Jordan Belfort

His paternal grandfather, Jack Belfort (1904-1970), was an immigrant from Russia, while his grandmother was a Second Generation American born to Lithuanian parents in New Jersey.

Belfort was raised in Bayside, Queens.

Between completing high school and starting college, Belfort and his close childhood friend Elliot Loewenstern earned $20,000 selling Italian ice from Styrofoam coolers to people at a local beach.

Belfort went on to graduate from American University with a degree in biology.

Belfort planned on using the money earned with Loewenstern to pay for dental school, and he enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.

However, the dean of the dental school gave a welcoming speech on the first day in which he said "The golden age of dentistry is over. If you're here simply because you're looking to make a lot of money, you're in the wrong place."

Belfort subsequently elected not to attend the graduate program.

Belfort became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman on Long Island, New York.

He claims in interviews and his memoirs that the business was an initial success; he grew his meat-selling business to employ several workers and sell 5000 lb of beef and fish a week.

The business ultimately failed, as he filed for bankruptcy at 25.

According to his memoirs and interviews, a family friend helped him find a job as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild.

Jordan Ross Belfort (born July 9, 1962) is an American former stockbroker, financial criminal, and entrepreneur who pleaded guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation and running a boiler room as part of a penny-stock scam in 1999.

Belfort spent 22 months in prison as part of an agreement under which, becoming an informant for the FBI and wearing a wire, he gave testimony against numerous partners and subordinates in his fraud scheme.

Belfort was born in 1962 in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, to Jewish parents, Maxwell "Max" Belfort and Leah (née Markowitz).

They were both accountants.

Belfort says he was laid off after that firm experienced financial difficulties related to the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987.

Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont as a franchise of Stratton Securities, then later bought out the original founder.

Stratton Oakmont functioned as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with "pump and dump" stock sales.

During his years at Stratton, Belfort led a life of lavish parties and intensive use of recreational drugs, especially methaqualone—sold to him under the brand name "Quaalude"—that resulted in an addiction.

Stratton Oakmont at one point employed over 1,000 stock brokers and was involved in stock issues totaling more than $1 billion, including being behind the initial public offering for footwear company Steve Madden.

Stratton Oakmont was under near-constant scrutiny from the National Association of Securities Dealers (now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) from 1989 onward.

Finally, in December 1996, the NASD expelled Stratton Oakmont, putting it out of business.

Belfort was then indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

Belfort became an informant for the FBI and wore a wire against numerous partners and associates, later testifying against many of them.

The firm was targeted by law enforcement officials throughout nearly its entire history, and its notoriety inspired the film Boiler Room (2000), as well as the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

On July 18, 2003, Belfort was sentenced to four years in prison.

Belfort served 22 months of the sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, California, in exchange for a plea deal with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for running pump-and-dump scams that led to investor losses of approximately $200 million.

Belfort was ordered to pay back $110.4 million that he swindled from stock buyers.

Belfort shared a cell with Tommy Chong while serving his sentence, and Chong encouraged him to write about his experiences as a stockbroker.

The pair remained friends after their release from prison, with Belfort crediting Chong for his new career direction as a motivational speaker and writer.

He published the memoir The Wolf of Wall Street in 2007, which was adapted into a Martin Scorsese film of the same name released in 2013, in which he was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The restitution he paid during his parole period (after leaving prison) amounted to $382,910 in 2007, $148,799 in 2008, and $170,000 in 2009.

Following this period, Belfort began negotiating a restitution payment plan with the U.S. government.

Belfort's restitution agreement required him to pay 50% of his income towards restitution to the 1,513 clients he defrauded until 2009, with a total of $110 million in restitution further mandated.

About $10 million of the $110 million that had been recovered by Belfort's victims was the result of the sale of forfeited properties.

Several days later, the U.S. government withdrew its motion to find Belfort in default of his payments, after his lawyers argued that he had only been responsible for paying 50% of his salary to restitution up until 2009, and not since.

In October 2013, federal prosecutors filed a complaint against Belfort.

At a motivational talk that he delivered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on May 19, 2014, Belfort stated:

"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 per cent of the business was legitimate. ... It was all brokerage firm issues. It was all legitimate, nothing to do with liquidating stocks."

Federal prosecutors and SEC officials involved in the case, however, have said, "Stratton Oakmont was not a real Wall Street firm, either literally or figuratively".