November 11, 1974
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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."
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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."
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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 Speaks at the Stratton Oakmont Christmas Party (1994) The real Jordan Belfort speaks at the 1994 Stratton Oakmont Christmas party. He tells the firm's employees that he is "proud" of what he has accomplished and that the employees should also be proud of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they have been given. At the end, he shares a moment with co-founder Danny Porush (Jonah Hill in the movie). The video was posted by Mary Detres, author of the book , which provides an insider's account of what it was like to work at the notorious brokerage firm. |
Jordan Belfort Interview Grant Lewers interviews Jordan Belfort on in 2010 about his memoir . Belfort talks about his life and what led him to start his firm. He offers his four keys to success that he teaches during his seminars and he recounts various stories, including his drug addiction, the story about his yacht sinking from the book, and trying to commit suicide. |
FBI Agent Gregory Coleman Interview (2007) This CNBC interview is from 2007, around the time of the release of Jordan Belfort's first memoir . Following a brief interview with Belfort, during which he describes himself as an "arch-criminal" who was in a way a "cult leader," FBI agent Gregory Coleman speaks about why he was so determined to catch Belfort. |
The Wolf of Wall Street Trailer 2 The second trailer for the Martin Scorsese movie , based on the autobiography of the same name by Jordan Belfort. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Jonah Hill. |
The Wolf of Wall Street Trailer Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio in the film adaptation of Jordan Belfort's memoir chronicling his life as a fast-living, corrupt stockbroker during the 1990s. Belfort's criminal ways caught up with him in 1998 when he was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering for which he spent 22 months in Federal Prison. |
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Martin Scorsese ’s The Wolf of Wall Street is a darkly comedic portrayal of unrestrained Wall Street hedonism and greed that ranks among the maestro’s greatest works of the last decade. Scorsese clearly excels at translating true stories into film, as seen with his newest release, Killers of the Flower Moon . Like all narrative films based on true stories, The Wolf of Wall Street takes a few liberties with Jordan Belfort’s life and crimes, such as using Jonah Hill ’s Donnie Azoff character as a stand-in for multiple real-life friends of Belfort’s.
Overall, though, the film is remarkably accurate and certainly conveys the underlying truths of Belfort’s 2007 memoir, which was the primary source material for the film . Although the film is three hours long , some details and interesting subplots were unable to make the final cut. As we explore the real-life stories of some of the film’s principal characters, we’ll see where Scorsese’s film diverted from the truth, and we’ll understand the additional context that helps add complexity to this remarkable, hilarious, and tragic story.
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.
The overall story of Jordan Belfort ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) and his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, as presented in Scorsese’s film , is true to life. Belfort was violating probably hundreds of laws at any given time, most of which involved defrauding his shareholders and manipulating the stock of dozens of companies. He recruited young, mostly working-class kids from Long Island to work at Stratton and indoctrinated them into what he repeatedly calls, in his 2007 memoir, a “cult.” They were taught to worship at the altar of money and to con their clients into buying worthless stock. While all this was happening in his professional life, Belfort’s personal life was plagued by addictions to numerous illegal substances, primarily cocaine and Quaaludes. He cheated on his first wife with a woman nicknamed “The Duchess of Bay Ridge,” played by Margot Robbie in the film . He later married the Duchess, and they had a tumultuous relationship filled with deceit and abuse that ended in divorce. Eventually, Belfort was caught by the FBI and after serving 22 months in federal prison , became a writer and motivational speaker. His first memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street , was published in 2007.
Steven Spielberg’s set visit lasted longer than expected!
Perhaps the biggest surprise to be found in Belfort’s memoir is that most of what is depicted in the film is true, at least according to Belfort’s best recollection. The copious amounts of drugs, the proliferation of sex workers, and rampant criminality are all depicted pretty accurately . Many of the more outrageous scenes in the film, such as when a female employee has her head shaved for $10,000, are true. Stratton Oakmont was notoriously depraved, but much of that depravity was inspired by existing financial institutions, some of them prestigious, others far less so. In other words, Belfort didn’t invent the practice of defrauding shareholders while snorting countless lines of cocaine, but he did engage in these illegal activities more frequently and ostentatiously than most.
One aspect of the film that accurately conveys Belfort’s mindset and perspective is its frequent use of fourth-wall-breaking narrations , in which Belfort speaks directly to the camera/audience . In his book, Belfort writes, “It was as if my life was a stage, and the Wolf of Wall Street was performing for the benefit of some imaginary audience.” Of course, that audience turned out to be real. Perhaps it was this idea of playing a character that led Belfort to dub himself the “Wolf of Wall Street.” There is scant evidence that anyone referred to him by that moniker until after the publication of his book. Belfort makes it seem throughout his memoir that people constantly called him “The Wolf” but that appears to be, at best, a creative embellishment.
In an effort to perhaps make Belfort seem a bit less crazed than his on-screen persona, it should be mentioned that despite the film citing “back pain” in air quotes as a reason for his drug habit, Belfort really did have constant back issues that required multiple surgeries. He would often use his health problems as a partial excuse for abusing various substances, but the film downplays his reliance on pharmaceuticals to alleviate his chronic pain . Belfort also wasn’t reckless or dumb enough to attempt to bribe an FBI agent, as depicted in the film. Belfort never even interacted with the FBI agent pursuing him until he was arrested.
One especially dramatic moment in Scorsese's unhinged biopic that is only partially true is when Belfort gives a speech to his employees, informing them that he is stepping down as leader and handing over the reins to Jonah Hill’s character Donnie. Then, mid-speech, he decides to reverse course and screams “ I’m not fucking leaving!” to rapturous applause. In reality, Belfort did step down but heavily implied in his speech that he would still be running Stratton from the sidelines by giving “advice” to Donnie’s real-life counterpart. Of course, once Belfort relinquished control, Stratton went on a downward spiral from which it would never recover.
Donnie Azoff is based on a real person named Danny Porush, who was Belfort’s right-hand man at Stratton and apparently an out-of-control Quaalude addict. Porush was introduced to Belfort through his wife. He was not, as the film depicts, a children’s furniture salesman who quit his job to work for Belfort when he saw one of Belfort’s pay stubs. In an interview with Mother Jones , Porush denied that several events depicted in the film ever happened, including the infamous dwarf-tossing scene (an idea that was seemingly shot down by Belfort for being too outrageous). He also confirmed to Mother Jones that nobody at the firm ever actually referred to Belfort as “The Wolf” or “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Although the film depicts Donnie as being resuscitated by Belfort after choking on food while under the influence of Quaaludes, it was actually another friend of Belfort’s whose life was saved when Belfort performed CPR on him. Porush similarly was not aboard Belfort’s yacht when it capsized and sank during a storm (that was another group of friends, all of whom were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard). Porush did, however, admit to eating an employee’s goldfish in order to send a message. Amazingly, it’s also true that Porush married his first cousin and brought Belfort to a crack den. He spent 20 months in prison after the FBI unraveled Stratton’s schemes .
Steve Madden ( Jake Hoffman ), the famous shoe designer, was childhood friends with Danny Porush and was roped into his old friend’s lawlessness ( Madden would end up being sentenced to 41 months in prison ). While Madden has a relatively quick cameo in the film, he looms much larger in Belfort’s memoir. Madden was actually personally and professionally closer to Belfort than he was to Porush. According to Belfort, Madden even offered to co-run his shoe company with Belfort , with Madden focusing on designing shoes and Belfort focusing on the manufacturing and distribution side of the business. After leaving Stratton, Belfort worked for Madden for a while until their relationship soured. Then the FBI took them both down. Madden ultimately was convicted of stock manipulation, money laundering, and securities fraud.
The merry band of misfits and former weed dealers that make up the core Stratton staff are mostly based on real people, but their exact work histories and relationships to Belfort are either simplified or omitted from the film. The Chester Ming ( Kenneth Choi ) character, for example, is based on a real person named Victor Wang , who had a much more interesting role to play in Belfort’s memoir than in the film . Victor wanted to start his own firm and was thus viewed with suspicion by Belfort. It turns out the suspicion was justified. Within days of forming his own business, Victor began spreading rumors that Stratton was on the verge of collapse. He later started poaching Stratton stockbrokers who preferred to work at Victor’s firm in Manhattan over Belfort’s firm on Long Island . Unbeknownst to Victor, Belfort was “waging a secret war” against him the whole time, which resulted in Victor’s new firm going belly up. It's also true that Victor assaulted Belfort’s butler and dangled him out of a window. Victor ended up being sentenced to eight years in prison.
Bo Dietl is a private investigator and former New York mayoral candidate with a long history of popping up in Scorsese’s films. Dietl appeared in Goodfellas as the detective who arrested Henry Hill and was cast in a memorable supporting role in The Irishman . Believe it or not, Dietl actually knew Belfort and berated him for plotting a scheme to bug the FBI. Dietl also introduced Belfort to an FBI agent, dug up some information about the FBI’s investigation into Stratton Oakmont, and helped keep alleged Mob members and other troublemakers from causing any problems at Belfort’s firm. Dietl ended up playing himself in The Wolf of Wall Street .
Perhaps the oddest fact concerning The Wolf of Wall Street is that Belfort’s cellmate in prison was none other than Tommy Chong , the legendary stoner and actor. In an interview with New York Magazine , Belfort credited Chong with inspiring him to write a memoir. Chong apparently found Belfort to be endlessly entertaining. “The Quaalude stories are my favorite,” Chong told New York Magazine .
The Wolf of Wall Street is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
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Was the Yacht Scene in Wolf of Wall Street Real?
The Wolf of Wall Street, a biographical comedy-drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, tells the story of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who became wealthy in the 1990s through his illegal activities. The film features several scenes that showcase Belfort’s lavish lifestyle, including a memorable yacht party scene. But was this scene real, or was it just a product of Hollywood’s imagination?
The Scene: A Night to Remember
The yacht scene in the Wolf of Wall Street takes place in the summer of 1998, when Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is at the height of his wealth and fame. The scene shows Belfort and his friends, including his business partner Donnie Azoff (played by Jonah Hill), partying on a luxurious yacht off the coast of New York City. The party is filled with champagne, strippers, and a general sense of debauchery.
What’s Real, What’s Not
So, was this scene based on real events? According to Jordan Belfort himself, the scene is largely fictional. In an interview with The Guardian, Belfort said: "The yacht party was a combination of a few different parties I had, but it was not one specific party. I had a lot of parties on yachts, and they were all crazy, but this one was a bit exaggerated."
But Was There a Yacht Party at All?
While the specific yacht party scene in the film may be fictional, there is evidence to suggest that Belfort did have a yacht party or two during his time as a stockbroker. In his memoir, "The Wolf of Wall Street," Belfort writes about a party he threw on a yacht in the Hamptons, where he and his friends spent the night drinking and partying.
Other Details That Are Real
While the yacht party scene may be fictional, there are several other details in the film that are based on real events. For example, Belfort did have a fondness for luxury cars, and he did own a Ferrari 328 GTS, which is featured in the film. He also did have a number of high-end watches, including a Rolex Daytona, which is shown in the film.
Table: Key Details from the Film vs. Reality
Detail | Film | Reality |
---|---|---|
Yacht Party | Fictional | Partially based on real events |
Luxury Cars | Featured in the film | Belfort owned a Ferrari 328 GTS |
High-End Watches | Featured in the film | Belfort owned a Rolex Daytona |
While the yacht party scene in the Wolf of Wall Street may be fictional, there is evidence to suggest that Jordan Belfort did have a number of lavish parties during his time as a stockbroker. The film’s portrayal of Belfort’s excesses and debauchery is likely exaggerated, but it is based on real events and details from his memoir. Ultimately, the question of whether the yacht scene is "real" is subjective, but it is clear that the film’s portrayal of Belfort’s lifestyle is at least partially based on reality.
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Even before Hollywood came calling, the real-life Jordan Belfort was equating himself to movie villains. Once a stockbroker, then a convict, then a motivational speaker, Belfort wrote of his experiences in his bestselling 2007 memoir , "The Wolf of Wall Street." It contains the line, "I had lots of nicknames. Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Keyser Soze; they even called me the King. But my favorite was the Wolf of Wall Street."
Cross-reference those first three alleged nicknames with the films "Wall Street," "The Godfather," and "The Usual Suspects." It soon becomes clear that Belfort, the born salesman, was all too ready to peddle himself as someone who belonged in the pantheon of great movie villains. Luckily for him (less so for the unseen victims of his financial crimes), director Martin Scorsese was happy to oblige him with a star-studded movie adaptation.
Belfort's memoir is filled with many wild stories, but some have questioned the veracity of its self-serving claims. By the time Scorsese came along and turned it into an Oscar-nominated 2013 film , audiences would be one more layer removed from the truth of what happened. The book cover reads, "I partied like a rock star, lived like a king," and inside its pages, Belfort, the "former member of the middle class," speaks in passing of "chaos capitalism."
"The Wolf of Wall Street," the movie, makes good on that dubious vision with a three-hour ode to excess, wealth, and skullduggery that's all the more unbelievable because some of it really occurred.
Martin Scorsese, working for the fifth time with Leonardo DiCaprio as his leading man, broke his own Guinness World Record for cinematic use of the f-word with "The Wolf of Wall Street." His film "Casino" had previously set the record in 1995, but "The Wolf of Wall Street" eclipsed its 422 f-bombs with a whopping 506 of them.
That's just one interesting bit of trivia related to the movie. When you sift through all the swearing to get at the facts, though, just how much of "The Wolf of Wall Street" was true, and how much of it was embellishment — or straight fibs of the kind Keyser Soze might tell?
Jordan Belfort is not what you'd call a credible witness; in fact, the whole movie is arguably told from the perspective of a master of deceit, who scammed investors out of millions. Scorsese leveraged all his cinematic powers in service of what DiCaprio called "a modern-day Caligula" story, but he was also adapting a criminal's autobiography. That's a little different than what he did with "Goodfellas" and the aforementioned "Casino," both adapted from a nonfiction book where the gangster's tale came filtered through author Nicholas Pileggi.
"The Irishman," too, was based on a Charles Brandt book about the life of mob enforcer Frank Sheeran, whose confession was later discredited . In "The Wolf of Wall Street," the bad guy tells his own story, sometimes giving the camera a suitably wolfish grin as he does so.
Terence Winter handled the screenwriting chores for "The Wolf of Wall Street," and he and Martin Scorsese framed an entire HBO series, "Boardwalk Empire," around another gangster named Nucky Thompson. Actor Bobby Cannavale – who won an Emmy Award for "Boardwalk Empire" the same year "The Wolf of Wall Street" hit theaters — narrated the original, abridged audiobook version of Jordan Belfort's memoir.
In the book, Jonah Hill's character, Donnie Azoff, is referred to by the name Danny Porush. Donnie was loosely based on the real Danny, who was Belfort's business partner and the co-founder of Stratton Oakmont, the Long Island brokerage house that becomes a circus of sex, drugs, dwarf-tossing, and pump-and-dump fraud in "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Though Porush has called Belfort's book "a distant relative of the truth," he himself married a not-so-distant relative: his own first cousin. In the movie, Belfort broaches the subject of these "rumors" over beers at a bar, eliciting Donnie's bug-eyed, toothy admission, "Yeah, my wife is my cousin or whatever." That part of Porush's personal background is true, according to Time , though he and his cousin are now divorced.
Unlike Belfort, Porush was not involved in the making of "The Wolf of Wall Street." Changing his character's name helped remove any liability the filmmakers might face for damaging his reputation. Porush reportedly threatened to sue them beforehand, so the name change was a practical decision meant to cover their bases.
On the testosterone-filled office floor in "The Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort psyches up his stockbrokers with the words, "This right here is the land of opportunity. Stratton Oakmont is America!" It's true he used to give speeches to his employees with a microphone, which prepared him for his later life of motivational speaking. Substitute "country" for "company" in his movie speeches, and it lays bare the cultural subtext of "The Wolf of Wall Street."
In Belfort's America, money can buy anything and everyone. Sex workers were indeed charged to the company credit card, his book indicates, and Danny Porush says it's true they paid an employee $10,000 to shave her head. The movie makes a spectacle out of her doing it to get breast implants, with Belfort shouting, "This is the greatest country company in the world!"
It's not long before a half-dressed band comes marching in, followed by champagne waiters and strippers. Martin Scorsese dials everything up to 11, combining Belfort's book description of multiple parties into one hedonistic scene.
In an interview with Mother Jones (by way of History vs. Hollywood ), Porush disputed that the office ever brought in a chimpanzee on roller skates or did any dwarf-tossing at its parties. Little people are said to have attended one party, but Belfort's memoir only depicts the meeting where he and his associates discuss the hypothetical specifics of tossing them. Porush admitted, however, that the part where he/Donnie swallows a broker's pet goldfish was true.
In "The Wolf of Wall Street," there's a scene where a journalist for Forbes magazine visits the offices of Stratton Oakmont. She's doing a profile on Jordan Belfort, which winds up being "a total f***ing hatchet job" in his eyes. The article appears onscreen with Leonardo DiCaprio in his tan-faced movie poster pose below the headline "The Wolf of Wall Street." All the while, Belfort rails against the journalist labeling him that, as if she was the one who coined his nickname and the movie's title.
You can read the real 1991 article on the official Forbes site (and see a larger scanned image of it here ). The headline was actually "Steaks, Stocks — What's The Difference?" This is one of the more interesting "Wolf of Wall Street" artifacts out there, showing how the movie partially overlaps with reality. It's a "prop" anyone can access online, and it offers a real view of how someone other than Jordan Belfort viewed Jordan Belfort.
The true journalist was Roula Khalaf, not Aliyah Farran (the fictitious byline shown in the movie), though her article does contain the highlighted movie phrase "pushing dicey stocks." It also contains a line that DiCaprio performs almost verbatim about Belfort "sounding like a kind of twisted Robin Hood, who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers." Yet if it wasn't Forbes that coined the "Wolf of Wall Street" nickname, that immediately opens up the question of who did.
According to CNN , Jordan Belfort himself came up with the "Wolf of Wall Street" name. Before Martin Scorsese's film premiered, Danny Porush disputed that anyone at Stratton Oakmont ever called Belfort that. In 2013, a prosecutor in the Belfort case, former assistant U.S. attorney Joel M. Cohen, likewise told The New York Times , "In all the years that we investigated him, the hundreds of hours I spent with him and his cohorts, I never heard anyone call him 'The Wolf of Wall Street.'"
Circling back to Belfort's sketchy book claim that "Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Keyser Soze" were among his many nicknames, he had already lumped himself together with several cinematic bad boys. By linking his name to famous movie villains, it's as if Belfort aimed to set himself up as a sort of prepackaged Hollywood deal. "I was the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing," he writes.
There's a part in the book where Belfort's apoplectic father, played by Rob Reiner in the movie, rattles off a whole paragraph of dialogue, which begins with, "And you, the so-called Wolf of Wall Street — the demented young Wolf!" Unless he was running a tape recorder in his office back in the 1990s, it seems unlikely Belfort would have been able to perfectly recollect such dialogue. It would appear that, rather than being incensed at his lupine nickname, Belfort anointed himself the Wolf of Wall Street as a bit of self-promotion.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" begins with Jordan Belfort already relishing a rich and famous lifestyle. It then flashes back to him at 22, getting off the bus on Wall Street, "the one place on earth that befit [his] high-minded ambitions."
The truth is, Wall Street came a little later for Belfort. In the movie, he mentions being "raised by two accountants." Yet there's no mention of him dropping out of dentistry school (per The Independent ) or selling meat and seafood door-to-door. The latter is what prompted the wordplay in the Forbes headline, "Steaks, Stocks — What's The Difference?" Belfort's beefy business soon went under, leaving him a failed businessman at 25. It was only then that he became a stockbroker-in-training at the firm L.F. Rothschild.
Matthew McConaughey's character, Mark Hanna, was a real senior broker at L.F. Rothschild who did advise masturbation and cocaine as keys to success, according to Belfort's memoir. In a video on his verified Twitter account, McConaughey said that the character's chest-thumping chant was born of a warm-up ritual that he himself did before every take, just to get in the zone as an actor.
Biography.com reveals that Belfort started selling stocks in 1987. That was the same year future president Donald Trump published his memoir, "The Art of the Deal," while Oliver Stone's aforementioned "Wall Street," with its famous movie quote, "Greed is good," hit theaters nationwide.
Actor Jake Hoffman, who also appears in "The Irishman" and is Dustin Hoffman's son, plays designer Steve Madden in "The Wolf of Wall Street." Madden and Danny Porush were childhood friends, just as the movie depicts. The company Madden founded (and continues to design for) is still a leading name in women's shoes. In the 2021 fiscal year, its revenue jumped up to $1.9 billion.
The real-life Madden thought Hoffman's portrayal of him was "too nerdy." Though the movie implies he stabbed Jordan Belfort in the back by unloading shares after Stratton Oakmont took his company public, Madden told Page Six , "He ratted me out to save himself."
Madden wouldn't cooperate with the FBI as Belfort did, and wound up serving a longer 41-month sentence in prison (compared to Belfort's 22-month stretch). However, his life rebounded, and he's called "The Wolf of Wall Street" "a great movie." In his autobiography, "The Cobbler," Madden wrote , "The movie also raised our brand awareness with young men and increased our name recognition."
When Jordan Belfort is touting Steve Madden's once-in-a-decade genius in "The Wolf of Wall Street," he compares him to other well-known fashion designers. Coco Chanel's name is sandwiched between Gianni Versace and Yves St. Laurent without further comment, but Belfort had a greater real-life connection to Chanel, as he was the last person to own her yacht.
Between the publication and filming of "The Wolf of Wall Street," Chanel's image was tarnished by revelations that she was a Nazi agent . This may be why her previous ownership of the yacht was left out, despite being included in Belfort's memoir. As seen in the movie, he did sink the yacht in a storm, and he did sink his marriage by hitting his wife and driving his car through the garage door with his 3-year-old child in front.
The yacht was named the Nadine, not the Naomi, and the same goes for Belfort's wife. Margot Robbie landed the Naomi part by going off-script and slapping DiCaprio in her improvised audition . She regretted filming their love scene on a cash bed because of all the paper cuts it left her.
The real Nadine, who went on to become a Ph.D. and TikTok-powered therapist after their divorce, said it's not true Belfort bought her the yacht as a wedding present. His abuse of her and his rough helicopter landing on their front lawn was partially fueled by a real drug problem.
After Jordan Belfort is caught and becomes the Rat of Wall Street, the movie portrays him heroically tipping off Donnie Azoff about him wearing a wire via a napkin message. Belfort never tipped off Danny Porush, but in his sequel book, "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street," he related a similar incident involving another friend.
By likening Belfort to Caligula, Leonardo DiCaprio somewhat aligns "The Wolf of Wall Street" with the idea that America is the new Roman Empire. His decline and fall is its decline and fall. FBI agent Patrick Denham, seen on Belfort's yacht with the American flag almost flowing out of his head, can only try and plug the dam. Kyle Chandler's all-American image as Eric Taylor in "Friday Night Lights" thus underpins Denham's character, who was based on agent Gregory Lockwood.
Former Stratton Oakmont exec Andrew Greene, the inspiration for the toupee-wearing character "Wigwam" in the book and "Rugrat" (P.J. Byrne) in the movie, unsuccessfully sued the studios behind "The Wolf of Wall Street" for libel, losing in part because of the credits disclaimer:
"While this story is based on actual events, certain characters, characterizations, incidents, locations and dialogue were fictionalized or invented for purposes of dramatization. With respect to such fictionalization or invention, any similarity to the name or to the actual character or history of any person, living or dead, or any product or entity or actual incident, is entirely for dramatic purpose and not intended to reflect on an actual character, history, product or entity."
Tommy Chong has dozens of movie and TV credits to his name, some through his collaboration with Cheech Marin in the stoner comedy duo Cheech & Chong. He had a recurring role on "That '70s Show" and has also done activism for marijuana legalization.
As chance would have it, a nine-month sentence for selling bongs online landed Chong in the same federal prison as Jordan Belfort. The prison was so nice that it didn't even have cells, but the two men apparently shared a cubicle. New York Magazine reports that they were "cube mates" or "cubies."
In 2014, Yahoo News further reported that Chong — as Belfort's cube mate — was instrumental in convincing him to turn his life story into a memoir. At the time, Chong was writing his own book, and though Belfort would regale him with stories of his stockbroker misadventures, he had been wiling away his days in prison by playing tennis.
The movie shows Belfort on the tennis court at the end, where he brags about how being rich and living in a country "where everything was for sale" helped soften the blow when he eventually had to face the consequences of his actions.
In prison, Chong gave Belfort some writing advice after the fictionalized first draft of "The Wolf of Wall Street" read like a John Grisham knockoff. "I told him a few tricks of the trade, how to articulate the story," Chong said.
While Belfort was on parole, 50% of his income went toward restitution for his victims. That ended in 2009, but for the rest of his life, Jordan Belfort has to continue paying at least $10,000 a month into a $110 million restitution fund. In 2018, a judge made a ruling to garnish more of his funds since Belfort had only paid a "fraction" of what he owed. He, therefore, has a deep incentive to continue making money.
In the film, Belfort boasts of "selling garbage to garbage men." A pivotal moment comes when his first wife, Leah (Christine Ebersole), suggests that he rethink his penny stock scheme, marketing it to "rich people who can, like, afford to lose a lot of money."
From there, Belfort's off to the races, but among his real-world victims were retirees and small-business owners, not just fabulously wealthy individuals. Some people he duped lost their life savings or the money for their children's college tuition.
In 2022, The New York Times reported that Jordan Belfort was investing in NFT start-ups and other ventures, while offering his services as a consultant, sales coach, and cryptocurrency guru. For the price of one $40,000 Bitcoin, guests could attend a workshop at his luxurious Miami Beach home.
The image that emerges in the Times via words and photos is one of Belfort drinking a morning Red Bull and lounging on his couch, surrounded by blockchain disciples — all men — whose bible for the day would be Belfort's 2017 sales manual, "The Way of the Wolf." One of the guests confessed to having already stolen a copy of "The Wolf of Wall Street" from the library.
Despite his continuing prosperity, 2021 saw Belfort himself become the victim of a crypto hacker, who robbed him of $300,000 in Ohm tokens. In 2020, Belfort also made headlines for filing a $300 million lawsuit against Red Granite Pictures, one of the production companies behind the "Wolf of Wall Street" film. The suit alleged that Red Granite and its CEO had co-financed the movie with a Belfort-like bundle of dirty money , stolen from the Malaysian government.
Belfort seemed to acknowledge that his own ill-gotten gains were the result of misdirected energy, and he could have profited better off legitimate business pursuits. "I missed the internet boom," he lamented. "I would've made 100x more money."
At the beginning of the "Wolf of Wall Street" movie, there's a moment where Jordan Belfort is speeding down the freeway in his red Ferrari as Naomi performs fellatio on him. Through voiceover narration, he offers a quick correction: "My Ferrari was white, like Don Johnson's in 'Miami Vice,' not red." The car then spontaneously changes colors onscreen, as if to illustrate the mutability of memory and malleability of the truth.
Later, during the infamous Quaaludes scene, Belfort drives his white Lamborghini under the influence and believes he's "made it home alive, not a scratch on me or the car." Two cops subsequently drag him outside, where he sees that the car is, in fact, wrecked.
In his drug-fueled state, he had misremembered the details. The irony is, in real life (per Time ), it was a Mercedes that Belfort drove home that night, not a Lamborghini.
If cars are interchangeable in "The Wolf of Wall Street," it leaves the viewer to wonder what other facts might have been changed for artistic purposes. For some things, all we have to go on is a game of he-said, he-said between Belfort and Danny Porush.
These are the same two men whose film analogs, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, are shown smoking crack together. In 2014, Porush denied moments like that or Donnie's impromptu public masturbation ever happened, telling The Sun , "I never smoked crack and I never pulled out my penis at a party."
As a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese took creative license with Jordan Belfort's book, just as Belfort may have taken license with some of the facts of his own biography. In "The Wolf of Wall Street," Belfort self-mythologizes. It's even possible there are things he believes happened that didn't, like how we see the movie Lamborghini making it home undamaged.
As he cold-calls strangers, reads from his script on how to fleece them, and coaches Stratton Oakmont trainees on how to do the same, the film version of Belfort puts one of his victims on speakerphone. With the guys around him snickering like hyenas, Belfort pantomimes reeling in a fish before flicking off the voice on the other end of the line. He openly mocks and shows his contempt for this sucker, who we never see, because we're always in Belfort's perspective. The other person's not important to him.
By the end, Belfort has reinvented himself as a respectable citizen, someone people will pay to see and learn sales psychology from at business seminars. For the final image, Scorsese points the camera at Belfort's audience, which includes the people onscreen and the ones watching the movie.
The real Belfort cameos as the host who introduces DiCaprio onstage. The Wolf is in Auckland now, asking guys with Kiwi accents to sell him a pen, but it's the same self-reflexive pitch-me pitch that he gave his "hometown boys" earlier in the movie.
The question is, are you buying what he's selling?
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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.'"
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.
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'?"
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."
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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.
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.
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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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 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.
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.
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, at 59 years of age, has a practically negative net worth. 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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When things start heading south for Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street , he demands that his yacht sail through a monstrous storm that, shocker, sinks his boat. The scene has almost nothing to do with the plot and everything to display the lengths of desperation and unearned confidence the cheating money man has stuffed in his pockets. It turns out all the money in the world can’t stop nature from sending your luxury party barge to the bottom of the sea. It also turns out that we almost never got to see the absurdist comeuppance because unnamed powers that be were interested in cutting the thing altogether to bring down costs.
According to screenwriter Terence Winter , Martin Scorsese fought to keep it in, much to the delight of schadenfreude connoisseurs.
“Because [the script] was so long, you know, the fear was there were going be things that we were gonna have to cut — like the sequence where the boat sinks and they get rescued at sea,” Winter said. “It was on the chopping block for the longest time because it was so wild and so expensive. To his credit, Marty just kept fighting and said, ‘We have to have that. I have to have that.’”
He makes a great point! There are a multitude of bizarre and shocking things in the movie, but nothing on such an epic scale. It’s the rug that really ties the room together.
Now if we could only get that four-hour cut …
(via The Hollywood Reporter )
Martin Scorsese has made many movies about crime and criminals. Oftentimes, he’s dealing with the mob. Think movies like “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” However, there are other kinds of criminals. That is at the center of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a film that is vulgar and bracing even by the standards of Scorsese. Some bristled at it. Others love it. However you feel, here are 20 facts about Scorsese’s white-collar-crime epic.
Believe it or not, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is based on a true story. Specifically, it’s based on a memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort, the main character of the film as well. After getting out of prison for assorted instances of fraud and other malfeasance, Belfort wrote his book.
In this instance, crime paid, as there was a bidding war for “The Wolf of Wall Street” after Belfort’s book was published. In the end, Leonardo DiCaprio joined forces with Warner Bros. in 2007 to win the bidding war with a $1 million payout. At this point, Scorsese would get involved, but it was a tumultuous ride.
Scorsese was doing some work on the screenplay, and DiCaprio wanted him to direct the movie. However, Warner Bros. wouldn’t give them the green light. Fed up, Scorsese left the project to work on another film, “Shutter Island.” That one would also star DiCaprio, funnily enough. Ridley Scott was then in talks to direct, but eventually, Warner Bros. abandoned the project altogether, leaving the rights open again.
With Warner Bros. off the project, the independent production company Red Granite Pictures bought the rights and offered carte blanche from a content perspective. They were a brand new company at the time, as they got the rights in 2012, the same year Red Granite released their first film, “Friends with Kids.” However, Red Granite has been mired in controversy since the heyday of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It was alleged that company co-founder Riza Aziz had illegally siphoned money from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad. The United States Department of Justice brought a civil lawsuit against Red Granite, who paid $60 million to settle. They have not produced a movie since.
The film is perhaps not as graphic as Belfort’s memoir, but to hear Belfort tell it things could have been even crazier. He claims that his publisher Random House asked him to tone his book down before they would publish it. Of course, this is also a guy who says he was on 22 different drugs at one point and who, you know, went to prison for fraud. Take what he says with a grain of salt.
When writing his memoir, Belfort used real names. For the film, though, some of the names were changed. This allowed Scorsese some artistic license, plus unsurprisingly some people did not want their names affiliated with the story. Particularly, Jonah Hill’s character Donnie Azoff is not specifically a real person, though he is reportedly based on Danny Porush, who threatened to sue if his name was used. Weirdly, Hill also played a fake version of a real person in “Moneyball.”
By the time he was filming “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Hill was already a star. He was not paid like one for the movie, though. In spite of being ostensibly the second lead, Hill got only $60,000 for the movie. This was the minimum he could be paid per SAG-AFTRA. DiCaprio, meanwhile, got $10 million.
“The Wolf of Wall Street” is a hard R movie if there ever was one. And yet, it almost featured one of the seemingly sweetest actors out there. Julie Andrews was offered the role of Aunt Emma, but she was recovering from an ankle injury. Instead, Joanna Lumley took the role.
Robbie is a big star now, but back in 2013, this was not the case. Prior to 2013, she was best known for her role in the Australian soap opera “Neighbours.” A couple of months before “The Wolf of Wall Street” came out she technically made her American film debut in “About Time,” but her turn as Naomi was definitely her breakout performance to many.
Belfort and his friends consume a lot of drūgs, especially cocāine. They were Wall Street guys, after all. In place, the production used Vitamin D powder for snorting scenes. Not that it was without health risks. Hill got bronchitis from all the Vitamin D snorting. At least he didn’t have to worry about rickets.
“The Wolf of Wall Street” has sex and drugs, naturally, but it also has a ton of swearing. In fact, it set a new Guinness World Record for the most swearing in a movie. They used the f-word 569 times alone, which averages out to 2.81 times per minute. The record now belongs to the Canadian film “Swearnet: The Movie.”
As a truly raunchy film about amoral people, the success of “The Wolf of Wall Street” was not a given. However, it kind of needed to be, given that it cost $100 million to make. Fortunately, the combo of Scorsese and DiCaprio worked again. The film made $392 million worldwide. In fact, it’s Scorsese’s highest-grossing movie ever.
When the Academy Awards rolled around, “The Wolf of Wall Street” was not overlooked. It got five nominations, including some of the big ones. Scorsese was up for Best Director, DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor, Hill got a look for Best Supporting Actor, and the movie was also up for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. However, it went home with zero wins.
McConaughey is barely in the film, but he makes quite an impact. In fact, the scene where he pounds his chest and hums featured prominently in the promotion of the film. This wasn’t in the script. In fact, it was an actual thing McConaughey did to warm himself up when acting. DiCaprio and Scorsese decided to work it into the movie.
Scorsese is an extremely successful director, but he’s not the only one associated with the movie. There are a few noteworthy directors with acting roles in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Marvel bigwig Jon Favreau has a role, and Rob Reiner played Jordan’s dad. Meanwhile, Spike Jonze has an uncredited role early in the movie as well.
Steve Madden is one of the few notable names not changed for the movie, and he’s played by Jake Hoffman. If you recognize that last name, you are on the right track. Hoffman is indeed the son of Dustin Hoffman. He also has a role in another Scorsese film, “The Irishman.”
During the section of the movie where Belfort is out of his mind on Quaaludes, Scorsese and DiCaprio did some improvising. One of the things they improvised was Jordan opening his car door with his foot. However, DiCaprio hurt his back during that, so they could only film that stunt once.
Terence Winter is the credited screenwriter on the movie. That makes sense, and he and Scorsese have a working history, as Winter created “Boardwalk Empire.” Prior to getting into writing, though, Winter worked as a lawyer in New York for a couple of years. In fact, he even worked as a legal assistant at Merrill Lynch in their trading department. That likely helped him in the writing of “Wolf of Wall Street.”
Hill was dedicated to his craft and wanted to actually eat a real goldfish in the movie. However, animal cruelty laws on films prohibited him from doing that. Instead, Hill was only allowed to keep the goldfish in his mouth for three seconds under the watchful eyes of animal handlers.
At the end of the movie, Belfort is out of prison and working as a motivational speaker. This was true for the real Belfort as well. Speaking of the actual man, he appears in that final scene as the man who introduces his cinematic doppelganger. This is, obviously, controversial. It’s one thing to buy a guy’s life story and make a movie about him that largely condemns his lifestyle choices. It’s another to actually have him in the film as well.
Chris Morgan is a Detroit-based culture writer who has somehow managed to justify getting his BA in Film Studies. He has written about sports and entertainment across various internet platforms for years and is also the author of three books about '90s television.
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You don't need to have seen The Wolf of Wall Street to know the life of an international tycoon ain't all it's cracked up to be. Jho Low would know, he lived the fantasy and is now paying the price. Creeping his way into the heart of Hollywood through the sheer power of money, and the influence it purchases, Low became the ultimate celebrity magnet in the early 2010s.
Living it up, the Malaysian businessman established himself as the guy to get things done. If you needed a cash infusion to get your film project off the ground, you made a beeline to his yacht. Through Red Granite Pictures — co-owned by the stepson of the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak — he benefited from his unique place in the Malaysian government to build his empire, channeling dough into the hands of Hollywood nobility.
The wolf of wall street.
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2013's The Wolf of Wall Street marked the high point in Low's career, breathing life into a floundering movie no one else had the guts to greenlight . It's an uncomfortable truth that no film gets made without money — lots of it. That particular resource is the lifeblood of the entertainment industry and is the very reason Hollywood can shrug off $100 million losses and filmmakers everywhere else need to beg for government grants and subsidies.
Yes, even rich people need to plead for money. Financiers are secretly the most pivotal players in the film world. With enough cash, anyone can buy respect, class, friends, political connections, and the adoration of Victoria's Secret supermodels. The caliber of people hurling themselves at Low's feet, groveling for his attention, was comical but also alarming.
Of course, there was a catch. Low was a crook . Corruption, bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering to fund a narcissist, international playboy's lifestyle of supermodel-filled yachts? Sounds like a great movie. And like every film you've ever seen, the feds eventually spoiled this party too.
After the Oscar ceremonies and gala premieres died down, we learned that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio inadvertently teamed up with an international conman robbing his country blind . Does crime pay? Well, we're not going to lie. So far, it seems to have paid off nicely for Low, but that could change. This is the pathetic ballad of Jho Low, the man who would do anything to rub elbows with the world's elites, and got away with it. Jordan Belfort, eat your heart out.
Jho Low's producing credits before 2013 were brief and unspectacular, peaking with The Wolf of Wall Street and Dumb and Dumber To . Without his finagling behind the scenes, there was a good chance neither one would hit the red carpet. You are probably asking how a film director like Martin Scorsese could struggle to get money to get his films produced. Truth is, he barely got Silence or The Irishman completed either. He and DiCaprio always seem to get stuck in development hell .
The substance of his work (violence, cursing, religious themes, and extended run-times) doesn't jibe with mainstream studios in search of safe, marketable (read: bland) content with broad appeal. Recalling his conversation with Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio told Vulture in 2013, "Larger-scale, R-rated dramas, like Blood Diamond or The Departed , don’t really get financed anymore." He spoke too soon. Stepping up to save the day, Red Granite agreed to supply the money , with no demands to soften the R-rating to PG-13, a decision that preserved the raw edge Scorsese needed.
No one at the time was fazed by an obscure figure materializing out of nowhere with endless pockets full of cash to distribute like Halloween candy. Insanely wealthy foreign financiers heaving stacks of money around is nothing new. Glance only at the Saudi Arabian Cultural Development Fund, which recently dumped resources upon filmmakers in the region, the conservative country even getting into bed with the WWE of all people.
Low played by his own rules. It turns out, he had a lot in common with The Wolf of Wall Street protagonist he brought to life, Jordan Belfort. His frat-boy lifestyle revolved around his yacht and lots of booze . Low's primary hobby, besides champagne, diamonds, boating, and film, was networking. He contracted celebrities to be his friends and attend his lavish yacht parties, the extent of which extended past film opportunities. Allegedly, he used his wealth to obtain some sick jewelry for his model girlfriend, Miranda Kerr. Overnight, Low was the most daring and intriguing producer in the biz. Unfortunately, the money wasn't his.
Here's how the con job worked. Making the best of his connections with the prime minister, he came up with the idea of an investment trust in 2009. Soon billions were being illegally transferred from Malaysian investment accounts to Red Granite (they denied all knowledge of Low’s scheme, naturally) over a six-year period. The slush fund was supposed to help prop up the infrastructure and services of Malaysia, but Low obtained access to the cash through his friendship with the PM , and the two used the coffer as their personal piggy bank. Malaysians were not happy when they found out their money was bankrolling Daddy's Home .
The 1Malaysia Development Berhad, better known simply as 1MDB, estimated $4.5 billion was pilfered. The conspirators extended to influential parties within the Malaysian elite. Prime Minister Najib Razak was among those tried and found guilty of ripping off their constituents through an intricate laundering scheme that shuffled lucre from one nation to another. According to US government spokespeople, it was the biggest seizure in the history of the Department of Justice . Riza Aziz, a fellow Wolf of Wall Street producer, was also involved in the investigation. He was implicated in the theft and laundering by the DOJ , according to Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt:
"Aziz and his co-conspirators allegedly diverted these funds for their own benefit and used them to acquire luxury real estate in New York and London and to make personal investments. The forfeiture of these assets will add to the almost $1.1 billion stolen from 1MDB that the U.S. Department of Justice has so far helped recover and return to the Malaysian people."
Those astute out there will recall that laundering money to make films is not a novel idea and that many criminals and underworld syndicates have waded into the movie-producing business over the years. Sometimes with very ugly results . However, this takes it to a whole new level. Money stolen was then funneled into films and underwriting the mogul's crime spree, paying famous people to attend his yacht parties on his $250 million luxury boat, where the likes of Emily Ratajkowski, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian twerked with the wannabe Jay Gatsby for their turn at his money — make that the Malaysians' money. His motive was as simple as it was sad. He wanted people to like him , thus developing the habit of paying models and famous individuals to take photo ops with him, as reported by Fortune . It worked.
Hollywood has had some deep ties to the mob and organized crime, with some films actually being funded and produced by mafia members.
Low's exploits weren't limited to models, actors, and hard-up directors in search of financiers. Thinking big, Low used his contacts with his then-buddy, Leo DiCaprio, to try and get access to the American president at the time, Barack Obama. In court, the Wolf of Wall Street actor testified that Low was in talks to give large donations, rumored to be upwards of $30 million, to the Obama re-election campaign in 2012, buying access to the most powerful man on the planet .
One to play every side, Low even allegedly reached out to Trump family members in a bid to help him when 1MDB scandal broke. He'd sadly never get the chance to leverage that influence as his operation exploded in his face. 1MDB is defunct, his buddies in the Malaysian government are disgraced, his ex-squeeze Kerr was forced to part with her jewelry as part of the forfeiture, all of Low's chums disowned him after he was found guilty in a trial in absentia, and Red Granite ceased producing films as of 2017. Scorsese's sugar daddy is now out of the picture, so don't cross your fingers for that Sinatra biopic .
Among 569 F-bombs, The Wolf of Wall Street has some very intriguing facts about Jordan Belfort, his addictions, and his business Stratton Oakmont.
As of writing, Low is still on the lam, on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. The sale of Basquiat, Warhol, Picasso, and Monet paintings is only a drop in the bucket of what was confiscated in the aftermath of the embezzlement scheme. Earlier this year, a documentary was released titled Man on the Run , all about Low and his co-conspirator Razak. Featured in the documentary are the whistle-blower who exposed the con and the journalist who reported the scandal, Clare Rewcastle Brown.
As his celebrity status exploded, Low, ironically, has been forced to keep his head down and live a modest life. Low maintained enough connections with corrupt government officials to evade multiple authorities across the globe . Rumors place the mastermind in Macau. Cash stashed away for a rainy day, Low's still got some friends willing to protect him. Though he is now traveling by more conventional means. Equanimity, his gaudy floating mansion, is currently on the market. For $250 million, this piece of film/legal history can be yours, bent politicians and socialites-for-rent sold separately.
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Her solution was to buy her own yacht. A 37m with a steel hull, built by the Dutch yard Witsen & Vis of Alkmaar. The yacht passed through many hands, finally ending up belonging to the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, on whose watch she foundered and sank in 1996. The yacht was originally built for a Frenchman under the name Mathilde, but ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 Nadine that was caught in a raging tempest and before sinking ...
The yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street is mostly true, with some artistic liberties taken to enhance the drama and spectacle. While the film's portrayal of the event may be exaggerated, the ...
Martin Scorsese was determined that " The Wolf of Wall Street " would have a sinking ship onscreen. The blockbuster, Oscar-nominated 2013 film which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life ...
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.
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. The movie features memorable moments from Belfort's memoir, such as smuggling money into Swiss banks and sinking a yacht. However, several real-life figures ...
The Yacht sinking scene from the movie Wolf of Wall Street was one of the most iconic scenes of the movie. What is even surprising is that was a real life in...
August 13, 2013By: Diane M. Byrne. To be fair, The Wolf of Wall Street, hitting theaters in November, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, and Jonah Hill. But to those of us in yachting, the megayacht in The Wolf of Wall Street movie is the real star. She's Lady M, and she plays the role of a well-known yacht from the 1990s, Nadine.
1. "The yacht in The Wolf of Wall Street is not just a backdrop; it symbolizes the larger-than-life personality of Jordan Belfort and his disregard for conventional norms." - Film Critic and Historian. 2. "The yacht scenes provide a visual feast, emphasizing the excesses of the characters and creating a sense of escapism for the ...
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 ...
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). ... 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 ...
His first memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street, was published in 2007. Related Steven Spielberg Helped Martin Scorsese Direct This 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Scene
The yacht scene in the Wolf of Wall Street takes place in the summer of 1998, when Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is at the height of his wealth and fame.
At the beginning of the "Wolf of Wall Street" movie, there's a moment where Jordan Belfort is speeding down the freeway in his red Ferrari as Naomi performs fellatio on him. Through voiceover ...
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 ...
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 Wolf of Wall Street" is a 2013 biographical comedy directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. The film stars L...
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 ... Controversial. Old. Q&A. QuickStopRandal • God, the real Naomi (Nadine) is not even remotely as hot as the one in the movie. Then again, he's no Leonardo, either. Reply reply ...
When things start heading south for Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, he demands that his yacht sail through a monstrous storm that, shocker, sinks his boat.The scene has almost nothing ...
It is truly amazing! Relentless, nonstop greed, hubris, insanity. And these are the kind of people that many of us mortals will admire and idolize in real life simply because they acquired wealth or project power. But Jordan was not wrong in this scene when he tells the agent "You should see what the other guys over at the big firms are doing".
TAKE THE QUAALUDES!The REAL Wolf of Wall Street tells how he sunk his 167-foot yacht, The "Nadine," with its own plane & chopper. ... TAKE THE QUAALUDES!The REAL Wolf of Wall Street tells how he ...
Believe it or not, "The Wolf of Wall Street" is based on a true story. Specifically, it's based on a memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort, the main character of the film as well.
Jho Low's producing credits before 2013 were brief and unspectacular, peaking with The Wolf of Wall Street and Dumb and Dumber To.Without his finagling behind the scenes, there was a good chance ...