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

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

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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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.

Margot Robbie played Naomi, who was based on Nadine.

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."

Nadine Macaluso opened up about the real life story of the yacht on TikTok.

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.

Belford didn't actually buy the yacht for his wife as a wedding gift.

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."

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

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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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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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10 Scorsese Trademarks In The Wolf Of Wall Street

The wolf of wall street: jordan belfort's net worth explained, what happened to the real jordan belfort after the wolf of wall street.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a con artist who became famous for his fraudulent actions.
Belfort's memoir, which the movie is based on, includes some accurate details, 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 those 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 people, 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 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.

Watch on Paramount+

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 actually 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.

Jordan Belfort was the subject of 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street. We break down what the stockbroker's net worth was at the height of his career.

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 does largely focus 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. 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 its 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, who Margot Robbie plays 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 with regard to 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.

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

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

Credit... Illustration by Richard Borge

Supported by

By Stacy Cowley and Emma Goldberg

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

Feb. 10, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

Ryan Sasson, wearing sunglasses and a blue T-shirt, stands outside an open-air restaurant.

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

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

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

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

In January, government regulators pounced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cockroach Theory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A High-Stakes Game of Chicken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Network of Law Firms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘To Have No Money for a Week Was Terrifying’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Lavish Corporate Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Surprise Federal Lawsuit

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitty Bennett and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

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

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

'Truth is stranger than fiction' says 'Wolf of Wall Street' agent

U.S. Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (left) and Francis Sullivan (middle), of Hill Wallack, LLP, gather on Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, with retired FBI Agent Gregory Coleman, who investigated the "Wolf of Wall Street" on Friday, Dec. 4, 2015. Coleman was the keynote speaker at Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce's holiday luncheon at Spring Mill Manor in Northampton.

The lobster-throwing boat scene didn't happen. But "Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort sinking his yacht in the Mediterranean during a storm did.

Those were some of the stories former FBI Agent Gregory Coleman — who spent six years investigating Belfort — told Friday to members of the Central Bucks Chamber Chamber of Commerce.

"I spent hundreds of hours tracking down (Belfort's) plane, the boat, getting the financial documents," said Coleman, who retired in January after more than 25 years with the FBI. "I'm ready to have parties on that boat with the FBI. But it's gone. It's at the bottom of the ocean."

Coleman, now a speaker and consultant on financial crimes, spent more than an hour Friday regaling about 100 business leaders gathered at Spring Mill Manor in Northampton with tales of the Belfort investigation, which was made into the 2013 Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, anything you can make up," Coleman said. "We go into Belfort's home, we arrest him, I have the agents take him away. I do my pitch to (Belfort's wife) Nadine, 'get on board the train that's leaving the station.' She agrees to speak with me. But first, [she says], 'I have to go put my PJs on.' We're putting her husband in handcuffs, and she goes up and puts her PJs on."

Coleman said the investigation into Belfort's crimes — using a system of "flippers" and "ratholes" to manipulate supply and demand for stocks, then pocketing the profits in cash — took six years of poring through financial records and working through a tight-knit group of brokers who were loyal to their boss.

"One of the biggest problems I had in cracking the case was getting through the loyalties of his employees," Coleman said. "Once I got them, it was a domino effect."

Eventually, the FBI would arrest such high-level players as Belfort's partner, Danny Porush, portrayed in the movie by Jonah Hill with the character name Donnie Azoff.

Belfort was smart, Coleman said. He targeted wealthy small-business owners who were less likely to complain about their losses. He adapted to changes in regulations to avoid detection. He spent millions in cash to create a false "perception of success" that would impress would-be investors.

"Belfort did not sell stocks," Coleman said. "He sold a story. If he told a good story, you would buy the stocks."

The scheme cost victims of Belfort's brokerage, Stratton Oakmont, $110 million. Today, Belfort is a motivational speaker.

Coleman was portrayed in the movie by Kyle Chandler, whose character's name was changed to Agent Patrick Denham.

"I had no idea who Kyle Chandler was," Coleman said. "I knew I would be OK, though. The ladies would come up to me in the office and say, 'Who's playing you in the movie?' 'Kyle Chandler.' And they'd go, 'Ooooh.'"

Some scenes, Coleman said, are purely fictional, such as the bribery scene on the boat. Others are a mix of truth and fiction, such as the arrest of Belfort's drug dealer, Brad Bodnick [portrayed by Jon Bernthal]. While based on a real person, Todd Garret, the arrest itself was because of money laundering, not drugs, Coleman said.

"Part of what they portrayed was absolutely correct and real," Coleman said. "On the other side of the spectrum, it was completely false. It was made up in Hollywood. They threw it in to spice it up. In the middle you have this mixture of truth."

The FBI never did get to seize Belfort's 175-foot yacht. But the agency did seize a beach house in tony Southampton, New York, which Belfort purchased with insurance money.

"The nice thing about money laundering," Coleman said, "is once it's tainted, it's always tainted."

Crissa Shoemaker DeBree: 215-345-3186; email: [email protected]; Twitter: @CrissaShoemaker

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The true story of Wolf Of Wall Street’s yacht ‘Nadine’

Jordan Belfort’s antics are so legendary that sinking a multi-million dollar yacht is just another act of depravity that Martin Scorsese manages to weave among The The wolf of Wall Street grotesque film adaptation. Those who know the wolf of Wall Street book will have read Belfort’s account about it in more detail, but the backstory of the superyacht Nadine is a lesser-known tale with unexpected twists.

Despite Jordan’s notoriety for unbridled bacchanalia, Nadine was sunk by natural forces far greater than even the fiercest drinking bout he could muster. In the middle of a pedestrianized Mediterranean cruise, a storm unexpectedly turned into a raging storm with high winds and huge swells to send the pride and joy of the wolf into Davey Jones’ locker.

In fact, this type of storm is so specific that it has its own name. The mistrals get their name from the winds that blow from the French Alps into the Mediterranean. This convection cycle is caused by warm air rising from African deserts and colder air from the Alps rushing through the void for sustained round trips of 12 to 40 hours. Nothing like a strong relentless wind to generate a dangerous swell. And the kicker? Mistrals are difficult to predict.

RELATED: Asymmetric superyacht hits market for $ 47 million

En route from Riva de Travino to the island of Sardinia, off the west coast of Italy, what should have been a routine race (which usually takes around 7 hours) ended in the fiasco that International Yachts described as ‘Mayday in the Med.’

â€œWhen we set off,â€ said Captain Mark Elliot, â€œthe forecast told us to expect wind and choppy but small seas. Knowing that this wouldn’t be an ideal crossing, the captain asked if the guests wanted to delay until the next morning. The answer was a definite ‘no’ as they were all eager to head to Sardinia for a round of golf the next morning. So, they cast off and set sail for another corner of paradise.

Hours later, the guests were enjoying the sunny afternoon weather of another dream day in the Mediterraneanâ€¦ when a rogue wave reached the bow and wheelhouse, inundating a hostess from head to toe. Immediately after this warning sign made contact, a transmission was received via radio warning of unexpected gale force winds in the area. The mistral had announced. The swell heights doubled, the winds intensified, and the shit became real.

However, before Belfort throws next-level parties aboard his elegant ship and charters it across the Mediterranean to Sardinia on that fateful day, Nadine had already lived many lives. In truth, the luxury yacht seen in The Wolf of Wall Street movie bears no resemblance to the period ship owned by Jordan Belfort. Scorsese hired a yacht called Lady M for these stages, which was originally built by Intermarine Savannah in 2002.

On the other hand, the real one Nadine (Where Mathilde as it was originally called), was built in 1961 and delivered by the Dutch shipyard Witsen & Vis for none other than fashion mogul Coco Chanel. At the time, Mathilde had five dark teak cabins, exceptional dining rooms and a helipad.

â€œAt that time, it was the largest yacht on the East Coast,â€ recalls Captain Mark Elliot. “No one had ever seen anything like it.”

After Coco’s death in 1971 the yacht was renamed Jan Pamela by its new owner, Melvin Lane Powers. While not as decorated as his predecessor, Powers was a notorious and ostentatious Houston real estate developer known for wearing crocodile skin boots and driving a golden Cadillac after being acquitted of the murder of her lover’s husband. The New York Times described his 1966 trial as “one of the most spectacular homicide trials of all time.”

Powers ordered a huge refit and extension of the ship, but in 1983 it hit rock bottom and Jan Pamela was sold before being renamed Waterside . In 1989, it was Bernie Little’s luck, and he bought her sight without seeing her. She then underwent another refit, before becoming Great eagle under the command of Mark Elliot once again. In this form, she caught the attention of Jordan Belfort, who took possession of it in 1995. Of course, he had to undertake his own additions and renovations, before renaming the ship after his second wife, Nadine .

However, the reincarnation of this historic yacht as Nadine was to be short lived. After 35 years of leisure, sailing on the most beautiful coasts and welcoming the great names of the time, Mother Nature would have the last word.

Back in the Mediterranean, hours later, roaring gusts ripped the $ 100,000 tender from its tow lines. Captain Mark Elliot calls to abandon yacht, as turning point Nadine against the crashing waves would have courted disaster. Abandoning the course to try to outrun the mistral was out of the question for the same reasons. They are there now – every captain’s nightmare – with seventy knot winds and 35 foot ridges to negotiate.

Then, Nadine’s The moment of “perfect storm” pointed its formidable head. The huge wave crashes all over the ship, tearing off the hatches and deck fittings, triggering a death knell that can only end with a day of disaster. The remaining supply crashes into the dining room window, causing it to collapse wave after wave flooding the living room.

“I knew at that time that Nadine had received a fatal blow. Once I assessed the damage, I walked over to the deck and used the satellite phone to contact the Italian Coast Guard known as â€œGruppo Marine Italian,â€ says Captain Elliot.

First aid stations. Guests are gathered in a secure central location and escorted one by one to their cabins to collect passports and any valuables that can fit in a small bag.

Half an hour later, a rescue helicopter attempts to bring down a diver to pick up guests. However, the gusts of wind turned out to be too violent, and after almost losing the said diver, the helicopter aborted. Imagine the heartbreaking feeling of those on board Nadine , as the Coast Guard abandon ship, defeated by the rampaging elements, and return to the safety of the coast as the sun sets below the horizon and night sets in.

Hurricane-force winds, severe flooding and a 15-meter-high sea are now pounding Italy’s shores in what will be known as the storm of the century. The situation is so tumultuous that when a large merchant ship attempts another rescue attempt a few hours later, it almost crashes in Nadine , before setting off again and again, abandoning the crew and the frenzied guests.

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The liferafts are deployed as a precautionâ€¦ until the roaring wind also tears them from the sea, leaving the crew completely stranded on board.

Below deck, the flooded kitchen has become an electrified death trap, and the chef and engineer receive jolts from the current before pulling the ass out of there to the (relative) safety above. It should be noted that this is probably around the time when a deranged and drenched Leo shouts at Jonah Hill with the unforgettable line: “Get the ludes downstairs!” I will not die sober! To have. The. Whore. Ludes! ”

Times of crisis. With no options left, Captain Elliot calls to throw the helicopter off the bridge to free up space for another rescue attempt. He unhooks the tie-downs and rolls the ship twenty degrees, throwing the expensive equipment overboard and into the Mediterranean, where its rusty skeleton undoubtedly lies to this day.

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At around 5 a.m., the Coast Guard returned and began to hoist the guests, then the crew to safety in the reassuring light of dawn. The weather calmed down as the winds and waves calmed down, but the damage was done. The last to leave the ship he commanded for so many years, Mark Elliot takes stock of the wreck before finally accepting his loss, closing the engine room controls and seizing the buoy rescue package handed to him by the coast guard.

Nadine is swallowed up by the sea, just ten minutes after Captain Elliot left his decks.

While all the guests and the crew of 11 survive, the prestigious motor yacht and its collection of toys (including eight jet skis, four motorcycles, snorkeling gear, a helicopter and a seaplane) sink into the deep end. at the bottom of the Mediterranean, over 1000 m deep. the water.

â€œThe insurance paid off immediately because it was the storm of the century,â€ said Captain Elliot.

Back on dry land, Mark Elliot was hailed as a hero after showing courage and leadership in such a dire situation. He was then offered command of Bernie Little’s famous yacht Vessel , and today works as a broker in Miami as one of the most experienced and capable men in the business.

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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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Jordan Belfort stands outside his former home

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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".

The Wolf of Wall Street: Most outrageous quotes

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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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.

Writer Jordan Belfort and fiancee Anne Koppe attend the premiere of "The Wolf of Wall Street" at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 17, 2013, in New York City.

Jordan Belfort’s early life

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s personal life

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s net worth

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

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s podcast

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s career

Early endeavours.

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

Wall Street

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

Stratton Oakmont

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s famous sales pitch

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

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

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

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

Steven Madden, Jordan Belfort, and Stratton Oakmont

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

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s legal troubles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s books

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

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

Motivational speaking and sales training

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

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

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

What is Jordan Belfort’s sales training about?

Jordan Belfort’s schemes explained

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

Boiler room

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

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

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

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

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

Pump and dump

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

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

Money laundering

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort’s boiler room

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

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

“1. Create IPO Stock;

2. Line Up the Victims;

3. Bait and Switch;

4. Market Manipulation;

5. Sell High and Shut the Door”.

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

1. Create IPO Stock

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

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

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

2. Line Up the Victims

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

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

3. Bait and Switch

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

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

4. Market Manipulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Sell High and Shut the Door

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

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

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

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

Jordan Belfort in the “Wolf of Wall Street” movie

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

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

“The Wolf of Wall Street” synopsis

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

Recommended video: “ The Wolf of Wall Street” trailer

In conclusion

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

FAQs about Jordan Belfort

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

What did Jordan Belfort do?

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

What Is a pump and dump scam?

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

What is a boiler room?

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

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

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

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

How did Jordan Belfort get rich?

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

How long was Jordan Belfort in jail?

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

Is Wolf of Wall Street a true story?

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

How much is Jordan Belfort worth?

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

Who is Jordan Belfort's wife?

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

Where is Jordan Belfort now?

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

Is Jordan Belfort alive?

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

What are some famous Jordan Belfort quotes?

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

Are Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush still friends?

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

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The Wolf of Wall Street : The True Story

We sort out what’s fact and what’s fiction in Martin Scorsese's glitzy new film about a real-life scammer

Drugs, prostitutes, crashed helicopters — the debauchery in The Wolf of Wall Street is so outlandish that audiences might leave the theater thinking director Martin Scorsese took plenty of creative license in telling the story of Jordan Belfort, a New York stock broker who conned his way to earning hundreds of millions in the 1990s. But Scorsese’s film closely follows Belfort’s own memoir , also titled The Wolf of Wall Street .

That said, Belfort glorifies his vulgar antics in his book, so how much of his account is truly real is up for debate. After all, Belfort was a scam artist — he made a living by lying. Scorsese, knowing this, portrays Belfort ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) as an unreliable narrator in the film (see: the changing color of the car in the first scene and the driving while high on Quaaludes episode).

TIME fact-checks the movie against Belfort’s books (he also wrote a sequel entitled Catching the Wolf of Wall Street ) and a series of Forbes articles that have followed Belfort’s scheming.

Belfort’s first boss told him the keys to success were masturbation, cocaine and hookers. Ruling: Fact

According to the book, a broker named Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) gave him this advice early on in his career.

Belfort and his partner owned shares of a risky stock and had their brokers at Stratton Oakmont brokerage aggressively sell the stock to inflate the price. They then sold the stock themselves to turn a profit. Ruling: Fact

Belfort and Danny Porush (called Donnie Azoff in the film and portrayed by Jonah Hill) utilized this age-old pump-and-dump scheme to get rich quick after graduating from scamming middle-class people into buying worthless penny stocks at a 50 percent commission.

Forbes magazine exposed Belfort, calling him a “twisted Robin Hood.” Ruling: Fact

Though Belfort wasn’t on the cover, Forbes did run a profile of him in which they called him “a twisted version of Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers.” Though it was a scathing portrait, the promise of quick $100,000 commissions brought job applicants to Stratton Oakmont in droves.

Stratton Oakmont took Steve Madden public. Ruling: Fact

Steve Madden did give a speech the day of the IPO, to which the Stratton Oakmont brokers responded with jeers. Madden, Belfort and Porush owned most of the stock and drove up the price. Belfort, Porush and Madden all went to jail for their scheme.

Belfort laundered his money into Swiss banks using his in-laws. Ruling: Fact

His wife’s mother and aunt both helped smuggle the money into Switzerland .

Now for the really ridiculous stuff…

Danny Porush (Donnie Azoff) was married to his cousin. Ruling: Fact

They’re now divorced.

The driving on Quaaludes scene. Ruling: Mostly fact

It was a Mercedes, not a Lamborghini. But the rest is true to Belfort’s memoir.

The office parties included a “midget-tossing competition.” Ruling: Fact

…According to Belfort.

The company billed prostitutes to the corporate card. Ruling: Fact

…And wrote them off in their taxes.

He crashed a helicopter in his front yard while high. Ruling: Fact

On a related note, he also did at least attempt to sober up in real life.

He sunk a yacht in Italy. Ruling: Fact

And the yacht used to belong to Coco Chanel.

He called his trophy wife “duchess.” Ruling: Fact

Though her name was Nadine, not Naomi.

He served a reduced prison sentence after ratting on his friends. Ruling: Fact

Turns out Belfort was even more of a jerk than they show in the movie. In the film version, Belfort tries to save his partner from incriminating himself. In reality, Belfort ratted out his partner Porush, among others, for a reduced sentence (the two reportedly no longer speak). Belfort spent only two years in prison and had Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) as his cellmate. Chong convinced Belfort to write a memoir.

He scammed only the rich. Ruling: Fiction

Some writers have criticized Scorsese for portraying Belfort’s lifestyle as glamorous without showing the victims of his scam. Though Belfort claims in his book and in the film that he only took from the wealthy, the New York Times reports that many small business owners are still trying to recover financially from Belfort’s scheme. (The government claims Belfort has failed to pay his restitution, and reports suggest that Porush is still running get-rich-quick schemes.)

lunarlogitech

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

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

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

What is true about The Wolf of Wall Street?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Leonardo DiCaprio looks at the camera in his role as Jordan Belfort, aka the wolf of wall street

15 Wild Facts You Didn't Know About Jordan Belfort, The Wolf Of Wall Street

Talk about bad behavior.

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street , may seem like a wild tale of excess wealth and bad behavior. And, uh, it is. But that doesn’t mean everything in it is true, or the whole story. If you watched The Wolf of Wall Street and thought, “This would never happen in real life,” buckle up, because these facts about Jordan Belfort are something else.

At times, the film makes The Hangover look like nothing more than a high school party. Between cocaine-fueled parties in the office and international financial crime, the movie does not give a single f*ck (of which, by the way, there are a lot in the dialogue itself ) about being sympathetic or moral.

But in Jordan Belfort’s memoir, titled — of course — The Wolf of Wall Street, things are even more wild, not to mention detailed. As a successful stockbroker con-artist in the 1990s, Belfort’s memoirs display the “profit-over-all” culture of Wall Street, portraying the lifestyle in all of its “depraved glory.” And Belfort didn’t hold back on the debauchery and bad behavior of his time drugged out and taking money. In fact, he revels in sharing things like how a friend electrocuted himself to save drugs from a sinking ship, or details of all the sex that happened in his office.

Of course, he also starts the memoir by admitting that it’s all based on his “best recollections” — which, considering a lot of the book is about how he was stoned out of his mind, means we should probably take some things with a grain of salt. But if you want to believe, I can’t blame you. For your reading pleasure, here are 15 wild facts about Jordan Belfort’s actual life and career, all according to his memoir.

1. Belfort once generated a $700,000 hotel bill.

According to his memoir, aka the book the movie is based on , he ran up the giant bill in Italy after being rescued when his yacht went down. (In his own words, “It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, though, because the bill included a $300,000 gold bangle studded with rubies and emeralds.”

2. One office junior agreed to have her hair shaved off on the trading floor in return for $10,000.

In his memoir, Belfort says the woman put on a bikini and let them shave her whole head in a “win-win” that let her pay off the debt for her boob job.

3. Belfort’s drug of choice was Quaaludes.

But if you saw the movie — did you really need someone to tell you that?

4. He confessed to making love to his wife on $3 million in $10,000 stacks of notes.

5. he once landed his helicopter on his back lawn, flying with just one eye open because he was so stoned he had double vision., 6. he sank his 167-foot motor yacht, complete with seaplane and helicopter, after overruling the captain and taking it into a mediterranean storm..

This was right before he ran up that $700,000 hotel bill.

7. He used his wife's sweet old aunt as a mule, helping him smuggle money out of the United States.

Former Wall Steet player turned novelist Jordan Belfort, author of The Wolf of Wall Street.

The real Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street

8. He used his first Wall Street million to buy a white Ferrari because Don Johnson had one.

9. he woke up his secretary at 4 a.m. because he was in london and ran out of drugs. an emergency supply was immediately sent out on a concorde jet., 10. he kicked his wife down a set of stairs in front of their young daughter, and then drove his car through his garage door with the little girl unbuckled in the front seat when she tried to stop him driving off., 11. he claims to have ingested enough drugs to "sedate guatemala.".

And was flying his helicopter during it.

12. He helped take Steve Madden, one of today's most iconic fashion companies, public.

13 he woke up from a drug-filled bender with the police at his door — they arrested him for causing seven different traffic accidents that he had no recollection of., 14. facing up to three decades in prison for securities fraud, he snitched — becoming a government witness supplying information against his co-workers., 15. perhaps the reason belfort still seems to have such fond memories of the days he was flying high and mighty with other people’s money is that he only had to serve 22 months in jail, and was ordered to pay back $110 million..

Of course, since his arrest and conviction on charges relating to securities fraud, Belfort seems to have… calmed down. As of 2021, he was marketing himself as a motivational speaker and sales trainer. If you want to keep up with him these days, he’s on Twitter — where his handle is, yes, @WolfofWallSt .

This article was originally published on 12.26.13

Cast & crew
User reviews

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. 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. 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.

Martin Scorsese
Terence Winter
Jordan Belfort
Leonardo DiCaprio
Margot Robbie
1.8K User reviews
438 Critic reviews
75 Metascore
37 wins & 179 nominations total

Donnie Azoff

Naomi Lapaglia

Agent Patrick Denham

Max Belfort

Manny Riskin

Jean Jacques Saurel

Teresa Petrillo

Leah Belfort

Captain Ted Beecham

Nicky Koskoff ('Rugrat')

Chester Ming

Robbie Feinberg ('Pinhead')

Alden Kupferberg ('Sea Otter')
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Matthew McConaughey 's scenes were shot on the second week of filming. The chest beating and humming performed by him was improvised and a warm-up rite that he performs before acting. When Leonardo DiCaprio saw it while filming, the brief shot of him looking away uneasily from the camera was him looking at Martin Scorsese for approval. DiCaprio encouraged them to include it in their scene and later claimed it "set the tone" for the rest of the film.
Goofs During the Black Monday crash of 1987 all of the digital tickers in the background are green - which means the market is going up.

Max Belfort : What kind of hooker takes credit cards?

Donnie Azoff : A rich one!

Crazy credits The film opens with a Stratton Oakmont advertisement hosted by Jordan Belfort. The film title appears only at the ending.
Alternate versions News reports in local media have said the version of the movie showing in Abu Dhabi cinemas removes 45 minutes of content. Aside from nudity and sexual situations, most of the edits come from the film's 600+ curse words. Time Out Abu Dhabi reported offensive language was removed by "either by muting the audio temporarily or chopping chunks from scenes mid sentence, which produces a jarring effect for viewers."
Connections Featured in The Daily Show: Jonah Hill (2013)
Soundtracks Stratton Oakmont Composed by Theodore Shapiro

User reviews 1.8K

Jun 17, 2014

The Movies of Martin Scorsese

How long is The Wolf of Wall Street? Powered by Alexa
Why was Bo Dietl confused about what Jordan said on the phone when we know Jordan was speaking clearly up to that point?
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December 25, 2013 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Official JioTV
Sói Già Phố Wall
Portofino, Genoa, Liguria, Italy (when Jordan and Naomi receive news of death of aunt Emma)
Red Granite Pictures
Sikelia Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$100,000,000 (estimated)
$116,900,694
$18,361,578
Dec 29, 2013
$407,039,432

Technical specs

Runtime 3 hours
Dolby Digital
Dolby Surround 7.1

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IMAGES

Jordan Belfort Yacht
Jordan Belfort Yacht
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Jordan Belfort Yacht
Naomi Wolf Of Wall Street Yacht
jordan belfort coco chanel yacht

VIDEO

How Jordan Belfort SANK His Yacht
The Real Wolf Of Wall Street

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The story of the Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort's 37m yacht Nadine
How Jordan Belfort's 37m superyacht Nadine sank off the coast of Sardinia. 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.
Jordan Belfort Yacht
Learn about the history, sinking, and features of the Nadine, the superyacht owned by Jordan Belfort, the inspiration for The Wolf of Wall Street. Compare the real and reel events of the stormy night that led to the yacht's demise.
The Ridiculous True Story Behind Wolf Of Wall Street's Yacht
Jordan Belfort's seshes were so legendary that sinking a multi-million-dollar yacht was simply another act of depravity that Martin Scorsese could weave into The Wolf of Wall Street's preposterous film adaptation. Those familiar with The Wolf of Wall Street book will have read Belfort's account of this in closer detail, but the backstory of the superyacht Nadine is a lesser-known tale ...
Jordan Belfort's ex-wife tells the real story behind the yacht on The
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.
Everything The Wolf Of Wall Street Doesn't Tell You About The ...
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.
The Ridiculous Truth Behind The Wolf of Wall Street Yacht Scene
Dec 10, 2021. It turns out that the preposterous scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jordan Belfort, and his co-horts are caught in a ferocious storm and nearly meet their makers, is true. According to an article by Brad Hutchins on bosshunting.com, the real Jordan Belfort was on a luxury yacht called the ...
The True Jordan Belfort Yacht Story: Fact vs. Fiction
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.
Wolf of Wall Street True Story
Did Jordan Belfort really name his yacht after his wife? Yes. The real-life yacht was named "The Nadine" after Belfort's wife, who, like in the movie, he affectionately referred to as "The Duchess of Bay Ridge." In the movie, the yacht bears the name "Naomi" after the character portrayed by Margot Robbie (Belfort's wife's name was changed for ...
Meet the Real Wolf of Wall Street Superyacht Built for Coco Chanel
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 ...
The Megayacht in The Wolf of Wall Street Movie
Nadine belonged to Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stockbroker with a penchant for living life to excess. (Belfort once gave an interview in which he said one of his role models was the fictional character Gordon Gekko.) ... On a side note, Luiz de Basto, who designed the yacht, says that the producers contacted him last year. The reason: "to ...
How Accurate The Wolf Of Wall Street Is To The True Story
The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a con artist who became famous for his fraudulent actions. Belfort's memoir, which the movie is based on, includes some accurate details, such as smuggling money into Swiss banks and sinking a yacht. However, several real-life figures have disputed the accuracy of the events ...
THE YACHT STORY
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He Grew Up in the Shadow of the 'Wolf of Wall Street.' Then He Got Into
As federal regulators closed in on his business, a yacht Mr. Sasson co-owns went up for sale: the $2.6 million ... Jordan Belfort was known as the Wolf of Wall Street, a title he bestowed on ...
REAL WOLF OF WALL STREET Yacht Sinking Story
LEAVE THE CASH... TAKE THE QUAALUDES!The REAL Wolf of Wall Street tells how he sunk his 167-foot yacht, The "Nadine," with its own plane & chopper. This was ...
'Truth is stranger than fiction' says 'Wolf of Wall Street' agent
But "Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort sinking his yacht in the Mediterranean during a storm did. Those were some of the stories former FBI Agent Gregory Coleman — who spent six years investigating Belfort — told Friday to members of the Central Bucks Chamber Chamber of Commerce. "I spent hundreds of hours tracking down (Belfort's) plane ...
The true story of Wolf Of Wall Street's yacht 'Nadine'
Jordan Belfort's antics are so legendary that sinking a multi-million dollar yacht is just another act of depravity that Martin Scorsese manages to weave among The The wolf of Wall Street grotesque film adaptation. Those who know the wolf of Wall Street book will have read Belfort's account about it in more detail, but the backstory of the superyacht Nadine is a lesser-known tale with ...
Jordan Belfort: The real Wolf of Wall Street and the men who brought
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 ... The yacht, the cars ...
Who is Jordan Belfort? True Story of "The Wolf of Wall Street"
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.
The Wolf of Wall Street: The True Story of Jordan Belfort
Mary Cybulski / Paramount. Drugs, prostitutes, crashed helicopters — the debauchery in The Wolf of Wall Street is so outlandish that audiences might leave the theater thinking director Martin Scorsese took plenty of creative license in telling the story of Jordan Belfort, a New York stock broker who conned his way to earning hundreds of millions in the 1990s.
Living the High Life: Jordan Belfort's Epic Yacht Adventure
Jordan Belfort's real-life yacht, "Nadine," was a symbol of his extravagant lifestyle. Measuring over 162 feet, it featured luxurious amenities like a helipad, jacuzzi, and multiple lounges. Today, we explore the captivating story of this opulent vessel and the extravagant world it once sailed in.
Facts About Jordan Belfort, The Wolf Of Wall Street
The real Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street. ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP/Getty Images. 8. He used his first Wall Street million to buy a white Ferrari because Don Johnson had one. 9. He ...
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street: Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey. 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.
Jordan Belfort Sunk a 167 ft Yacht (Wolf of Wall Street)
The INSANE True Story of Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street) https://youtu.be/cbyUKx_INCYPls Subscribe :) https://bit.ly/3JSExDeIn this video, we take a l...
Who Is Denise Lombardo, The Ex-Wife Of Jordan Belfort?
A fictionalized version of Jordan Belfort's wife Denise Lombardo was portrayed by Cristin Milioti in The Wolf of Wall Street — but what happened to the real Lombardo? Personal photo Jordan Belfort, a.k.a. the "Wolf of Wall Street," with a woman believed to be his first wife, Denise Lombardo. Martin Scorsese's 2013 film The Wolf of ...
In Wolf of Wall Street, why do the FBI agents on Jordan's yacht ask him
Leo did almost too good imo, I think misguided people see his performance and start viewing Jordan Belfort as some sort of role model, same type of people who idolize Christian Bale in American Psycho, except Belfort is real, and ruined real people's lives and is still out there rich as fuck selling his "motivational speeches" and raking in the ...

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

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

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine?

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

Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

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

Jordan Belfort’s life today

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

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

Belfort's wives' names were changed for the film

The original crew Belfort recruited from friends are composite characters

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

Danny Porush's wife introduced Jordan Belfort to her husband

Belfort's destroyed yacht once belonged to Coco Chanel

Steve Madden spent time in prison for stock fraud

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

Tommy Chong was Belfort's cellmate in prison

Stratton Oakmont was never on Wall Street

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

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

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

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Nadine yacht model

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Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

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

Jordan Belfort’s life today

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What was the name of Belfort's brokerage house?

What exactly did Jordan Belfort do that was illegal?

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

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?

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

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

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

Did Jordan Belfort really abuse cocaine and other drugs?

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?

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

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

Was there ever a chimpanzee in the office?

Did he really almost crash his helicopter in his yard?

Did Danny Porush really marry his own first cousin?

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

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

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?

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

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

Did Jordan Belfort really name his yacht after his wife?

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

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

Did Jordan really strike his wife?

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

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

What inspired Jordan Belfort to write his memoir?

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

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