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How Jordan Belfort's 37m superyacht Nadine sank off the coast of Sardinia

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Meet the Real Wolf of Wall Street Superyacht Built for Coco Chanel

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 true story. In real life, predatory tycoon Jordan Belfort bought a yacht in 1993 called Big Eagle and renamed her Nadine , after his English-born second wife. The vessel had been built in 1961 by Witsen & Vis in Holland for fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had undergone many transformations by the time Belfort got his mitts on it. Originally 121 feet long, in the 1970s she was extended by nearly 15 feet, and in 1988 she was cut in half and had another 29-foot section grafted on, finally totaling 167 feet.

The luxury yacht used in Scorsese’s film actually bears little resemblance to the Nadine , being a far more modern vessel. The director hired the 148-foot Lady M , built by Intermarine Savannah in 2002 and refit in 2011, for filming. It features luxury accommodations for 10 guests, and a marble and granite interior with gold accents.

In Coco Chanel’s day the yacht was mainly used to cruise from Monaco to Deauville for the summer horse racing season. The real Nadine sank in 1997 during a storm off the east coast of Sardinia while crossing from Porto Cervo to Capri, much as the movie depicts. Belfort has said that his insistence on sailing in a storm caused the yacht to capsize. Luckily, everyone on board at the time was rescued by the Italian coast guard.

Jared Paul Stern

Jared Paul Stern, JustLuxe's Editor-at-Large, is the Executive Editor of Maxim magazine and has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the New York Times' T magazine, GQ, WWD, Vogue, New York magazine, Details, Hamptons magazine, Playboy, BlackBook, the New York Post, Man of the World, and Bergdorf Goodman magazine among others. The founding editor of the Page Six magazine, he has al... (Read More)

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Meet The Real Wolf Of Wall Street Superyacht Built For Coco Chanel

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 true story. In real life, predatory tycoon Jordan Belfort bought a yacht in 1993 called Big Eagle and renamed her Nadine , after his English-born second wife. The vessel had been built in 1961 by Witsen & Vis in Holland for fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had undergone many transformations by the time Belfort got his mitts on it. Originally 121 feet long, in the 1970s she was extended by nearly 15 feet, and in 1988 she was cut in half and had another 29-foot section grafted on, finally totaling 167 feet.

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The luxury yacht used in Scorsese's film actually bears little resemblance to the Nadine , being a far more modern vessel. The director hired the 148-foot Lady M , built by Intermarine Savannah in 2002 and refit in 2011, for filming. It features luxury accommodations for 10 guests, and a marble and granite interior with gold accents.

In Coco Chanel's day the yacht was mainly used to cruise from Monaco to Deauville for the summer horse racing season. The real Nadine sank in 1997 during a storm off the east coast of Sardinia while crossing from Porto Cervo to Capri, much as the movie depicts. Belfort has said that his insistence on sailing in a storm caused the yacht to capsize. Luckily, everyone on board at the time was rescued by the Italian coast guard.

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Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

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.

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine?

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.

Did the yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street actually happen?

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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Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

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 best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

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.

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

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.

Jordan Belfort’s life 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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The Real Story Behind the Yacht in The Wolf of Wall Street

Based on the eponymous memoir, the 2013 hit The Wolf of Wall Street told the story of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker who was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie was a smashing success through and through. Amongst its many impressionable scenes, one of the most memorable ones was the yacht party, where Belfort and his colleagues indulged in lavish excess. However, Belfort’s ex-wife, Nadine Caridi, has now spoken out about the real story behind the yacht.

Nadine Caridi, the Ex-Wife

Caridi, who was portrayed in the movie by Margot Robbie, gave an interview in which she revealed that the yacht scene was not entirely accurate. According to Caridi, the yacht that was shown in the movie was not the one that Belfort actually owned. Instead, it was rented for the filming of the scene. In reality, Belfort owned a different yacht called Nadine. Caridi claims that the yacht was named after her and that she played a significant role in its design and decoration. She says that the yacht was much smaller than the one shown in the movie, but it was still luxurious and served as a symbol of Belfort’s wealth.

The Sinking of the Nadine Yacht

Nadine Caridi recently spoke about the sinking of the yacht in June 1996, an event that inspired a scene in the movie. The yacht’s sinking during a storm off the coast of Italy was a terrifying experience for everyone on board. The waves were violent and relentless, hitting the yacht repeatedly. Rescue services had to be called in to rescue the passengers and crew, including Belfort and Caridi. In a recent TikTok video, Caridi shared real-life footage of the rescue, showing the fear and chaos that ensued during the storm, while expressing gratitude that everyone survived.

Can a Circle of Salt Paralyze a Self-Driving Car?

Autonomous vehicles are truly within the grasp of humankind. But the brain of a sci-fi geek can wonder whether it’ll bring an apocalyptic scene, where a troop of autonomous cars is pursuing human prey across a desolate landscape. Well, of course, it’s not going to happen, but luckily, if it did, there’s a strangely simple solution for that. And it involves nothing but salt!

The Salt Trap

Back in 2017, artist James Bridle demonstrated how an understanding of road markings using salt could paralyze a self-driving car midway by delivering confusing messages. You need to draw two circles of salt, one in a block line and the other in broken stripes. When the car comes to the middle of it, the markings will direct it to go right ahead and also not to cross, simultaneously. The result is the fabulous “Autonomous Trap 001.” Future models may be able to overcome this fun technological quirk, but it has surely raised a valid question about the possibility of the success of the trick. It’s astonishing to find out that there may be a simple way to manipulate the environment to disrupt the self-driving capacity of an autonomous car.

The Response

This salt circle trap has caught the attention of none other than Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and newly-appointed CEO of Twitter. As an avid enthusiast, Musk is known for dabbling in autonomous vehicles. Responding to the demonstration, he explained that the salt circle trick will probably be able to trap a Tesla car with the production Autopilot build. But he suspected that it won’t work its magic on the FSD models or the cars with Full Self-Driving capabilities. Musk further suggested that making a ring of traffic cones would be effective on the FSD cars. So, if you ever find yourself facing a murderous fleet of autonomous cars, all you need to do is just take your salt bags and traffic cones out! Easy-peasy, right?

Everything The Wolf Of Wall Street Doesn't Tell You About The True Story

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.

Belfort's wives' names were changed for the film

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."

The original crew Belfort recruited from friends are composite characters

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.

Donnie Azoff doesn't exist, his real-life counterpart is Danny Porush

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."

Danny Porush's wife introduced Jordan Belfort to her husband

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.

Belfort's destroyed yacht once belonged to Coco Chanel

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.

Steve Madden spent time in prison for stock fraud

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.

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

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."

Tommy Chong was Belfort's cellmate in prison

"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.'"

Stratton Oakmont was never on Wall Street

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.

Jordan Belfort was never called 'The Wolf of 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'?"

Belfort had a head-on collision while driving under the influence of Quaaludes

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."

The Fascinating True Story Behind The Wolf Of Wall Street

Jordan Belfort talking with hands raised

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.

A conman's sworn (and swearing) testimony

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.

Jonah Hill's character was based on Danny Porush

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.

What really happened at the office?

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.

Forbes really did profile Belfort

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.

Was Belfort ever actually called The Wolf of Wall Street?

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.

What Belfort did before becoming a stockbroker

"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.

Fashion designer Steve Madden was involved

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."

Coco Chanel's yacht went down with Belfort's marriage

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.

Fall of the new Rome

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 was Belfort's 'cube mate'

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.

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

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.

What's Jordan Belfort up to today?

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."

A Lamborghini of lies mixed with the truth

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."

Are you buying it?

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?

Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

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Nadine yacht model

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine? 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.

Jordan belfort yacht sailing

Did the yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street actually happen? 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.

Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The movie captured each passenger’s fear and stress 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 each was called off due to rising risks. By some twist of luck, the yacht’s engine room remained undamaged primarily for a while, because of which they were able to make their way through the sea.

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

The 167 ft Nadine, as its former passengers claim, was beautiful. 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.

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

Martin Scorsese got the yacht Lady M to represent Nadine onscreen. While Nadine had a luxuriously vintage charm, 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.

Jordan Belfort’s life today

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 has practically negative net worth at 59 years of age. 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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Jordan Belfort: The real Wolf of Wall Street and the men who brought him down

Jordan belfort scammed investors out of $200m. as martin scorsese and leonardo dicaprio bring his outrageous life to the big screen, nick harding gets the real inside story, article bookmarked.

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Jordan Belfort stands outside his former home

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The pitch could have been barked by any of the "motivational-training" snake-oil salesmen who ply their wares in the corporate sector. But the man behind this particular "sales and persuasion" one-day course in Australia last year thought himself special enough to demand a US$5,000 entrance fee.

The inflated price tag may have been something to do with the quality of the after-dinner anecdotes, as the man hosting the event was Jordan Belfort - a 51-year-old American ex-con who is among the most infamous crooked businessmen in recent history. In the 1990s, Belfort was reputed to have been worth £60m, earning £600,000 a week. He owned a sprawling estate in the Hamptons, a fleet of supercars and a 167ft yacht which once belonged to Coco Chanel and which he sank in the Mediterranean. He had a supermodel wife and a drug and alcohol habit. He employed an army of young salespeople who aggressively sold stocks in questionable companies to unwitting investors. His workers were rewarded with massive bonuses and parties where prostitutes and dwarf-throwing competitions were provided as entertainment.

Today, the disgraced swindler (a term Belfort hates) has reinvented himself as a reputable businessman, with clients such as Delta and Virgin Airlines. Much to his delight, he's also being played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's new film, The Wolf of Wall Street, which portrays the lavish, drug-fuelled and illegal antics at Belfort's now-defunct East Coast stocks and shares brokerage Stratton Oakmont.

But, says Belfort, he's not letting all that glitz go to his head - he is a new man since his 2004 conviction for defrauding clients of more than $200m. "We are not the mistakes of our past," he recently said. "We're the resources and capabilities that we glean from our past. It chokes me up a little when I think about it. I was a bad guy. And it wasn't like I started that way. You can get desensitised to your own actions, it's easy on Wall Street... I shouldn't really care what people think of me. I know I'm good. But of course I do care."

Former Assistant US Attorney Joel Cohen, who helped put Belfort behind bars, couldn't agree less. "If he is trying to create the impression that he is basically an honest guy who stepped over the line a bit, that is dead wrong. This is a guy who woke up every day, seven days a week for many years, and said, What crimes can I commit today? He was looking to rip people off on a daily basis."

The yacht, the cars, the supermodel wife and the fortune have all gone. The father of three now lives in a modest three-bedroom house in a relatively inexpensive LA suburb. At his seminars, attendees are taught a technique he calls "Straight Line" selling; a set of pre-determined steps from first contact to closing a deal. It is, he has said, roughly the same system he taught his employees to use when pressuring people to buy shares in the useless firms he once promoted. He's paid around $30,000 an hour for his wisdom.

He makes a very good living, then - but his income is a fraction of the vast wealth he enjoyed, and a court order requires him to pay 50 per cent of his earnings into a compensation fund for his thousands of victims. Nevertheless, the sale of the film rights to Belfort's two memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, are estimated to have earnt him $2m. The film is up for a Golden Globe (Best Comedy) tonight and there is talk of several Oscar nominations when they are announced on Thursday.

Over the festive period, American film-goers flocked to see DiCaprio as Belfort marching hookers on to the office floor, receiving the attentions of a young lady at the wheel of his Ferrari and tearing up a sofa to find a stash of cocaine. Predictably, there has been outrage that the film glorifies these exploits. All of which, one imagines, gave Belfort his best Christmas in years - as he wrote on his blog at the end of last month: "Visit the theater and watch DiCaprio portray me as I was and remember the man I have become."

And what has Belfort, whose representatives did not answer our request for comments, become in the seven years since his release?

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By all accounts a natural raconteur, Belfort delights in recounting stories of drug-fuelled excess, and distances himself from other disgraced businessmen. He describes Bernie Madoff, the US financier convicted in 2009 of defrauding investors of $65bn, as a "complete crook who took people’s money", and defends his own actions by claiming 95 per cent of his business dealings "were totally legit".

The Wolf of Wall Street: Most outrageous quotes

Belfort also gives the impression that he was seduced by the financial environment of the time. The market of the early 1990s made a lot of people a lot of money and, by Belfort's reckoning, his endeavours cost no one more than they could afford. "I don’t like to come off like what I did was not wrong. But I wasn't dealing with poor people. I was dealing with very rich people. No one lost their life savings," he argues.

This revisionism, however, is not the account Belfort gave to court when he pleaded guilty to charges of international securities fraud and money-laundering in 1999. Facing 20 to 30 years in jail, he agreed to gather evidence against his friends and colleagues in a year-long undercover operation in exchange for a lighter sentence.

It is also not an account that the two key investigators behind his downfall recognise.

FBI Special Agent Greg Coleman began investigating Belfort in 1992. "I have run into individuals who were bad people doing bad things and I've run into ones who were basically good people who made a mistake and will never do it again," says Coleman. "Belfort was really bad. And while there is some attempt on his part to clean up and change, I think he is still a work in progress. There were a lot of victims who could ill afford to lose that kind of money."

Joel Cohen concurs. "My sense is that he is only half-repentant, for whatever reason - whether he thinks it sells books and movies better. He says he is sorry to his victims but on the same token he tells the world that only 5 per cent of his behaviour was criminal."

Both have mixed feelings about the movie. Says Cohen, "It's not going to be about his prosecution. It will be about his rise and dwarves being thrown out of cannons. I fear it is being marketed as a general comment of all that ails society, when in fact it is a sordid story about bad people who do not represent society at all."

While the debauchery depicted in the film is true, plenty of the Belfort story is myth. His supposed links to the mafia have never been proven and Stratton Oakmont - a name chosen as it k sounded British and reputable - was never a Wall Street firm: the Wolf of Wall Street operated from a shopping mall in suburban Long Island.

Stratton Oakmont was a so-called "boiler room"; ostensibly a call centre where young workers rang investors and random names from the telephone directory, pushing them to buy shares in companies it financed and floated on the stock exchange (in a process called Initial Public Offerings or IPOs). Stratton Oakmont practised a technique called "pump and dump": investors were first hooked with the promise of shares in stable companies and then persuaded to invest in Stratton’s IPOs. The greater the number of people who invested, the higher the share prices rose. Illegally, Belfort and a group of insiders he tipped off also bought shares in these businesses. When the prices peaked, Belfort tipped off his cohorts to sell. They all made fortunes while the share prices plummeted, leaving everyone else with worthless stocks.

Belfort says he "exited the womb an entrepreneur". At 16, he sold ice lollies, bagels and trinkets on the beach at Long Island and with the money he made he put himself through college. He enrolled in dental school, but walked out on the first day when the Dean told the new intake that they were in the wrong profession if they wanted to make money. Instead, he began selling meat off the back of lorries. He started his own firm, but it went bankrupt, owing $24,000, when he was 24. Desperate for a job, Belfort started at the bottom in a Wall Street trading firm working as a connector, making calls to potential investors whom he would patch through to the brokers. "I was pond scum."

When he finally passed his traders' exams, he began his stockbroking career on 19 October 1987: Black Wednesday, when the market plummeted 508 points in a day. The company he worked for closed, but the setback only fuelled his desire. In 1989, he set up Stratton Oakmont.

When Cohen and Coleman started investigating the firm in 1992, the brokerage was already the subject of a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As a result, the company was ordered to pay a $2.5m fine and Belfort and his partners, Daniel Porush (played by Jonah Hill in the film) and Kenneth Greene agreed to $100,000 fines apiece. None of the three admitted or denied the SEC's allegations and the penalty was peanuts compared to what the firm and its employees and bosses were earning.

Coleman and Cohen spent the following years gradually digging away to collect evidence - but the loyalty Belfort engendered in his well-paid staff made it an almost impossible task.

The breakthrough came when Belfort became desperate and began smuggling money out of the country. The funds ended up in Swiss bank accounts, where it was laundered - and money-laundering was Coleman's area of expertise.

"The crowbar we used to open them up was the tax evasion," he explains. "We were able to get some witnesses who were helping them smuggle the money to provide information about that. We used that to go to the Swiss authorities to get them to provide information about the bankers Belfort was using in Geneva. It took time because bank secrecy in Switzerland was still very robust and we had to convince the authorities that this sort of behaviour was something they should provide information to us about. Eventually we got Belfort’s Swiss banker to co-operate."

With concrete evidence, both Belfort and Porush were arrested in September 1998 and persuaded to work with the investigation. Belfort was required to post $10m security as a condition of his bail. (The security took the form of jewels which he had delivered to the courthouse in an armoured car accompanied by armed guards.) The skills that made Belfort such a good conman also made him an effective government mole: the evidence he collected was used in scores of other prosecutions.

Belfort eventually pleaded guilty. The case took years to come to trial and in 2004 he was convicted, sentenced to four years, and jailed, serving 22 months in all. He reported to a federal prison camp in California, where he shared a cell with the comedian Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame, who was serving a nine-month sentence for selling drug paraphernalia.

Chong was working on a book; after hearing Belfort's outlandish tales, he persuaded his cell-mate to put pen to paper as well. On his release in 2006, Belfort realised there was an appetite for his life story and started pitching his manuscript. Publisher Random House gave him a $1m advance. Within a year of his release, The Wolf of Wall Street was on sale.

Coleman still keeps in contact with his former prey "as a subtle reminder that I am still watching", and the FBI man admits he is curious about the film. Asked to consult on the plot, he's played by actor Kyle Chandler (who recently appeared in Argo and Zero Dark Thirty). "I want to see how I am portrayed," he says. "I hope it's done realistically, rather than the stereotypical FBI guy in a suit." As for Cohen, "I don’t think Jordan loves me. In his book, his caricature of me is unfair. He describes me as 'the bastard' about 100 times."

Belfort has realised that infamy can be lucrative. However, for the man who once boasted he made $13m in one day, crime will not necessarily pay in the end. According to a recent letter from prosecutors sent to the judge overseeing his compensation agreement, so far Belfort has paid $11.6m of the required $110.4m into the fund. The letter suggests he has been withholding payments and that he is in default of his agreement. Belfort disputes this and is currently in talks with the federal courts to resolve the situation. Whatever the outcome, the Wolf still has a long way to go before he pays his debt to society. 1

'The Wolf of Wall Street' (18) is out on Friday

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The true story of Wolf Of Wall Street’s yacht ‘Nadine’

Jordan Belfort’s antics are so legendary that sinking a multi-million dollar yacht is just another act of depravity that Martin Scorsese manages to weave among The The wolf of Wall Street grotesque film adaptation. Those who know the wolf of Wall Street book will have read Belfort’s account about it in more detail, but the backstory of the superyacht Nadine is a lesser-known tale with unexpected twists.

Despite Jordan’s notoriety for unbridled bacchanalia, Nadine was sunk by natural forces far greater than even the fiercest drinking bout he could muster. In the middle of a pedestrianized Mediterranean cruise, a storm unexpectedly turned into a raging storm with high winds and huge swells to send the pride and joy of the wolf into Davey Jones’ locker.

In fact, this type of storm is so specific that it has its own name. The mistrals get their name from the winds that blow from the French Alps into the Mediterranean. This convection cycle is caused by warm air rising from African deserts and colder air from the Alps rushing through the void for sustained round trips of 12 to 40 hours. Nothing like a strong relentless wind to generate a dangerous swell. And the kicker? Mistrals are difficult to predict.

RELATED: Asymmetric superyacht hits market for $ 47 million

En route from Riva de Travino to the island of Sardinia, off the west coast of Italy, what should have been a routine race (which usually takes around 7 hours) ended in the fiasco that International Yachts described as ‘Mayday in the Med.’

â€œWhen we set off,â€ said Captain Mark Elliot, â€œthe forecast told us to expect wind and choppy but small seas. Knowing that this wouldn’t be an ideal crossing, the captain asked if the guests wanted to delay until the next morning. The answer was a definite ‘no’ as they were all eager to head to Sardinia for a round of golf the next morning. So, they cast off and set sail for another corner of paradise.

Hours later, the guests were enjoying the sunny afternoon weather of another dream day in the Mediterraneanâ€¦ when a rogue wave reached the bow and wheelhouse, inundating a hostess from head to toe. Immediately after this warning sign made contact, a transmission was received via radio warning of unexpected gale force winds in the area. The mistral had announced. The swell heights doubled, the winds intensified, and the shit became real.

However, before Belfort throws next-level parties aboard his elegant ship and charters it across the Mediterranean to Sardinia on that fateful day, Nadine had already lived many lives. In truth, the luxury yacht seen in The Wolf of Wall Street movie bears no resemblance to the period ship owned by Jordan Belfort. Scorsese hired a yacht called Lady M for these stages, which was originally built by Intermarine Savannah in 2002.

On the other hand, the real one Nadine (Where Mathilde as it was originally called), was built in 1961 and delivered by the Dutch shipyard Witsen & Vis for none other than fashion mogul Coco Chanel. At the time, Mathilde had five dark teak cabins, exceptional dining rooms and a helipad.

â€œAt that time, it was the largest yacht on the East Coast,â€ recalls Captain Mark Elliot. “No one had ever seen anything like it.”

After Coco’s death in 1971 the yacht was renamed Jan Pamela by its new owner, Melvin Lane Powers. While not as decorated as his predecessor, Powers was a notorious and ostentatious Houston real estate developer known for wearing crocodile skin boots and driving a golden Cadillac after being acquitted of the murder of her lover’s husband. The New York Times described his 1966 trial as “one of the most spectacular homicide trials of all time.”

Powers ordered a huge refit and extension of the ship, but in 1983 it hit rock bottom and Jan Pamela was sold before being renamed Waterside . In 1989, it was Bernie Little’s luck, and he bought her sight without seeing her. She then underwent another refit, before becoming Great eagle under the command of Mark Elliot once again. In this form, she caught the attention of Jordan Belfort, who took possession of it in 1995. Of course, he had to undertake his own additions and renovations, before renaming the ship after his second wife, Nadine .

However, the reincarnation of this historic yacht as Nadine was to be short lived. After 35 years of leisure, sailing on the most beautiful coasts and welcoming the great names of the time, Mother Nature would have the last word.

Back in the Mediterranean, hours later, roaring gusts ripped the $ 100,000 tender from its tow lines. Captain Mark Elliot calls to abandon yacht, as turning point Nadine against the crashing waves would have courted disaster. Abandoning the course to try to outrun the mistral was out of the question for the same reasons. They are there now – every captain’s nightmare – with seventy knot winds and 35 foot ridges to negotiate.

Then, Nadine’s The moment of “perfect storm” pointed its formidable head. The huge wave crashes all over the ship, tearing off the hatches and deck fittings, triggering a death knell that can only end with a day of disaster. The remaining supply crashes into the dining room window, causing it to collapse wave after wave flooding the living room.

“I knew at that time that Nadine had received a fatal blow. Once I assessed the damage, I walked over to the deck and used the satellite phone to contact the Italian Coast Guard known as â€œGruppo Marine Italian,â€ says Captain Elliot.

First aid stations. Guests are gathered in a secure central location and escorted one by one to their cabins to collect passports and any valuables that can fit in a small bag.

Half an hour later, a rescue helicopter attempts to bring down a diver to pick up guests. However, the gusts of wind turned out to be too violent, and after almost losing the said diver, the helicopter aborted. Imagine the heartbreaking feeling of those on board Nadine , as the Coast Guard abandon ship, defeated by the rampaging elements, and return to the safety of the coast as the sun sets below the horizon and night sets in.

Hurricane-force winds, severe flooding and a 15-meter-high sea are now pounding Italy’s shores in what will be known as the storm of the century. The situation is so tumultuous that when a large merchant ship attempts another rescue attempt a few hours later, it almost crashes in Nadine , before setting off again and again, abandoning the crew and the frenzied guests.

31cf4e10 409f 11ec 9876 69705d7108ad Nadine dining room

The liferafts are deployed as a precautionâ€¦ until the roaring wind also tears them from the sea, leaving the crew completely stranded on board.

Below deck, the flooded kitchen has become an electrified death trap, and the chef and engineer receive jolts from the current before pulling the ass out of there to the (relative) safety above. It should be noted that this is probably around the time when a deranged and drenched Leo shouts at Jonah Hill with the unforgettable line: “Get the ludes downstairs!” I will not die sober! To have. The. Whore. Ludes! ”

Times of crisis. With no options left, Captain Elliot calls to throw the helicopter off the bridge to free up space for another rescue attempt. He unhooks the tie-downs and rolls the ship twenty degrees, throwing the expensive equipment overboard and into the Mediterranean, where its rusty skeleton undoubtedly lies to this day.

31b22920 409f 11ec 9876 69705d7108ad Nadine superyacht interior 3

At around 5 a.m., the Coast Guard returned and began to hoist the guests, then the crew to safety in the reassuring light of dawn. The weather calmed down as the winds and waves calmed down, but the damage was done. The last to leave the ship he commanded for so many years, Mark Elliot takes stock of the wreck before finally accepting his loss, closing the engine room controls and seizing the buoy rescue package handed to him by the coast guard.

Nadine is swallowed up by the sea, just ten minutes after Captain Elliot left his decks.

While all the guests and the crew of 11 survive, the prestigious motor yacht and its collection of toys (including eight jet skis, four motorcycles, snorkeling gear, a helicopter and a seaplane) sink into the deep end. at the bottom of the Mediterranean, over 1000 m deep. the water.

â€œThe insurance paid off immediately because it was the storm of the century,â€ said Captain Elliot.

Back on dry land, Mark Elliot was hailed as a hero after showing courage and leadership in such a dire situation. He was then offered command of Bernie Little’s famous yacht Vessel , and today works as a broker in Miami as one of the most experienced and capable men in the business.

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Did Jordan Belfort Sink Coco Chanel's Former Yacht?

Jordan Belfort insisted that they go through a storm in the Mediterranean Sea, which wasn't the best idea while using Coco Chanel's Luxury yacht.

Jordan Belfort was always an eccentric character, although he probably never intended to become a star associated with Hollywood as he is today. His memoir about the time he spent manipulating stocks in the '90s became the inspiration for the acclaimed Martin Scorsese film, The Wolf of Wall Street .

It has been a surreal rollercoaster ride for Belfort, who spent nearly two years in prison for his crimes, but later saw Leonardo DiCaprio earn at least $25 million to portray him in the film.

The 59-year-old's current net worth is in negative figures , mostly thanks to the debts he still owes the victims of his scam. However, he is still making a killing from his story, as he charges a pretty penny for his motivational speech seminars.

As with any other film based on a true story, there were elements that were purely historical in the Scorsese picture, and others that were fictional - for dramatic purposes. One of the iconic scenes depicted Belfort and his friends in a sinking yacht , which actually turns out to be one of the crazy things that did in fact happen in real life.

Jordan Belfort Insisted That They Go Through A Storm In The Mediterranean Sea

The Wolf of Wall Street had a stellar cast, but the yacht scene itself is quite a star-studded affair. DiCaprio was joined by Jonah Hill as Belfort's business associate Donnie Azoff. Margot Robbie played Belfort's wife Naomi Lapaglia, in what was the breakout role of her career .

Also, on the yacht were Shea Whigham as the captain of the boat and MacKenzie Meehan as Donnie Azoff's wife. While on the yacht, they receive news that Naomi's Aunt Emma - under whose name Belfort had been hiding money in a Swiss bank account - had died.

At the same time, the hustler receives a call for a business opportunity in Monaco, which prompts him to insist that they go through a storm somewhere off the coast of Italy. Despite the protestations of the women, the boat captain concedes and the yacht ends up sinking.

RELATED: The Truth About Jordan Belfort’s Massive Net Worth And How He Really Spends It

In 2010 - about three years before the movie came out - Belfort confirmed that the story was in fact based on real life events, and he even confirmed that he was high on drugs at the time.

Belfort Was High On Substances

Talking about his intoxication during an interview with The Room Live, Belfort said that he had been high on several substances.' The movie would come to repopularize the term ludes, a sedative that was largely abused in the '70s as a party drug when mixed with alcohol.

In the yacht-sinking sequence in the film, Belfort at one point shouts at Donnie to go and 'get the ludes downstairs,' humorously proclaiming, "I will not die sober, get those ludes!" Belfort had gone on to explain the potency of the said ludes in his 2010 interview.

"For those who don't know... for the benefit of your viewers who are normal and haven't been addicted to ludes - thank God for that," he explained, "one lude is enough to knock out a 220-pound navy seal for eight and a half hours. I was taking four a day and walking around."

RELATED: 'Wolf Of Wall Street' Legend Jordan Belfort Flirts With Tana Mongeau On Twitter

The passengers were eventually rescued by the Italian navy. This is where the movie embellished some details differently than what actually happened in real life.

Belfort's Yacht That Sank Was Once Owned By Coco Chanel

Belfort also had a chopper on the upper deck of the yacht, which was shown to have been knocked off by the waves in the movie. In the actual events back in 1997, however, they had to climb up to the deck where the helicopter was, and literally push it off in order to make space for the Italian navy seals to land.

The yacht that sank that day in the Mediterranean was once owned by French fashion icon and entrepreneur, Coco Chanel . When he bought it, Belfort decided to name it Nadine, after his then-wife Nadine Caridi. In the film, the character's name was changed to Naomi, which is what the boat was subsequently called.

While this scene was mostly scripted according to actual happenings, there were also a lot of innovation going on on set. DiCaprio for instance improvised one scene where his character was totally drunk and unable to get into his car.

Matthew McConaughey also played a character called Mark Hanna, who kept humming and pumping his chest as he spoke. The actor would later reveal that this was his own personal routine that was imported into the story.

NEXT: Here's How Much Jordan Belfort Gets Paid For His Motivational Speeches

Screen Rant

How accurate the wolf of wall street is to the true story.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based on an elaborate memoir written by Jordan Belfort himself, raising questions about both the book and film's accuracy.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a con artist who became famous for his fraudulent actions.
Belfort's memoir, which the movie is based on, includes some accurate details, such as smuggling money into Swiss banks and sinking a yacht.
However, several real-life figures have disputed the accuracy of the events depicted in the movie, suggesting that Belfort may have exaggerated or fabricated certain elements to suit his own narrative.

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of the infamous rise and fall of American stockbroker and criminal Jordan Belfort. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort in the movie, exploring his outrageous lifestyle, the various figures in his life, and the crimes that led to his downfall. The dramatized version of events depicted in the movie rings mostly true to the 2007 memoir of the same name. However, there are a lot of criticisms of how Belfort depicts himself and the truth, including from those people featured in The Wolf of Wall Street.

The real Jordan Belfort of The Wolf of Wall Street story has been called a manipulative conman by many people, so it's plausible that his memories and anecdotes of the events depicted in the movie and book are flawed and exaggerated to suit his inflated self-image. A number of real-life sources have spoken out about the inaccurate depiction of events in Belfort's story, hinting that Belfort's fraudulent sensibilities might have fooled Hollywood as they did on Wall Street.

Watch on Paramount+

10 Scorsese Trademarks In The Wolf Of Wall Street

The wolf of wall street is accurate to jordan belfort's memoir, various successes and failures depicted in the movie came from belfort's own admission.

There are several key details in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street that have been confirmed to be true based on Belfort's representation of himself and his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont in his memoir. According to the memoir, Belfort actually had his in-laws smuggle money into Switzerland banks and Stratton Oakmont actually helped make the luxury shoe line Steve Madden go public. The depiction of Matthew McConaughey's The Wolf of Wall Street character Mark Hanna is also based on Belfort's description, including Hanna's crude philosophy that the key to success was masturbation, cocaine, and sex workers.

Other details in the movie that were accurate to Belfort's memoir include: Donnie Azoff (inspired by the real-life Danny Porush, played by Jonah Hill in the movie) did marry his cousin before later divorcing her, Belfort sunk a yacht in Italy that was once owned by Coco Chanel, and he did crash his helicopter trying to land while he was high. Most notably, Belfort truly did serve a reduced prison sentence after informing on his friends . He did not try to save Porush (Azoff) from incriminating himself as is displayed in the film. He informed on Porush in real life.

The Wolf Of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort's Net Worth Explained

Wolf of wall street's accuracy has been disputed by key figures, the depiction of belfort's crimes has become a controversial topic for the movie.

The Wolf of Wall Street has been criticized for how much it downplays the victims of Belfort's crimes and it does largely focus on him ripping off the wealthy. According to the New York Times , Belfort targeted people from all types of financial backgrounds to buy his worthless stocks.

One California man used his home equity line of credit to invest with Belfort and has been impacted financially ever since. The depiction of Belfort in Scorsese's movie as being some type of voice of an underprivileged class who was righteous in turning the system on its head and against itself has been debated since its release.

The real-life Donnie and Naomi also dispute a lot of what happens in both Jordan's memoir and Scorsese's movie. Nadine Macaluso, who is represented by the character Naomi, who Margot Robbie plays in The Wolf of Wall Street , claimed that the movie was mostly accurate through Jordan's perspective, but not through an objective lens or with consideration to Nadine's point of view with regard to their marriage. Nadine went on to get a Ph.D. and became an expert in relational trauma ( via The Independent ).

Danny Porush told Bustle that most of the film is completely fictitious, claiming that nobody in real life ever called Belfort the "Wolf" nor was there any throwing of little persons or chimpanzees that took place in the office.

What Happened To The Real Jordan Belfort After The Wolf Of Wall Street

Why wolf of wall street's accuracy (or otherwise) is part of its legacy, does the movie glorify jordan belfort.

The glorification of the debauchery surrounding Belfort's lifestyle and business practices is suitable to the mystique around whether or not the film depicts real events. This disparity in what is actually true in the movie and memoir versus what other real-life parties have to say about fabrications is part of its reckless and dysfunctional appeal.

Even Scorsese himself came under fire for celebrating the corrupt actions of the bonafide con artist in his film, which is meant to be seen as an overarching satire of capitalism rather than a stamp of approval for Belfort. Regardless of its degree of accuracy, The Wolf of Wall Street is a wildly entertaining exercise on limitless greed.

Source: The New York Times , Time , The Independent , Bustle

The Wolf of Wall Street

Directed by Martin Scorcese, The Wolf of Wall Street tells the true story of stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), based on his memoir of the same name. It chronicles the rise of Belfort and the subsequent corruption of his firm as he engages in a wide assortment of criminal acts while amassing a staggering fortune. Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and Kyle Chandler also star alongside DiCaprio.

Who is Jordan Belfort? True Story of “The Wolf of Wall Street”

The guide will examine the life and fraudulent activities of Jordan Belfort , whose real-life events inspired the movie “ Wolf of Wall Street “. It will delve into Belfort’s career, particularly his time at Stratton Oakmont and the financial schemes that eventually led to his downfall.

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Who is Jordan Belfort?

Belfort spent 22 months in prison, during which he found his passion for writing. Soon after his release, he published his first memoir, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” recounting his time as a stockbroker, later popularized in the 2013 Martin Scorsese film, in which he is depicted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

After various scandals and a term in prison for fraud, Jordan Belfort has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker, his primary topic being the distinction between greed, ambition, and passion on Wall Street.

Writer Jordan Belfort and fiancee Anne Koppe attend the premiere of "The Wolf of Wall Street" at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 17, 2013, in New York City.

Jordan Belfort’s early life

Jordan Belfort was born in 1962 in the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish parents, who were both accountants. Around 16, Belfort and his close childhood friend earned $20,000 selling Italian ice from styrofoam coolers at a local beach.

After graduating from American University with a degree in biology, Belfort planned on using the money earned selling ice cream to pay for dental school, subsequently enrolling himself at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. However, he dropped out on the first day after the school dean warned the students saying: “The golden age of dentistry is over. If you’re here to make a lot of money, you’re in the wrong place.”

Jordan Belfort’s personal life

While Jordan Belfort had a tumultuous business life and a flair for corrupt practices, his personal life wasn’t far from it. While running his company Stratton Oakmont, Belfort was already divorced from his first wife, Denise Lombardo. Jordan Belfort’s first wife, Denise Lombardo, whose movie character in “Wolf of Wall Street,” was played by Cristin Milioti.

You may also recognize the name Naomi, Jordan Belfort’s wife, portrayed by Margot Robbie in the movie “Wolf of Wall Street.” In real life, Naomi’s name is Nadine Caridi, Belfort’s second wife . Nadine and Jordan Belfort had two kids together (or Belfort and Naomi in the movie), but ultimately divorced in 2015 after domestic violence accusations.

Belfort’s ex-wife Nadine now goes by the name of Nadine Macaluso and works as a therapist, using her experience to help other women in abusive relationships via social media. Nadine has said she “ walked away from my marriage with absolutely nothing ,” reasoning “ it was the right thing to do ,” after realizing Belfort’s money was all “blood money.”

@drnaelmft I left my marriage from The Wolf of Wall Street with my kids and my curtains. #wolfofwallstreet #wolfofwallstreetmovie #wallstreet #nadinemacaluso #drnadinemacaluso #drnae #drnadine #marriedtothewolfofwallstreet #margotrobbie #margotrobbieofficial #tiktok #tiktokviral #tiktoker #tiktoknews #tiktokcelebsnews #tiktokfamous #naomiwolfofwallstreet #wolfofwallstreetnaomi #leonardodicaprio #leonardodicaprioedit #martinscorsese #martinscorsesefilms #martinscorsesemoviesbelike #icon #tiktoktherapist #tiktoktherapy #therapy #therapist #90s #longisland #wallstreet #wallstreet90s #goldcoast ♬ You Found Me – Instrumental Pop Songs

Jordan Belfort’s yacht was named after his second wife Nadine (or Naomi in the “Wolf of Wall Street” movie), which was previously built for Coco Chanel in 1961. It ultimately sank off the Sardinian east coast in 1996 after Belfort insisted on sailing out in high winds against the captain’s advice.

Jordan Belfort’s net worth

It is estimated that Jordan Belfort’s net worth peak was around $400 million in 1998; however, the exact figures are unknown. Despite his fraudulent past, Jordan Belfort has leveraged his years working in the financial industry, engaging in different ventures.

Motivational speaking, book sales, movie rights, as well as various real estate, stocks, and crypto investments, have accumulated Jordan Belfort a sizeable fortune, which as of March 2023, was estimated to be around an impressive $134 million .

A large chunk of Belfort’s annual income of $18 million comes from book sales (a book titled “The Wolf of Wall Street”) and motivational speaking events worldwide, where he shares his story of triumph and failure. He also makes an impressive $50 million by selling the movie rights to his story.

Furthermore, Belfort has invested roughly $27 in luxury real estate, owns multiple high-end cars worth $4 million, has an estimated cash reserve of over $32 million, and has an investment portfolio valued at around $15 million, adding crypto-related products.

Jordan Belfort’s podcast

Besides working as a motivational speaker and earning money through books and movies, Belfort keeps sharing his doings through a personal YouTube channel called The Wolf of Wall Street, where he posts monthly episodes of a podcast, “The Wolf’s Den,” where he shares his business ventures, motivational speaking events, life events, and new partnerships.

For example, in his session from January 13th with Robert Beadles, speaking to the founder of the Monarch crypto wallet, he shared his outlook on Bitcoin and the current crypto market and discussed the new regulations surrounding Bitcoin outlook for 2023 and the likely events that would follow.

Jordan Belfort’s career

Early endeavours.

At 23, Jordan Belfort became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman on New York’s Long Island, dreaming of getting rich. He grew his business to a string of trucks and several employees, moving 5,000 pounds of beef and fish a week. But as he expanded too fast, the lack of capital ultimately failed the business, and he filed for bankruptcy at 25.

Wall Street

After the meat and seafood business went bust, Belfort’s interest turned to Wall Street, where he got a position as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild. However, he was later let go after the company experienced financial difficulties due to the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 .

Stratton Oakmont

Jordan Belfort eventually ended up at Investor Center, a small brokerage firm on Long Island, in 1988. There, he was introduced to penny stocks (high-risk securities with small market caps that typically trade for a low price over-the-counter (OTC) and are therefore less regulated than stocks traded on a major market exchange), which would later propel him to success.

A year later (1989), Belfort started an over-the-counter brokerage house in the franchise “Stratton Securities” with partner Danny Porush. Within five months, the two had earned enough to buy the whole Stratton franchise, renaming the company Stratton Oakmont. The company essentially functioned as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with pump-and-dump stock sales.

Stratton Oakmont did astonishingly well over the next several years, at one point employing over 1,000 stock brokers, and was linked to the IPOs of nearly three dozen companies. However, during his years at Stratton, Jordan Belfort led a life of lavish parties and intensive recreational drugs (especially methaqualone under the brand name “Quaalude”), which resulted in addiction.

Jordan Belfort’s famous sales pitch

Part of Belfort’s strategy was to teach his brokers his infamous sales pitch, the “ Kodak pitch ,” by which they were directed to cold-call clients and entice them with a trusted blue-chip company, only to then recommend stocks with higher margins for the seller, such as penny stocks.

The name came from using the blue-chip company Eastman Kodak as the bait. The goal of the pitch was solely to gain the client’s confidence in the trustworthiness of their firm by recommending a familiar household name that larger brokerage houses such as Merrill Lynch might recommend.

From there, the client would receive future updates on Eastman Kodak and new stock pitches involving a penny stock that Jordan Belfort was illegally manipulating and funneling money through. Unfortunately, the penny stocks often had little or no actual fundamental value and later crashed, obliterating the client’s investment while Belfort and his company pocketed millions. Naturally, during these events, Belfort claimed that he only tried to help his clients invest in the future of America.

Recommended video : “Don’t hang up until the client buys or dies”

Steven Madden, Jordan Belfort, and Stratton Oakmont

Steven Madden was introduced to Stratton by Danny Porush (the key partner at Stratton) and welcomed into the firm with a $500,000 early investment . Next, Stratton organized an IPO that gave themselves up to 85% (illegal as the underwriter of the public offering) of the company, subsequently dumping the shares almost right after the company went public to their clients, banking $20 million .

Madden eventually paid millions to the government and spent considerably more time (30 months) locked up in federal prison than Belfort (22 months).

The irony here is, however, though Steve Madden was taken public at a ludicrous valuation at the time (3 million shares worth $15 million), yet, as Madden writes in his memoir: “if you bought Steve Madden stock that day, even at the inflated price, and held onto it, you would be very rich today.”

Meanwhile, Eastman Kodak, the original blue chip company that served as bait to potential investors, has since filed for bankruptcy. Interestingly, in a twist of fate, the bait stock went bust, and the scam penny stock could have turned relatively small retail investors into millionaires today.

Jordan Belfort’s legal troubles

Law enforcement officials targeted Stratton Oakmont throughout its lifetime. Finally, in December 1996, the National Association of Securities Dealers (now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) expelled Stratton Oakmont, forcing it out of business. Jordan Belfort was subsequently indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

Belfort’s demise can largely be attributed to his private attempts to move his money out of the U.S., smuggling it to Swiss bank accounts to be laundered. Eventually, however, the FBI agents (led by Greg Coleman and Joel Cohen) investigating Stratton and Belfort convinced witnesses to give them information about the move and were ultimately successful at also getting notoriously secretive Swiss banks to cooperate.

With solid evidence, both Belfort and Porush were arrested in September 1998 and convinced to collaborate with the investigation. Eventually, Belfort pleaded guilty, and after the case had taken years to come to trial, in 2004, he was convicted. However, Belfort ultimately served only 22 months of a four-year sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in California in exchange for a plea deal with the FBI.

Jordan Belfort was ordered through his restitution agreement to pay 50% of his income until 2009 towards restitution to the 1,513 clients he had defrauded (totaling approximately $200 million in investor losses), with a total of $110 million in restitution further mandated. As late as 2013, complaints had been filed by federal prosecutors regarding his payments, leading to Belfort making a separate deal with federal authorities to complete the restitution payments.

During his time in prison, he shared a cell with comedian Tommy Chong, who encouraged him to tell the story of his experiences as a stockbroker. On his release in 2006, Belfort realized there was interest in his life story and so began pitching his manuscript, which eventually got picked up by Random House, who rewarded him with a $500,000 advance. “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the book that inspired the Jordan Belfort movie, was on bookshelves within a year of his release.

Chong and Belfort remained friends after their release from prison, with Belfort crediting him for his new career path as a motivational speaker and writer. Belfort commented on his wrong-doings in his memoir, stating:

“I got greedy. … Greed is not good. Ambition is good, passion is good. Passion prospers. My goal is to give more than I get, that’s a sustainable form of success. … Ninety-five percent of the business was legitimate. {…} It was all brokerage firm issues. It was all legitimate, nothing to do with liquidating stocks.”

Yet federal prosecutors and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials involved in the case maintain : “Stratton Oakmont was not a real Wall Street firm, either literally or figuratively.”

Jordan Belfort’s books

Belfort published two memoirs: “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” also issued in approximately 40 countries and translated into 18 languages. In 2017, Jordan Belfort released a self-help book, “Way of the Wolf.”

The former Federal prosecutor who led the investigation of Belfort has insisted that much in his memoirs is a fabrication embellished by aggrandization of his own persona and adoration by others and that “the real Jordan Belfort story still includes thousands of victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars that they never will be repaid.”

Motivational speaking and sales training

Ultimately Belfort reinvented himself as a motivational speaker. When he first began speaking, he focused mainly on motivation and ethics in the financial world but then moved his focus to practical sales skills and entrepreneurship.

Recommended video: Jordan Belfort Reveals How To Sell Anything To Anyone At Anytime

The primary subject matter of his seminars is what he has referred to as the “Straight Line System,” a system of sales advice and persuasion skills, boldly stating : “You’re either a victim of circumstance or you’re a creator of circumstance.”

What is Jordan Belfort’s sales training about?

Jordan Belfort’s schemes explained

Let’s now briefly explain the various financial schemes, Jordan Belfort, together with Stratton Oakmont, partook in, including a boiler room and pump-and-dump operation, as well as money laundering.

Boiler room

A boiler room is an operation in which brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade investors to purchase securities with false or misleading premises. Most boiler room salespeople contact potential investors by cold calls. While this means the potential client has no reason to trust the caller, it also means they have no background information to refute their claims.

Part of the pressure sales approach includes making exaggerated assertions about the investment opportunity that the client cannot verify, encouraging the investor to buy the stock immediately. In addition, the salesperson might insist on immediate payment, including taking an aggressive approach and threatening the prospect to act, lest they “lose an opportunity of a lifetime.” In fact, promises of high returns and no risk are essential to pressuring clients to invest.

Boiler room scams typically sell fraudulent, speculative securities, typically penny stocks, i.e., small companies that trade for less than $5 per share. Penny stocks are too small for major stock exchanges and are only traded over-the-counter, meaning that a relatively small amount of buyers can cause a significant price rise.

In a typical penny stock scam, fraudsters would first accumulate a small-cap stock at a low price and then use boiler-room methods to gather buyers for an inflated price. In such a scam, victims may think they are buying on the open market when in reality, they are purchasing the shares directly from the scammers. The commission and the stock’s easy manipulation are the primary incentives for brokers to trade penny stocks.

Boiler room operations, if not illegal, unquestionably violate the rules of fair practice set forth by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).

Pump and dump

Much like a boiler room operation, a pump-and-dump is a manipulative scheme to boost the price of a security through false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements. In a typical pump-and-dump, fraudsters use cold-calling, message boards, or social media to reach potential investors and convince them to buy the asset, with promises of guaranteed profits. Then, as the price rises, the scammers sell their shares, leaving investors holding the bag.

These schemes generally target micro- and small-cap stocks on over-the-counter exchanges that are less regulated than traditional exchanges as well as easier to manipulate. The practice is illegal based on securities law and can lead to heavy fines.

Money laundering

Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities, i.e., making “dirty” money appear legitimate. The method of laundering money typically involves three steps:

Placement: Injecting the “dirty money” into a legitimate (cash-based) financial institution;
Layering: Concealing the source of the funds through a series of transactions and bookkeeping tricks;
Integration: Withdrawal of the “clean” money as needed.

For example, Belfort attempted a money laundering method known as “bulk cash smuggling,” based on moving “dirty” money, in its physical form, over the border to another country (in this case, Switzerland), where the bank secrecy laws are much more stringent.

Jordan Belfort’s boiler room

Ronald L. Rubin, the SEC enforcement attorney assigned to put together the case against Steven Madden, got a first-hand account from Jordan Belfort and Porush as “cooperating witnesses,” in which they explained the finer points of how they used their brokerage firm to steal millions of dollars from investors.

Rubin breaks Belfort’s signature fraud technique into five steps:

“1. Create IPO Stock;

2. Line Up the Victims;

3. Bait and Switch;

4. Market Manipulation;

5. Sell High and Shut the Door”.

Let’s summarize his findings outlined in the WSJ article.

1. Create IPO Stock

First, they needed a business to sell, and the definition of business, in this case, was very loose. What was required was not an actual business but rather a business entity with a story that could be transformed into publicly traded stock through a Stratton IPO.

Notably, the Stratton IPO stock was not actually sold to the public but to Stratton. To avoid securities laws that forbid underwriters from buying more than a small percentage of the IPO stock they issue, Stratton sold all of its IPO stock to friends (flippers), who immediately sold the stock back to Stratton for a small profit.

The IPO stock was typically issued to flippers at $4 per share and then sold back to Stratton for $4.25 per share – a lucrative deal for the flippers, who could pocket $50,000 from an IPO without risking a loss.

2. Line Up the Victims

Stratton’s brokers would first gain investors’ confidence by letting them make a small profit on one or two Stratton IPOs. Then, once trust had been established, the Stratton salesmen would inform these customers of a new hot IPO with a $4 issue price and wait for them to take the bait.

Like all Stratton IPOs, the stock’s price was expected to skyrocket after its release. So, for example, an eager customer with $100,000 of savings allocates the Stratton broker to purchase 25,000 shares of that IPO stock (with a $4 issue price) and then transfers the $100,000 to his Stratton account, offering Jordan Belfort and his cronies an exact picture of how much buying power they have.

3. Bait and Switch

Shortly before an IPO, the Stratton broker would call these customers and inform them that the IPO was so desirable that they could offer only a few shares at the $4 IPO price. However, the promise was still that they create purchase orders to be executed as soon as the stock began trading on the market, resulting in many customers assuming that such orders would result in stock purchases near the issue price ($4).

The pressure put on these investors was immense, especially since they had already consented to buy the same stock at the issue price, so they agreed to whatever was being shoved at them.

4. Market Manipulation

The company could have made millions just by selling its customers penny stocks for $4 per share, but after a few such IPOs, investors and regulators would have grown suspicious. So instead, Jordan Belfort used the stock market to disguise his fraud.

Let’s imagine Stratton issued one million shares of the IPO stock, but its customers had already pledged to purchase $12 million of the stock in the aftermarket.

The goal was thus to have the stock price rise from $4 to $12 per share before selling it to them. Then, having repurchased all of the IPO stock from the flippers, Belfort and Porush could cause the stock to trade in the aftermarket at any value. The simplest way to achieve that would have been to trade shares between Stratton accounts at increasing prices, but that would have been too conspicuous.

So instead, they had their flippers buy small amounts of stock using “market orders,” which buy shares at the lowest price offered by any seller. Of course, the only seller was Stratton Oakmont.

Flippers began placing these small market orders right when aftermarket trading kicked off on IPO day. At the same time, Stratton would sell its stock using “limit orders,” which offer stock for sale only above a fixed minimum price. After each of these sales, the firm would place another limit order with a slightly raised minimum price, resulting in the market orders executing at a higher price.

The market recorded a steady progression of trades at $4.25, $4.50, and $4.75, up to the $12 target price (all accomplished in mere minutes). And since this was the typical first-day trading pattern for legitimate hot IPO stocks during the 1990s, the manipulation wasn’t blatant.

5. Sell High and Shut the Door

When the IPO share price reached the $12 target, Stratton executed its customers’ buy orders. Had investors holding the inflated stock attempted to resell it quickly on the market, they would have found almost no genuine buyers, the stock price having nosedived about as fast as it had risen.

However, such an early price crash was rare for legitimate IPO stocks and would have drawn regulatory scrutiny and scared away future Stratton customers. To combat this, Stratton sustained the high price, typically for a month, by purchasing any of its IPO stock for sale on the open market.

Still, letting customers sell their stock for $12 while Stratton Oakmont was almost the only buyer would defeat the purpose of the scheme. So, investors had to be discouraged from selling too soon. This was done by showering more hyperbole onto customers who called to place sell orders (Stratton operated before online brokers, which enable investors to place their own orders).

Most sinister of all, if customers couldn’t be persuaded into holding on to their stock, their sell orders would simply be lost and their phone calls ignored. Or, when the sell orders were finally executed, the lack of buyers would cause the stock to crash, resulting in the customers’ funds being totally wiped out. But, of course, by that time, Belfort had the following IPO ready and was lining up new prey for his schemes.

Jordan Belfort in the “Wolf of Wall Street” movie

Based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir of the same name, “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) is a biographical black comedy crime movie directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Terence Winter, recounting Belfort’s perspective on his career as a broker in New York City.

In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Bros. won a bidding war for the rights to Belfort’s memoir, with Belfort banking $1 million from the deal.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” synopsis

After trying out a few entry-level jobs on Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, still in his 20s, decides to establish his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. With his trusted right-hand man and a motley crew of brokers, Belfort and his brokerage make an immense fortune by defrauding investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies indulge in a hedonistic concoction of sex and drugs, the SEC and the FBI gather evidence for his eventual comeuppance.

Recommended video: “ The Wolf of Wall Street” trailer

In conclusion

All in all, Belfort’s infamy has proved lucrative. He has picked himself up from the ruins of his fraudulent empire and built a brand new one by utilizing the media’s glorification and obsession with him as the embodiment of Wall Street greed.

FAQs about Jordan Belfort

Jordan Belfort is a former Wall Street stockbroker who, in 1999, was indicted for fraud and money laundering concerning his firm Stratton Oakmont’s market manipulation schemes that evaporated millions of investor dollars. Following his prison stint, Belfort transformed his image, becoming an acclaimed author and motivational speaker. His most notable work, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” chronicled his experiences and was subsequently adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role.

What did Jordan Belfort do?

Stratton Oakmount ran a boiler room to pump the value of penny stocks. Belfort’s brokers were trained to pressure inexperienced retail investors to buy shares of companies that Belfort owned, artificially inflating those stock prices and allowing Belfort to sell his shares at a high profit.

What Is a pump and dump scam?

A pump-and-dump is an illegal market manipulation scheme in which scammers artificially raise the price of their own shares to sell them at a profit. In a typical pump-and-dump, fraudsters use cold-calling, message boards, or social media to reach potential investors and convince them to buy the asset, with promises of guaranteed profits. Then, as the price rises, the fraudsters put in sell orders, leaving investors scrambling.

What is a boiler room?

A boiler room is an operation in which brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade customers to purchase securities. Most boiler room salespeople contact potential investors by cold calls. Notable boiler room tactics include making extravagant unverifiable claims on the stock, demanding immediate payment, or threatening non-compliance.

What are similar films to "The Wolf of Wall Street"?

There are various films that are both entertaining and educational that depict the greed and excess of Wall Street, such as:

“Boiler Room”;
“Wall Street” and its 2010 sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”;
“The Big Short”;
“Margin Call.”

How did Jordan Belfort get rich?

Jordan Belfort got rich by starting an over-the-counter brokerage called Stratton Oakmont. The company earned money by functioning as a boiler room (a business where brokers apply high-pressure sales tactics to persuade investors to buy securities), selling and marketing worthless penny stocks, and defrauding investors via pump-and-dump schemes.

How long was Jordan Belfort in jail?

Jordan Belfort was in jail for nearly two years – a total of 22 months, despite pleading guilty and being sentenced to 4 years. Belfort and his associate Danny Porush were arrested in 1999 for money laundering and securities fraud.

Is Wolf of Wall Street a true story?

Yes, Wolf of Wall Street is based on a true story inspired by the real-life events of Jordan Belfort, who used to work as a stockbroker on Wall Street in the 1990s. Jordan Belfort defrauded thousands of investors of millions through his company Stratton Oakmont and was sentenced to jail for money laundering and market manipulation schemes.

How much is Jordan Belfort worth?

Jordan Belfort’s net worth is an estimated $134 million.

Who is Jordan Belfort's wife?

Jordan Belfort has been married four times. His first wife was Denise Lombardo, followed by Nadine Caridi (played by Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street”), whom he married in the 1990s. He then tied the knot with Anne Koppe in 2008. Most recently, in 2021, he married Cristina Invernizzi, who remains his wife to this day.

Where is Jordan Belfort now?

Jordan Belfort has transitioned from his controversial past to become a motivational speaker, author, and sales trainer. He’s penned memoirs such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” with the former adapted into a hit movie by Martin Scorsese. Belfort’s recent endeavors center on delivering seminars and online courses where he teaches sales techniques and emphasizes ethical business practices. Drawing from his personal missteps, he often speaks about the importance of integrity in business.

Is Jordan Belfort alive?

Yes, as of December 2023, Jordan Belfort is still alive.

What are some famous Jordan Belfort quotes?

Some of Jordan Belfort’s most famous quotes include, “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.” Another notable quote is, “There’s no nobility in poverty,” reflecting his controversial perspective on wealth and success. Belfort’s quotes often combine elements of ambition, the psychology of success, and a no-nonsense approach to achieving one’s goals, despite his notorious past.

Are Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush still friends?

The current state of the relationship between Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush is not publicly known. After their release from prison, both have attempted to rebuild their lives separately. Belfort has become a motivational speaker and author, while Porush has kept a lower profile, staying away from the public eye. Since their conviction and release, they have not publicly acknowledged each other’s presence. While they had a close partnership during their careers, it is unclear whether this relationship has continued or not after their legal troubles and subsequent life changes.

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Did jordan belfort really meet his future business partner in a restaurant.

What was the name of Belfort's brokerage house?

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.

What exactly did Jordan Belfort do that was illegal?

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

How many employees worked for Jordan Belfort's brokerage firm?

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

Danny Porush says the movie's dwarf-tossing scene (above) never happened. Even Belfort's book only discusses it as a possibility. Did Jordan Belfort really host an in-office dwarf-tossing competition?

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

During what years did the events in the movie take place?

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

Was Jordan Belfort really known as the "wolf" of Wall Street?

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

Is Matthew McConaughey's character, Mark Hanna, based on a real person?

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

Did Jordan Belfort really abuse cocaine and other drugs?

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."

Jordan Belfort did give speeches like DiCaprio in the movie (left). Right: The real Belfort speaks at a 1994 Stratton Oakmont Christmas party (right). Did Belfort really stand in front of his employees and give riling speeches with a microphone?

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.

Did a female employee really let them shave her head for $10,000 to pay for breast implants?

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

Was Jordan Belfort's Quaalude dealer in the movie, Brad Bodnick (Jon Bernthal), based on a real person?

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.

Was there ever a chimpanzee in the office?

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

Did he really almost crash his helicopter in his yard?

Did Danny Porush really marry his own first cousin?

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.

Did Belfort and his colleagues really have drug-addled nights and sexcapades with prostitutes on a near daily basis?

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

Was Belfort really arrested for crashing his Lamborghini while high on expired Quaaludes?

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

The real Donnie Azoff, Daniel Porush, says that he really did swallow a goldfish like Jonah Hill (pictured). Did Danny Porush really swallow a goldfish?

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

Did they really tape money to a woman's body?

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

Was footwear mogul Steve Madden really involved in Belfort's scheme?

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

Did Jordan Belfort really name his yacht after his wife?

Did Belfort's yacht really sink in a Mediterranean storm?

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.

How long did FBI agent Gregory Coleman spend tracking Jordan Belfort and his firm?

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

Did Jordan really strike his wife?

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."

Did Belfort really endanger his 3-year-old daughter's life by crashing his car through the garage door?

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.

Tommy Chong was Jordan Belfort's cellmate in prison and encouraged him to write the book. What was Jordan Belfort's punishment?

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

What inspired Jordan Belfort to write his memoir?

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

Why is Jordan Belfort's memoir filled with so many exclamations?

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.

What happened to Belfort's partner, Danny Porush, portrayed by Jonah Hill in the movie?

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

I heard that Jordan Belfort is a motivational speaker, is that true?

How much did Jordan Belfort earn from his books and the movie?

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.

Does Jordan Belfort have a cameo in The Wolf of Wall Street movie?

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.

Have any other movies been based on Jordan Belfort's story?

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's Website
Danny Porush's Website (played by Jonah Hill)
Mark Hanna's Website (played by Matthew McConaughey)
The Wolf of Wall Street Official Paramount Movie Site

'Wolf of Wall Street' Jordan Belfort Lost a Fortune After His Scam Was Exposed; Here's His Net Worth

The Wolf's Den: Jordan Belfort's net worth chronicles

Jordan belfort's early life, motivational speaking and writing career, jordan belfort's luxurious yacht and its specifications, jordan belfort's rise to success, legal troubles, and the eventual downfall, what are jordan belfort's sources of income, jordan belfort's residence in new york, jordan belfort's financial journey and successful stock trading, lessons from jordan belfort's journey and impact of his story, buying and selling penny stocks, pump and dump scheme, earnings by year , social media following , personal life.

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Jordan Belfort's net worth is currently negative $100 million due to his involvement in fraudulent activities, particularly pump-and-dump schemes conducted through his financial firm, Stratton Oakmont, from 1989 to 1996. Belfort, a former stockbroker and author, defrauded victims of hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to his indictment for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999. Despite his negative net worth, he has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker, charging substantial fees for speaking engagements and seminars.

Jordan Ross Belfort was born in The Bronx, New York, on July 9, 1962. Raised in Bayside, Queens, he initially pursued a career in dentistry but left after one day of classes. Belfort entered the finance world and, after facing setbacks, founded Stratton Oakmont in the early 1990s. Convicted of securities fraud and money laundering in 1999, he served 22 months in prison.

Post-release, Belfort became a motivational speaker through his company, Global Motivation, Inc. He emphasizes the importance of ethics and learning from mistakes in business. Additionally, Belfort is a published author, with memoirs like "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street," the former adapted into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

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Belfort owned the luxury yacht "Nadine," built in 1961 for Coco Chanel. Renamed after his second wife, the yacht sank off the coast of Sardinia in June 1996. Belfort admitted to insisting on sailing in high winds against the captain's advice, leading to the vessel's demise. The Italian Navy's special forces rescued all aboard.

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Belfort's rise to success involved founding Stratton Oakmont in the early 1990s, orchestrating pump-and-dump schemes that defrauded investors of hundreds of millions. Legal troubles ensued, and in 1999, he was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering. Belfort's cooperation with the FBI led to a reduced sentence of 22 months in prison. His firm was expelled from the National Association of Securities Dealers in 1996, marking its downfall.

Jordan Belfort's notorious journey towards financial crime started when he founded the firm Stratton Oakmont in 1989. This firm orchestrated elaborate pump-and-dump schemes, through which it defrauded unsuspecting victims of hundreds of millions of dollars. Belfort's primary source of income during this period were the ill-gotten gains from these schemes, which he used to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Jordan Belfort is seen on June 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California/ GettyImages/ Photo by SMXRF/Star Max/GC Images

Belfort's former residence in Long Island, New York, was seized by the federal government in 2001 and sold to compensate fraud victims. The property, initially listed for $3.4 million in 2017, faced price reductions, with the latest known price at $2.89 million in August 2018.

Jordan Belfort's financial journey involved early ventures, including door-to-door meat and seafood sales. Despite bankruptcy at 25, he became a stockbroker, eventually founding Stratton Oakmont. His success was marred by fraudulent practices, resulting in legal consequences and a negative net worth. Belfort has written about his experiences and developed a system of sales advice called the "Straight Line System."

Jordan Belfort's story serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of financial fraud. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from his mistakes, emphasizing the importance of ethical business practices. Belfort's transformation into a motivational speaker and author reflects the possibility of redemption and personal growth after facing legal and financial setbacks.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jordan Belfort (@wolfofwallst)

Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker, was involved in fraudulent activities related to penny stocks through his financial firm, Stratton Oakmont. The firm engaged in pump-and-dump schemes, defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. Belfort's involvement in such schemes led to his indictment for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

Stratton Oakmont, founded by Jordan Belfort, orchestrated pump-and-dump schemes as part of its fraudulent activities. The firm manipulated stock prices, leading to inflated values that benefited Belfort and his associates. This scheme defrauded investors, and Belfort eventually faced legal consequences, serving 22 months in prison and being ordered to pay $110 million in restitution.

Jordan Belfort's personal life has been marked by turmoil. He married Denise Lombardo in 1985, but their marriage ended in 1991. His second marriage, to British-born model Nadine Caridi in 1991, produced two children but ended in divorce in 2005 after allegations of domestic violence. Belfort later married Anne Koppe in 2008, divorced her in 2020, and began dating Cristina Invernizzi in 2021.

Jordan Belfort graduated from American University with a degree in biology. Initially planning to attend dental school, he changed his path after a discouraging speech by the dental school dean. Belfort's career took a different turn when he became a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman before entering the world of finance.

Jordan Belfort is seen on September 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, CA/ GettyImages/ Photo by Hollywood To You/Star Max/GC Images

Why is Jordan Belfort's net worth in minus?

Jordan Belfort's net worth is negative $100 million because of his involvement in fraudulent activities.

How accurate is Wolf Of Wall Street?

While "The Wolf of Wall Street" is based on Jordan Belfort's memoir, it takes creative liberties and exaggerates some events.

Did Jordan Belfort lose his money?

Yes, Jordan Belfort lost a significant amount of money due to legal consequences from his fraudulent activities. He was ordered to pay $110 million in restitution to his victims.

How did Jordan Belfort build his net worth?

Jordan Belfort initially built his net worth through fraudulent activities as the founder of Stratton Oakmont, a financial firm engaged in pump-and-dump scheme.

How has Jordan Belfort spent his money?

Jordan Belfort spent his money on a lavish lifestyle, including buying a white Ferrari with his first Wall Street bonus, sinking a 167-foot yacht in a Mediterranean storm, running up a $700,000 hotel bill, and engaging in extravagant activities.

How do people live with a negative net worth?

Individuals with a negative net worth, like Jordan Belfort, may face financial challenges, including difficulties in repaying debts and meeting financial obligations.

The Wolf of Wall Street’s yacht

Coco Chanel decided to buy her own yacht, a 37-meter steel-hulled yacht built by the Dutch manufacturer Witsen & Vis. The yacht passed through many hands, finally belonging to the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, when it sank in 1996. The yacht was originally built for a Frenchman under the name Mathilde, but he gave up and she caught the attention of Chanel instead. With a narrow beam, high bow and long, low superstructure typical of Dutch yachts of her era, she was certainly a beautiful boat. But she was also well-equipped, with five dark teak-panelled cabins, her own galley, a tender room and a helipad.

Coco Chanel died in 1971 and shortly thereafter the yacht was renamed Jan Pamela under the new ownership of Melvin Lane Powers. He was a real estate developer in Houston. At this time, in the Merrill Stevens workshop in Miami, a huge seven-meter section was added amidships. The result of the extension is a new seven meter master cabin, an additional saloon and another cabin – increasing the charter capacity to seven cabins. During this refit, the color of the boat was also changed from white to gray. In 1983 Powers went bankrupt and the yacht was again sold to Edgewater.

An intelligent hydraulic function was also something new at the time. 3.6m x 1.2m glass panels were hidden under two of the settees in the main cabin, giving a view of the sea below the boat. At the push of a button, the sofas lifted up and the mirrors above allowed a view of the sea floor. The yacht was named Big Eagle in 1995. when it was bought by Jordan Belfort. He fell in love with her and asked her to be sold to him. Shortly after, the boat was re-christened “Nadine”, the name of his wife.

Belfort embarked on a new round of renovations, refurbishing the interior with vintage decoration and lots of mirrors, this time extending the upper deck and installing a crane capable of lifting and retracting the Turbine Seawind seaplane.

Nadine also had space for a helicopter, a 10-meter Intrepid tender, two 6-meter bow boats, four motorcycles, six jets, state-of-the-art diving equipment.

Nadine and her vast cohort of toys and vehicles have toured all the usual yachting spots on both sides of the Atlantic. Disaster befell the boss and guests on board during the 85km crossing between Civitavecchia in Italy and Calle de Volpe in Sardinia.

What was forecast to be 20-knot winds and moderate seas turned into a raging 70-knot storm with crests towering over 10.6m. Wave after wave battered the superstructure, flooding hatches and windows. Miraculously, the engine room remained dry and they were able to maintain control, driving slowly through the darkness of the night until rescue attempts were unsuccessful.

Nadine eventually sank at dawn just 20 miles off the coast of Sardinia. All were evacuated by helicopter and there were no casualties.

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W hen he was the multimillionaire investor known as the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort owned a 167ft yacht named Nadine that sank off the coast of Sardinia after an ill-advised voyage in a freak storm. Belfort didn’t need to make that trip. The yacht’s captain had said they shouldn’t. His wife at the time, Nadine, after whom the yacht was renamed — it was originally built for Coco Chanel — said they shouldn’t, but Belfort was “stoned out of his mind” on the sedative Quaalude and experiencing “a frantic need for movement”. He insisted they sail. “Don’t forget I was on a lot of cocaine too,” he says today. “But yeah, my decision-making was definitely off.”

After a 50ft wave wrecked the vessel he

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kc135delta Member

I saw this m/y on another thread here and it peaked my curiosity. Very narrow beam, apparently extended a couple times and then it sank off the coast of france. Does anyone know where she was built? Specs? Engines? Any sister ships? And why did she sink?

Norseman Senior Member

And why did she sink? Click to expand...

captholli Senior Member

Built in Holland in one of the founding federation of ship builders that finally became the modern day two Feadship yards of Van Lent and DeVries. Believe she was launched as CoCo Chanel (not sure) than named Jan Pamela and "Jumbolized" or a mid section of 30' fabricated @ Merrill Stevens and installed in 1982. Sank while making passage from Naples to Sardinia as the loss has been well documented.

NYCAP123 Senior Member

Back at the time of her sinking I'd heard that a forward hatch blew open in rough seas and it was a done deal from there. They tried to jettison the toys to regain stability, but it was too little, too late.

K1W1 Senior Member

Hi, The Skipper of it when it sank is a well known and active character within the industry to this very day. I found this on another site. Nadine's sinking was indeed caused by the violent waves. A foredeck hatch was smashed, allowing water to flood the crew quarters and bringing the yacht down by the bow. This allowed more waves to break over the fordeck and they caused one of the large tenders carried there to shift, breaking one of the dining salon windows that overlooked the foredeck, which causing flooding on the maindeck. As if that wasn't bad enough, the violent motion of the yacht caused the swim platform to rip off the hull, allowing the lazarette to flood.

Ahh, now its coming back to me, The first lengthening was the 12' cockpit addition @ Merrill Stevens in 1980 the original machinery in place when launched was Detroit Diesel 12-71 naturals for mains and 6-71 gens. Mains replaced in 1991 with Cat 3412 and Gens replaced with N.L. -This work was also done by Merrill Stevens in Miami.

captholli said: Mains replaced in 1991 with Cat 3412 and Gens replaced with N.L. -This work was also done by Merrill Stevens in Miami. Click to expand...

C4ENG Senior Member

But then not to long after the Nadine sinking, Mr. Little hired that Capt to run Starship. Proved to be a good idea because that captain did an excellent job marketing the vessel for charter. I then felt fortunate enough to be there when Mr. Little did has last boat ride before departing for the big boat in the sky. We went to Freeport Bahamas Port Luycaya. The unique thing was, on that trip I never seen him happier.

Hi, Uncle Bernie as we used to call him was an outstanding Owner and one heck of a gentleman to work for or be associated with.

I was the Engineer from '80 to '84 when Mel Powers out of Dallas owned her as Jan Pamela and Norm Dahl was Capt. So I have first hand knowledge of what, when and where the cockpit and and mid section were added right down to a young Kiwi, Paul Solenicks contracted to provide the electrical work through his newly formed Co. Tess Marine. After Mel filed chapter 13 the boat went up for auction and the Whole crew went on to Empress Subaru.

nas130 Member

The autobiography "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street" both have some information about the sinking of the Nadine. The movie "Boiler Room" was allegedly the story of Nadines owner’s business on Long Island. I think the book about megayacht disasters also has some interviews with the captain and crew that were taken after sinking.

Hi, Captholli- Would your first name be Mark by any chance?

No, But enjoying the anonymity as you do "Kiwi" Cheers!

Hi, I asked because in 1984 I met a guy who was Chief on Empress Subaru and I thought his name was Mark Hollingsworth. He also got speared in the foot with a dart at a party I was at. By the way Paul Salenieks expanded his co - Tess Electrical Marine and sold it out to a multi national.

Neil Rooney Senior Member

Seawind with Allison C-18 I have been a passenger in that Seawind a few times. She was powered by an Allison C-18 Turbine with a cut down 3 blade prop. Quite a fast plane. The plane was in the USA when Nadine went down. Do read the account in "The Wolf OF Wall Street".

Benprez New Member

this boat was once owned by Jordan Belfort the wolf of wall street it sunk watch the youtube story jordan belfort yacht story

Hi, It had a few more interesting Owners as well. The late great Bernie Little and the infamous Mel Powers to name just two.

CaptTom Senior Member

Benprez said: ↑ this boat was once owned by Jordan Belfort the wolf of wall street it sunk watch the youtube story jordan belfort yacht story Click to expand...

stgeorge123 New Member

MY Nadine With the new movie 'The Wolf of Wall Strret' about to come out, I relooked at this thread and discovered it has never been clearly answered. The 'Nadine' was originally built at Niklaas Vitsen und vis in Aalkmar Holland circa 1962 for a wealthy French industrialist - she was floated as 'Mathilda' and retained this name until May 1977 when she was renamed Coco Chanel and crossed over to the US. She was originally fitted with GM Diesels and Mercedes gensets.The next time she was over in the Med, if my memory serves me right was in 1988 at the Cannes Film Festival, on charter having come across on Dock Express. Jordan Belfort was onboard with guests and full crew when she sadly sank off Corsica (all rescued fortunately) - theories and way she sank are numerous and probably mostly inaccurate, but I believe her length, by now 53 metres instead of the 40 metres she was originally built at, contributed. However, having sailed on this vessel as Ch.Off from 1970 - 1977, she should never have set sail in the weather conditions that day, which eventually were worse than forecast - whatever the Owner said!!

Hi, Mel Powers owned it when it was stretched by Merril Stevens in Miami. It lurked around the area for a few years and the late Bernie Little expressed an interest in it when it was called Jan or Jam Pamela and was laying at Merril Stevens in 1988. I was working for BLL on something else and was asked to go take a look. I next saw it when I was in Astilleros in Palma in the summer of 1989. Follwing this it was acquired by BLL and I worked on the refit when it was repowered with CAT 3412's and CAT Gensets in late 1992. The rest as they say is history - there are varying accounts of many historical events so this fits well.

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The story of the Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort's 37m yacht Nadine
How Jordan Belfort's 37m superyacht Nadine sank off the coast of Sardinia. Coco Chanel was famously outspoken on many things, but yachting, in particular, attracted her ire. "As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom," she was once quoted as saying. Her solution was to buy her own yacht.
Meet the Real Wolf of Wall Street Superyacht Built for Coco Chanel
The vessel had been built in 1961 by Witsen & Vis in Holland for fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had undergone many transformations by the time Belfort got his mitts on it. Originally 121 feet long ...
Meet the Real Wolf of Wall Street Superyacht Built for Coco Chanel
In real life, predatory tycoon Jordan Belfort bought a yacht in 1993 called Big Eagle and renamed her Nadine, after his English-born second wife. The vessel had been built in 1961 by Witsen & Vis in Holland for fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had undergone many transformations by the time Belfort got his mitts on it. Originally 121 feet long, in ...
The Ridiculous True Story Behind Wolf Of Wall Street's Yacht
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 ...
Jordan Belfort Yacht
The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine. 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.
The Real Story Behind the Yacht in The Wolf of Wall Street
By Steph Silver - 4/18/23. The Real Story. Based on the eponymous memoir, the 2013 hit The Wolf of Wall Street told the story of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker who was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie was a smashing success through and through.
Everything The Wolf Of Wall Street Doesn't Tell You About The ...
Jordan Belfort bought a yacht and named it after his second wife. ... Belfort's vintage yacht once belonged to none other than the famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel. Chanel is known for ...
The Fascinating True Story Behind The Wolf Of Wall Street
Coco Chanel's yacht went down with Belfort's marriage Paramount Pictures When Jordan Belfort is touting Steve Madden's once-in-a-decade genius in "The Wolf of Wall Street," he compares him to ...
The True Jordan Belfort Yacht Story: Fact vs. Fiction
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. ... 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 ...
Jordan Belfort: The real Wolf of Wall Street and the men who brought
He owned a sprawling estate in the Hamptons, a fleet of supercars and a 167ft yacht which once belonged to Coco Chanel and which he sank in the Mediterranean. He had a supermodel wife and a drug ...
The true story of Wolf Of Wall Street's yacht 'Nadine'
Jordan Belfort's antics are so legendary that sinking a multi-million dollar yacht is just another act of depravity that Martin Scorsese manages to weave among The The wolf of Wall Street grotesque film adaptation. Those who know the wolf of Wall Street book will have read Belfort's account about it in more detail, but the backstory of the superyacht Nadine is a lesser-known tale with ...
Did Jordan Belfort Sink Coco Chanel's Former Yacht?
Belfort's Yacht That Sank Was Once Owned By Coco Chanel. Belfort also had a chopper on the upper deck of the yacht, which was shown to have been knocked off by the waves in the movie. In the actual events back in 1997, however, they had to climb up to the deck where the helicopter was, and literally push it off in order to make space for the ...
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. Belfort's memoir, which the movie is based on, includes some accurate details, such as smuggling money into Swiss banks and sinking a yacht. However, several real-life figures have disputed the accuracy of the events ...
Meet the real wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort
Belfort said he flew his own helicopter while high, sank his 167-foot yacht (once owned by Coco Chanel) in the Mediterranean while high, drove with his 3-year-old daughter unbuckled beside him ...
Nadine Macaluso
Belfort, who had previously been married to Denise Lombardo, ran the brokerage house Stratton Oakmont. They married in 1991. She and Belfort had two children. The couple owned a luxury yacht, originally built in 1961 for Coco Chanel, that Belfort renamed Nadine after Macaluso. The yacht sank off the east coast of Sardinia in June 1996.
Mayday In The Med
The real story of the sinking of the Wolf of Wall Street's yacht. In 2000, Doug Hoogs interviewed Capt. Mark Elliott about the sinking of the motoryacht Nadine.Elliott was in command of Nadine on the fateful day in 1996 when she encountered a powerful mistral in the Mediterranean between the Italian mainland and Sardinia. All guests and crew survived, but the real story of the sinking, which ...
Meet Jordan Belfort, The Real Life 'Wolf Of Wall Street,' In These
Here he is talking about the night his yacht (which was originally built for Coco Chanel) sank off the coast of Italy… Here he is in an interview talking about bunking with Tommy Chong in ...
Who is Jordan Belfort? True Story of "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Jordan Belfort's yacht was named after his second wife Nadine (or Naomi in the "Wolf of Wall Street" movie), which was previously built for Coco Chanel in 1961. It ultimately sank off the Sardinian east coast in 1996 after Belfort insisted on sailing out in high winds against the captain's advice. Jordan Belfort's net worth
Wolf of Wall Street True Story
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 ...
Jordan Belfort's Falling Fortunes Were Showcased in 'Wolf of Wall
Jordan Belfort's luxurious yacht and its specifications Belfort owned the luxury yacht "Nadine," built in 1961 for Coco Chanel. Renamed after his second wife, the yacht sank off the coast of ...
The Wolf of Wall Street's yacht
Coco Chanel decided to buy her own yacht, a 37-meter steel-hulled yacht built by the Dutch manufacturer Witsen & Vis. The yacht passed through many hands, finally belonging to the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, when it sank in 1996. The yacht was originally built for a Frenchman under the name Mathilde, but he gave up and she caught the ...
Jordan Belfort: 'I still feel bad
W hen he was the multimillionaire investor known as the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort owned a 167ft yacht named Nadine that sank off the coast of Sardinia after an ill-advised voyage in a ...
Any info on the yacht 'Nadine'
Believe she was launched as CoCo Chanel (not sure) than named Jan Pamela and "Jumbolized" or a mid section of 30' fabricated @ Merrill Stevens and installed in 1982. ... this boat was once owned by Jordan Belfort the wolf of wall street it sunk watch the youtube story jordan belfort yacht story K1W1, Oct 20, 2012 #17. K1W1 Senior Member. Joined ...

How Jordan Belfort's 37m superyacht Nadine sank off the coast of Sardinia

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Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

What happened to the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine?

Did the yacht scene in The Wolf of Wall Street actually happen?

Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

Jordan Belfort’s life today

The Real Story Behind the Yacht in The Wolf of Wall Street

Nadine Caridi, the Ex-Wife

The Sinking of the Nadine Yacht

Can a Circle of Salt Paralyze a Self-Driving Car?

The Salt Trap

The Response

Everything The Wolf Of Wall Street Doesn't Tell You About The True Story

Belfort's wives' names were changed for the film

The original crew Belfort recruited from friends are composite characters

Donnie Azoff doesn't exist, his real-life counterpart is Danny Porush

Danny Porush's wife introduced Jordan Belfort to her husband

Belfort's destroyed yacht once belonged to Coco Chanel

Steve Madden spent time in prison for stock fraud

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

Tommy Chong was Belfort's cellmate in prison

Stratton Oakmont was never on Wall Street

Jordan Belfort was never called 'The Wolf of Wall Street'

Belfort had a head-on collision while driving under the influence of Quaaludes

The Fascinating True Story Behind The Wolf Of Wall Street

A conman's sworn (and swearing) testimony

Jonah Hill's character was based on Danny Porush

What really happened at the office?

Forbes really did profile Belfort

Was Belfort ever actually called The Wolf of Wall Street?

What Belfort did before becoming a stockbroker

Fashion designer Steve Madden was involved

Coco Chanel's yacht went down with Belfort's marriage

Fall of the new Rome

Tommy Chong was Belfort's 'cube mate'

Belfort was ordered to pay restitution to his victims

What's Jordan Belfort up to today?

A Lamborghini of lies mixed with the truth

Are you buying it?

Jordan Belfort Yacht: The True Story and The Wolf of Wall Street Version

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Nadine yacht model

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Interesting insights on the sinking as portrayed in the movie

The best features of the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine

Which model was portrayed as the Jordan Belfort yacht Nadine in the movie?

Jordan Belfort’s life today

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