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View information about Jordan Belfort's arrest and mugshot here on famouslyarrested.com Jordan Belfort. You can view information about Jordan Belfort's arrest and other celebrity arrests. You can view by name or by category. We also have included Jordan Belfort mugshots.
Jordan Belfort
- Jordan Belfort
- Stockbroker
- 1998
- Fraud
- 22 months in prison
The arrest of Jordan Belfort:
He was a swindler who likened himself to a wolf.
Jordan Belfort is the former stockbroker who was the inspiration for the Leonardo DeCaprio character in the 2013 movie, "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Belfort was born not far from Wall Street, in the Bronx, New York and grew up in Bayside, Queens. Money was his motivation. He quit dental school the same day the dean told him the golden age of making money in dentistry was over.
So he tried his hand in the markets, first as a stock broker at L.F. Rothschild. He went on the start his own brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont, which was really a boiler room operation pushing penny stocks and defrauding customers.
Here's how Hollywood portrayed it in the movie:
But it sure was lucrative and over the years his company employed over one thousand stock brokers and was involved in more than one billion dollars in transactions.
He also enjoyed living the high life and had a serious addiction to Quaaludes.
A multi-state task force eventually caught up with Stratton Oakmont after a series of complaints from investors. The firm was shut down in 1998 and Belfort was indicted for money laundering and securities fraud.
After cooperating with authorities, Belfort served 22 months in a federal prison, wrote his memoirs and now works as a motivational speaker.