Jordan Belfort, the man that films such as Boiler Room and The Wolf of Wall Street depict as a drug-binging, investor-fleecing felon who was complicit with armies of prostitutes servicing brokers on the Stratton Oakmont sales floor and who fleeced investors to the tune of $200 million, claims that he has turned over a new leaf, according to reports from the Sacramento Bee.
After ratting-out his employees and associates in order to cop a lighter sentence, Belfort agreed to pay $110 million in restitution to the over 1,500 investors he defrauded. He also served 22-months in jail.
When it is suggested that he hasn't made a real effort to repay the $110 million in restitution, of which Timothy Sykes calculates that the "Wolf of Wall Street" has yet to pay $100 million, Belfort is both elusive and defiant.
"It's ridiculous. I've paid more than anybody in my position has. The government's view is completely incorrect, based on a flawed assumption, on their part, that I owe 50 percent of my income for life. That is completely untrue. In fact, two months ago, the judge ruled 100 percent in my favor, saying that I am not obligated to pay 50 percent of my income for life..... I currently pay $10,000 a month, which was a number my lawyer worked out with the government, and on top of that I am voluntarily turning over all of my book and movie royalties, and also all my profits from the U.S. tour."
In his books, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching The Wolf of Wall Street, Belfort describes how he turned Stratton Oakmont into, "one of the largest and by far the wildest brokerage firms in Wall Street history." The statement contains two outright lies.
First, Stratton Oakmont was located in a strip plaza in Long Island, and was never located on Wall Street. Second, while Stratton Oakmont may have been big, when compared with real Wall Street firms, such as JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) and The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) with market capitalizations in the tens and hundreds of billions, and even non-Wall Street firms, such as privately-held Fidelity Management and Research, LLC, which manages over $2 trillion in customer assets, Stratton Oakmont was a small player.
However, it did not seem small to investors like Alfred Vitt, a retired dentist, who likely believed he was dealing with a real Wall Street firm and lost $250,000 to the "Wolf of Wall Street." Vitt says that he has only gotten about $8,000 back. On top of all this, Vitt also has to pay for a lawyer to pursue the matter, out of his own pocket.
In fact, in the film Boiler Room, the name of the fictional company portraying Stratton Oakmont was J.T. Marlin, which the film points out was deliberately chosen to trick investors into believing that they were dealing with a legitimate Wall Street firm.
Watch "The Wolf of Wall Street" discuss his actions with Liz Hayes, reporter with the Australian news magazine 60 Minutes, where he storms out, declaring, "You've got a lot of nerve!"
