10][7][7]

On May 25, 1999, Belfort waived indictment before Judge Gleeson and pleaded guilty to all 10 counts of a superseding information filed by the government, covering securities fraud, money laundering, and fraud in connection with numerous initial public offerings. The plea transcript and superseding information were unsealed that September. Porush had pleaded guilty on December 2, 1998.⁠[16][16][16][17][16][16]

He was then facing 20 to 30 years in prison. After pleading guilty he became a cooperating witness, wearing a wire to help the FBI gather evidence against his partners and associates in exchange for a lighter sentence. Judge Gleeson later wrote that Belfort testified before him twice and that his cooperation played a crucial role in the decisions of a number of other defendants to plead guilty.⁠[7][2][17]

On September 15, 1999, Judge Gleeson signed a preliminary order of forfeiture against Belfort authorizing the government to seize and fully liquidate the listed property; the preliminary forfeiture order against Porush authorized the seizure of $6 million. On October 22, after a hearing on whether to revoke Belfort’s pretrial release, the court denied bail and remanded him.⁠[16][16][16]

On February 28, 2000, Belfort waived indictment in a second case (1:00-cr-00126), in which the government charged him by a one-count felony information. In March the government consented to his bail application, and the court released him to home confinement with 24-hour electronic monitoring, barring him from leaving his residence except for meetings with prosecutors; from June he was allowed to work at his office during hours approved by the government.⁠[18][18][16][16][16][16]

In October 2000 the court temporarily lifted his home confinement so that he could testify in U.S. v. Gaito; in December electronic monitoring ended and he was instead required to report in person to the pretrial services office once a week.⁠[16][16][16]

On July 18, 2003, Judge Gleeson sentenced Belfort. In case 98-cr-859, the counts of the original indictment were dismissed on the government’s motion, and on the 10 counts of the superseding information he received 42 months in prison (to run concurrently), three years of supervised release, restitution of $110,362,993.87 and an $800 special assessment; in case 00-cr-126 he received six months, to run concurrently. He was ordered to surrender to the designated facility by noon on October 17, 2003, and the court recommended a facility in the Los Angeles area with residential drug treatment. The judgment was signed on October 14.⁠[16][16][18][16][16][16]

The sentence also required him, during supervised release, to pay 50 percent of his monthly gross income to a court-appointed trustee, who would remit the money to his victims.⁠[17]

He served his sentence at a federal prison camp in California, about 22 months in all, and was released in 2006. In prison he shared quarters with comedian Tommy Chong, who was serving nine months for selling drug paraphernalia; after hearing Belfort’s stories, Chong urged him to write a book. He has said he spent 10 hours a day in prison teaching himself to write, studying Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities as a textbook.⁠[7][7][7][10][19][19]

In 2002 the government asked the court to approve distribution of the forfeiture proceeds by the trustee for the liquidation of Stratton Oakmont. On October 3, 2006, Judge Gleeson ordered the Clerk of Court to distribute the transferred funds to the victims identified in the trustee’s victim list, and to distribute any future restitution payments made by or on behalf of Belfort and Porush according to the same list. The trustee was Harvey R. Miller.⁠[16][16][16][16][16]

On September 25, 2007, Bantam published his memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, named for his favorite among his many nicknames of the time. The book recounts the rise of Stratton Oakmont and his life of excess and drug use; by that October, Martin Scorsese had optioned it. Under his plea agreement he had to surrender half of any money he made to investors; he said at the time that he lived modestly in a rented apartment in Los Angeles.⁠[20][20][6][10][10][10][10]

He told NPR at the time: “I’m a convicted criminal. And I’m guilty. Like I have no illusions that I was falsely accused or that I didn’t do it.” He also said he believed he would have committed the crimes even without drugs, because greed was what motivated him.⁠[10][10]

In 2009, Bantam Books published his second memoir, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street.⁠[6][21][21]

On April 19, 2012, it was made official that Martin Scorsese would direct a film adaptation of his memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort and a screenplay by Terence Winter; Red Granite Pictures owned the rights. According to figures the government submitted to the court in 2013, he received $940,500 in 2011 for the film rights to his two books.⁠[22][22][22][22][22][23]

During preparations he spent about a year with DiCaprio, going through the script with him and teaching him the Straight Line sales system and salesman’s tonalities.⁠[5][5][19]

On October 11, 2013, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York wrote to the court asking that Belfort be found in default on the restitution owed to 1,513 victims. By the government’s count he had paid about $11.6 million since his 2003 sentencing, more than $10 million of it from court-ordered property forfeiture, and nothing in 2010; the government contended that he remained obligated to pay 50 percent of his annual gross income. Belfort called the accusations “all lies … a complete fabrication”; his lawyers said he had repeatedly offered over more than two years to turn over 100 percent of the profits from the film and the two books, that the government had not responded to settlement requests, and argued that the 50 percent arrangement had expired when he left supervised release in April 2009.⁠[23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23]

On October 17 the court allowed public filing of the government’s letter with income information redacted. On October 25 the government withdrew its default motion without prejudice to renewing it; on the 28th the court granted the withdrawal, stayed the briefing schedule and adjourned oral argument without date.⁠[16][16][16]

The film was released on Christmas Day 2013 and grossed more than $400 million worldwide. DiCaprio won the 2014 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Belfort has said the film was not exaggerated but “under-exaggerated,” with its fictionalization mainly consisting of merging several characters into one and compressing events in time.⁠[2][5][24][24][19][19]

On January 30, 2014, responding to a letter from non-party Professor Ian Ayres asking whether third parties could contribute to the restitution fund, Judge Gleeson stated that Belfort was no longer under the court’s supervision and that responsibility for satisfying the substantial judgment lay with the Executive Branch, which the court expected to vigorously pursue all appropriate avenues.⁠[16][16]

On June 11, citing the need to protect victims’ privacy, Judge Gleeson denied a request by a producer of the television program Inside Edition for the names of the victims and the restitution owed to each. In his ruling he noted that Belfort’s obligation to pay 50 percent of his monthly gross income had expired years earlier when his supervised release ended, but that he still owed the victims more than $100 million and that the Department of Justice could pursue a broad array of statutory collection means; the victim list contained more than 1,300 names.⁠[17][17][17][17][17]

In 2017, Simon & Schuster published his Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling, subtitled “Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success,” a systematic presentation of his Straight Line sales system.⁠[25][25][25][25]

In January 2017, ahead of a speaking appearance in Switzerland, he gave an interview to the Swiss financial news site finews.com, published in three parts. He said one of the lessons he had learned was that “you are the people you surround yourself with,” and that he had surrounded himself with the wrong people; not being “half-pregnant with ethics” was a major belief of his. He said he was coming to talk about sales and persuasion, not banking.⁠[3][13][13][26]

He also said that during the 2016 U.S. presidential election he at first thought Donald Trump was a joke, but amid the media’s criticism came to support and vote for Trump, while describing himself as “a liberal at heart” with liberal social views.⁠[26][26][26][26]

On October 6, 2017, the government applied to the court for a writ of continuing garnishment against Belfort, and the garnishee Delos Living LLC filed its answer in December; in April 2018 the government also sought to garnish money owed to him by the publisher Simon & Schuster. Belfort’s request to transfer the garnishment proceedings to the federal court for the Central District of California was denied in February 2018 on the ground that all relevant parties other than himself were in New York. By then the case had been reassigned to Judge Ann M. Donnelly.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16][16]

On August 20, 2018, by agreement of the parties, the $19,472.85 then held by Simon & Schuster was transferred to the Clerk of Court for distribution under the restitution order. On November 30 the court granted the garnishment of his membership interests in Delos Living and denied his claims of exemption.⁠[16][16]

He hosts the podcast The Wolf’s Den. In episode 26, released on September 28, 2019, he interviewed Greg Coleman, the FBI special agent who had brought him down, and the two looked back on the investigation; the episode notes describe the former adversaries as having become good friends.⁠[27][27][27][27]

In 2021, answering a fan’s question on TikTok about the most money he had made in one day, he said: “22 million dollars, made it in 10 seconds, but it was planned out meticulously beforehand.” He did not say which deal it was. He then had about 3.2 million followers on TikTok and often used his videos to discuss his past and details of the film.⁠[28][28][28][28][28]

In 2023 he published the personal-investing book The Wolf of Investing: My Playbook for Making a Fortune on Wall Street. In early November, on The Brian Kilmeade Show, he said that retail investors trading individual stocks all day were “playing the sucker’s game,” recommended holding long-term positions such as the S&P 500, reinvesting dividends and adding gradually, and likened short-term trading to “a corrupt casino.”⁠[29][29][29][30][30][30][30][30][30]

In March 2024, interviewed by Business Jet Traveler magazine at his Miami Beach home, he said Miami was his home base, that his biggest source of income was consulting for companies, and that he gave about 50 speeches a year. He described his new book as being about building wealth through index funds, a balanced portfolio, low expenses and playing the long game. Asked about his lawsuit against the film’s producer, Red Granite, he said the parties were in the process of settling. Asked how he would like the first line of his obituary to read, he answered: “The greatest redemption story ever.”⁠[5][19][5][5][19][19][19][19]

On his personal website he recruited participants for a two-day “AI Mastermind” weekend scheduled for November 1–2, 2025, at his estate in Miami, combining artificial intelligence tools with his sales and persuasion methods.⁠[31][31][31]

On February 23, 2026, the YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel School of Hard KnocksSchool of Hard KnocksSchool of Hard Knocks is a business-interview media brand founded in 2021 by James Dumoulin, Jack Dumoulin and Joshua Smith, based in Austin, Texas. Its street interviews, long-form videos and podcast explore guests’ careers and business experiences. It also operates content services and the School of Mentors community.Open the full entry released an interview video filmed in Miami, part of which was recorded at Belfort’s Miami home. Asked the most money he had made in a single day, he said: “In a single day, in cash, 23 million,” made in about four minutes, from trading and an IPO he did; he did not specify which day or which offering. (Video at 15:57–16:08)⁠[32][32][32]

In the program he also discussed recruiting and communicating a vision, whether everyone is built for entrepreneurship, money and human nature, and the advice his sponsor gave him when he first got sober: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow’s a mystery, and today is a gift.” He said that if he could change anything, he would undo the hurt he had caused anyone. At the end he responded to the film’s “Sell me this pen.” (Video at 16:14–20:39)⁠[32][32][32][32][32][32][32]

According to people familiar with the matter, his legal obligation to continue making court-ordered restitution payments expired on April 28, 2026, ending more than two decades of federal court supervision of the case; the court-appointed trustee ultimately distributed to the 1,513 victims an amount far below the original nine-figure restitution sum. In July 2026 he told TMZ: “For nearly three decades, I’ve lived with the consequences of my past and worked every day to take responsibility for it. Today, I can finally say that I completed my court-ordered restitution.”⁠[33][33][33][33]

On July 14, 2026, Paramount+ released the three-part documentary The Real Wolf of Wall Street, produced by See It Now Studios, Maxine Productions and Bloomberg, drawing on never-before-seen footage, thousands of internal FBI documents, archival interviews and firsthand accounts from people who witnessed Stratton Oakmont; interviewees include his former wife Nadine and members of his inner circle, and FBI agent Coleman, who investigated him, also appears. Belfort had no part in the documentary and said it omitted the “final chapter” of his story, his fulfillment of his restitution obligation.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][33][34]

Howard Gelfand, a former Stratton Oakmont partner interviewed in the film, told Los Angeles magazine that the movie “got a lot of things wrong” and “was a glorification of him.”⁠[35][35]

After prison he became a motivational speaker and sales trainer, centered on what he calls the “Straight Line” sales system: a set of predetermined steps from first contact to closing a deal. He has said it is roughly the same system he taught his employees to use in selling stocks. As of early 2014, his one-day “sales and persuasion” course in Australia cost US$5,000, he was paid around $30,000 an hour, and his clients included airlines such as Delta and Virgin.⁠[6][7][7][7][7][7]

He says he has consulted for more than 50 publicly traded companies and for businesses such as Toyota, IBM and Procter & Gamble, and he sells Straight Line sales certification, persuasion courses and corporate training programs on his personal website.⁠[36][4][4]

He has said: “We are not the mistakes of our past. We’re the resources and capabilities that we glean from our past.” He has also acknowledged: “I was a bad guy.”⁠[7][7][7]

“Every entrepreneur needs to be a sales person.” He argues that entrepreneurs sell not just a product but a vision for the future; only by communicating that vision in a way that moves people can they recruit people who truly believe in it and will work twice as hard, rather than relying on overpaying staff. (Video at 16:23)⁠[32][32][32]

“The biggest challenge of making money is … getting to that spot where you actually have a formula to make money.” He says a plan that looks great on paper rarely works the first time; the key is pivoting and trying things until “that last piece of the puzzle comes into place” and the business takes off, stressing that this comes from hard work, not a get-rich-quick scheme. (Video at 17:54–18:21)⁠[32][32][32]

“I don’t really think the job of a salesperson is to turn no into yes.” He says a clear no from someone who does not want or need the product should be respected; real salespeople turn hesitations such as “let me think about it,” “let me call you back” or “let me talk to my business partner” into a yes. (Video at 18:32–18:59)⁠[32][32][32]

“How can I sell you a pen if I first don’t know what you want?” Responding to “sell me this pen,” he said the first step is to reverse the question and learn what the other person needs rather than rushing to praise the product; he does not waste his time trying to sell to people who do not need or want what he has. (Video at 20:26–20:39)⁠[32][32]

“You can live, learn, and be a better version of yourself every day.” Speaking about regrets, he said one cannot live in regret but should focus on improving every day. (Video at 19:45–20:00)⁠[32][32]

Personal website: https://jb.online/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

X: Public account: https://x.com/wolfofwallst (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbelfort/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@wolfofwallst (opens in a new window)⁠[27]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/wolfofwallst/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@wolfofwallstreet (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

Facebook: Public profile: https://www.facebook.com/jordanbelfort (opens in a new window)⁠[4]