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Summary
Summary
Belfort leads us from his early rise to power, to the FBI raid on his estate, the endless indictments at his arrest, and his deal to rat out his oldest friends and colleagues.
Author Notes
Jordan R. Belfort was born on July 9, 1962 in the Bronx. He is a motivational speaker and former stockbroker. He was convicted of fraud crimes related to stock market manipulation and running a penny stock boiler room for which he spent 22 months in prison. He is a graduate from American University with a degree in biology. Belfort started his career as a broker at L.F. Rothschild.
In the 1990s, he founded the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont which functioned as a boiler room marketing penny stocks, where he defrauded investors with fraudulent stock sales. During his years as a stock swindler, Belfort developed a hard-partying lifestyle, which included a serious drug addiction to Quaaludes.Stratton Oakmont employed over 1,000 stock brokers and was involved in stock issues totaling more than $1 billion, including an equity raising for footwear company Steve Madden Ltd. The notoriety of the firm, which was targeted by law enforcement officials in the late 1990s, inspired the 2000 film Boiler Room.
Belfort was indicted in 1998 for securities fraud and money laundering. After cooperating with the FBI, he served 22 months in federal prison for a pump and dump scheme, which resulted in investor losses of approximately $200 million. Belfort was ordered to pay back $110.4 million that he swindled from stock buyers. Belfort wrote two memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, which have been published in approximately 40 countries. His life story was turned into a motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and Margot Robbie, and directed by Martin Scorsese. Filming began in August 2012. The movie was released on December 25th, 2013. The book The Wolf of Wall Street made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
After serving time in federal minimum-security prison for stock fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes, Belfort offers another coarse, lively text as a companion to The Wolf of Wall Street (2007). That unsavory bestseller chronicled the rise of a cocky thief who actually operated a bucket shop in Long Island, not lower Manhattan. This is about his fall. It's also about money and sex, featuring erotic histrionics and rancid uxorious relations. The language is still nasty, the braggadocio intact. No lovable scamp, Belfort remains cunning and vainglorious, frequently mentioning the cost of his clothing and his furniture, sneering at the cheap shoes and Bic lighters of his federal captors. After all, he once had the mansions, the yacht, the money. But he confessed and became a cooperating informant. He ratted on friends and thieving comrades. He wore a wire. His new memoir is graphic, at once lowdown and over-the-top. Included is the collapse of his second marriage to "the Duchess of Bay Ridge," a classic trophy wife he had bugged for his own reasons. He got engaged to Miss Soviet Union. He dallied with a "self-proclaimed Jewish blow-job queen" and dabbled in what he calls "model-mongering." He jumped bail and broke his cooperation agreement by taking an ill-fated trip to Atlantic City with an underage "model." Withal, his love for his two children remained. In reward for his cooperation he served less than two years. In the Big House he bunked with Tommy Chong, who guided him in the craft of authorship. Chong, whose sincere, flaky memoir (The I Chong, 2006) is half as long as his student's, apparently forgot to impart the rule of Less is More. Still a hustler, still a salesmanand also a hell of a writer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Belfort's memoir (his recollection of events with some changed names and reconstructed dialogue) was written after serving almost two years in prison for securities fraud. The author recounts his meteoric rise on Wall Street, where he built one of the largest brokerage firms by age 27. He reflects upon his remarkable journey, explaining his core skill of training salesmen, especially stupid or naive young people, showing them how they can become rich. This is the story of a scam artist who enjoyed a lifestyle of parties, hookers, and drug dealing until the FBI took him away in handcuffs at age 36. It tells of his cooperation with the government and his life as an informant. In recounting what he acknowledges was his dysfunctional life, his apparent devotion to his children is a bright light. This sordid saga will either become popular as a cautionary tale of greed and treachery or it will become romanticized as glamorous excess and celebrity.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2009 Booklist