Original subtitles

[suspenseful music]

- I think I saw

"The Wolf of Wall Street" movie alone.

I had received a call from Jordan Belfort

asking me if I wanted to attend a premiere.

- Martin Scorsese's film, "The Wolf of Wall Street,"

tells the real life story of Jordan Belfort.

- The one-time stockbroker spent 22 months in prison

for fraud and money laundering.

Leonardo DiCaprio playing you glamorizes you.

- I'd prefer him than Danny DeVito playing me.

- $100 million in box office.

- Sex, drugs, bad language,

and people just treating each other horribly.

- Five Oscar nominations.

- I appeared very, very briefly in his book,

so I had more than a little bit of trepidation.

- When I went to go see the movie,

I felt like wearing

a paper bag with the eyes cut out.

- Of course, a Martin Scorsese movie is

shot beautifully from a technical point of view.

The scenes on Wall Street make everybody look glamorous.

- I sat in a movie theater and cried.

- I was watching my life on screen.

It was surreal.

[intriguing music]

- Are we ready?

Is everyone rolling?

- I solemnly swear--no. [laughs]

- Hold on for one second.

- I used to get worried when I heard sirens.

- Those aren't the police coming for me, right?

Huh?

- Have you ever told your story publicly before?

- No.

- How's it feel sitting here?

- I'd rather be in the dentist's chair.

That's pretty bad. [chuckles]

- Why are you here today?

- Actually, I was there. I lived the life.

- Kind of asking for forgiveness, in a way.

- There's a lot of reasons why somebody would say no to this.

- It's important to get the story out there

because Jordan called me a fat fuck in his movie.

- Donnie, that fucking fat piece of shit.

- A lot of the movie was bullshit.

This is the truth.

- The story "The Wolf of Wall Street" tells

is a narrative that Jordan Belfort created.

- You know the truth about Jordan Belfort?

He was never called the Wolf of Wall Street.

- No one ever called Jordan "Wolf."

- The movie doesn't even accurately portray

the level of insanity that occurred.

- There wasn't enough hookers, drug use.

Really missing from the movie.

- Young people today think that movie is real.

They admire the person in that movie.

Show me how you sell me a pen.

- Sell me this fucking pen right here.

You sell that.

- The movie was just a way of making him a celebrity,

and he then used that.

- The one thing I've learned tonight is

how to sell a pen from the master salesman.

- People don't know the real Jordan Belfort.

- We got married. I think I was 23.

The highs were really high.

The lows were really low.

- What's missing from the movie is

that there is a price to pay.

- In real life, he destroyed people's lives.

- People lost money. People got hurt.

- There was fallout for everyone.

- Did Jordan get away with it?

- Well, God punished me later in life.

- Now I'm a convicted felon.

- Betrayal. Here it comes.

- For a lot of people, the American dream in this story

turned into the American Nightmare.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[gentle music]

♪ ♪

- So I've had this video collection for years.

I was always into taking videos back in the Hampton days.

Then when I met up with Jordan in 1991,

I started taking videos of us

with all the different adventures

that he brought me to.

- My name is Ross Portenoy,

and I had the honor and pleasure of being

friends with Jordan Belfort and Nadine Belfort,

AKA the Wolf of Wall Street and the Duchess.

We had some crazy, wild times.

- And my life was very surreal during those years.

I was living the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

The drugs were going around.

It was chaos. It was wild.

- These tapes have been with me for 30-some odd years.

- "The Wolf of Wall Street," for the most part,

whether it was the book or the actual movie,

was through Jordan's lens,

and a lot of it is for Hollywood.

What I lived was the actual life.

And I'm doing this today to explain

to the people that idolize him

that you don't know the other side of him.

- When you picture Jordan Belfort,

what five words come to mind?

- First of all, he's not my friend.

- Confident.

- Extremely persuasive.

- Manipulative.

- Very, very smart, incredibly selfish.

- And arrogant.

- He was a chameleon.

- He's, you know, the antihero.

- He was constantly high.

- Pays no attention to the law.

- A rat.

- And absolutely no remorse, no conscience.

- Midget, scumbag, lying piece of shit,

although I think I went six words.

- When Stratton first started,

I invented the system for training salesmen.

We was legit.

We were trying to make our clients money,

and that was great.

- You know, he's a great salesman.

He sold garbage, but he was a great salesman.

- Sales isn't about what you sell.

You're always just selling yourself.

- I know him since I'm ten years old.

We were best friends.

I grew up in his house. He grew up in mine.

If you've been betrayed

by whoever's the closest person you've ever had in your life,

you'd get close to why this is difficult for me.

My name is Andrew Greene--

[grunts]

And I unfortunately fit right into the middle

of the whole discussion.

The only question is, you know, what you want to discuss.

But it's not just Stratton Oakmont for me.

It's very personal.

- Was there a character based on you in the movie?

- Yes.

- Was it Rugrat?

- I called him Rugrat because of his piece-of-shit hairpiece.

- First of all, no one ever called that name to me,

at least to my face.

And if he ever did, I'd have my foot up his ass.

And he knows it.

I grew up in a great place.

Bayside, New York.

I moved there when I was ten.

Jordan was a different person.

He likes to think of himself now as, you know,

Mr. Wall Street and debonair.

That wasn't him growing up.

He was the complete opposite.

But he was always smarter than everyone else.

Got it from his mother.

The place that I grew up was very competitive.

We would be playing basketball one day,

baseball, swimming, whatever.

But Jordan wasn't the greatest athlete.

He was smaller.

And when it came to girls, you know,

it was a difficult time for him.

He lacked self-confidence.

Yeah, I hate to tell you, but when we were growing up,

he would have to put lifts in his shoes

'cause he was upset of how short he was.

He would take hormone shots.

To me, it wasn't really the physical growth.

He needed to grow in here.

We didn't grow up in wealth.

It was a middle-class neighborhood.

All the things that he had later on in life,

none of us had.

[up-tempo music]

- Growing up, we used to hang out at Jones Beach.

The concession stand was a quarter of a mile

from where the water was.

And to walk that in the hot, hot weather

to get a drink was crazy.

So along comes this little guy, Jordan Belfort,

who I knew from my friends and from Bay Terrace,

selling ices out of a cooler.

- When we were in high school,

we're selling ices on the beach.

You know, I'd sell a cooler or two

and sit down and enjoy my day.

He was a fanatic about it.

Italian ices come in these paper cups,

and he'd squeeze the bottom of the cup

so he'd have to put less ices into each cup.

- Jordan realized he now didn't have to put

two full scoops of ices in, and nobody knew he was making

literally thousands of dollars every summer.

- And he really grew selling ices to an art form.

- In the beginning when he was young,

Jordan was definitely a much more humbled Jordan

because he wasn't making

anywhere near what he wound up making.

He was just starting.

My name is Robert LoRusso.

I met Jordan when I was maybe 19 or 20 years old.

I would consider us really very, very close--

almost, I would say, even best friends.

The Hamptons has really changed a lot.

When we were growing up, we would go out there

on weekends to party.

This is the Studio 54 days, by the way,

so disco was very big.

We would rent a hotel room, go to the beach the next day.

There were bikini contests.

We were young.

We were in our 20s.

On one occasion, I was at a club,

and in front of us was Jordan.

We were both trying to get this one girl's attention.

Um, how can I say this?

And we--let's just say

we became friends with her together.

Well, she liked both of us, and we both liked her.

And I think we left the club, and we spent time together.

That's all.

- All three of you?

- Yes.

- Jordan had a meat business as well.

He would knock on people's doors,

and he would say, listen, I have my boss's truck

full of meat and fresh shrimp.

And if I didn't sell them, he's going to end up firing me.

I could give you a great price on it.

Those products were also a part of a scam

because the 16-ounce steak only weighed 12 ounces.

He would take water in a syringe,

and he would inject shrimps to make them look larger

than they actually were.

- Jordan was an expert at learning what people wanted

to hear to get them to buy,

whether it's ices, whether it's steak or stocks.

- After working as a meat and fish salesman,

he gets a job at a real Wall Street firm,

L.F. Rothschild.

[percussive music]

Wall Street at that time was the golden ticket.

It was like an infinite number of ways

that you could get rich.

Anybody could make money if they were good and smart.

I'm Pat Hurtado.

I'm a reporter for Bloomberg News,

and I cover the courts.

- For the last five years, it's been party time

on Wall Street with record high after record high.

- Jordan seemed to be doing well,

but then he had the unfortunate bad luck

of having worked there when Black Monday happens.

- In trading rooms on Wall Street, there was panic.

- The stock market crash cost investors $500 billion.

- Black Monday was devastating.

People lost their life savings.

And it was a huge setback for Jordan Belfort.

Most of the people on Wall Street suddenly

found themselves without a job.

- When I started looking through

the "help wanted" section, I stumbled upon an ad

for stockbrokers out in Long Island.

I didn't even know what it was, but I was desperate.

- Eventually, Jordan is able to get a job

at this place called the Investors Center,

which is right out of the movie.

- It's 3¢ a share.

That's $3, you cheap fuck!

- It's a boiler room operation,

a high sell, pushy--

get grandma on the phone.

She answers by accident.

A boiler room is when an army of cold callers

use very aggressive tactics to sell stocks

to unsuspecting members of the public.

- Took the job, and the first day,

shattered the company record.

But this was different 'cause I had this--

this moment of clarity.

I was making a million bucks a year myself

as a stock broker,

but I could train any human being,

regardless of age, race, creed,

color, socioeconomic background,

educational status-- didn't matter.

They could have this much desire and I could amplify it,

and in six months, they'd be rich too.

- When Jordan was at Investor's Center,

I know he was doing well there.

I remember we had, like, a little celebration

when he made his first million.

[mellow music]

He bought the West Hampton house

when he was very young.

So on the weekends, that's where we would go.

It was pretty much an open party--

people at the beach, people in the water,

people in the pool,

people in the bathrooms doing drugs,

people in the basement doing drugs,

people upstairs in the bedrooms doing drugs,

people on the roof doing drugs.

That is what the party was like.

It was a lot of fun.

♪ ♪

Jordan didn't really talk much about Investors Center,

but I know he was making a lot of money.

He's like, I could just do this myself.

[pensive music]

- In 1989, I got a call from Jordan,

and he told me he wanted to start a firm.

What did he need to know?

I'm known as Ike Sorkin.

I started out of law school at the SEC as a trial attorney.

Hi.

And then I went into private practice.

At the time, Jordan was working for Investors Center,

a small boiler room with a bunch of brokers

who didn't know the difference between a stock certificate

and a parking ticket.

They were trying to sell companies

that really had no worth.

And I said to Jordan, if you wanted to start a firm,

you're gonna get in trouble if you didn't do it right.

He thanked me, and he disappeared.

♪ ♪

- In 1989, Jordan and I met up.

And Jordan said he started this brokerage firm

called Stratton Oakmont.

I knew a bunch of brokers working for him.

He recruited most of the guys from Bayside.

- One day, we were in Puerto Rico.

Jordan was married to Denise, his first wife.

They were in love.

They were very active, from what I remember.

We were chilling in the pool.

The girls were on their lounge chairs.

And I said, how's the business going?

He goes, good.

He asked me, do you want to become a partner?

Maybe $100,000 for 10%, something like that.

I said, no, you know,

I don't know anything about that industry.

You know, that decision I made was probably a good decision,

'cause I'd probably be in jail right now.

[upbeat music]

- The lessons Jordan Belfort learned

from the Investors Center, he took with him,

creating this little mini-empire out in Long Island

called Stratton Oakmont.

And within a few years,

it was one of the most successful boiler rooms

in the country.

For many of the people that he hired,

Jordan Belfort became their inspirational leader.

- It was crazy partying going on.

- People snorting coke, people doing ludes,

traveling the world.

These young brokers all wanted to live the same lifestyle.

- He's the Pied Piper.

He had these guys march to his beat of his drum.

- It was a good scene in the movie where you had

these young kids coming into the firm,

all looking for jobs.

- What's all this?

- It's the "Forbes" article.

They all want to work for you now.

- He knew what to say to a bunch of kids

and promised them you're all gonna be

millionaires someday.

And people believed him.

- The perfect candidate was young, dumb,

broke, and hungry.

My name is Howie Gelfand, and I was at Stratton

from '89 till it closed.

I grew up in Flushing, Queens.

My childhood was really nothing special

other than the fact that that's where I started

to become a-- you know, a fat fuck.

The reason we eventually moved out to Long Island

is because I was stabbed in the arm with a lead pencil

by a girl in the boys' room for my lunch money.

Now, a little fat kid,

last thing you want to have to give up is your lunch money.

And as soon as that happened, the Jewish mother said,

that's it.

We're packing up, and we're going to the suburbs.

We moved out to Long Island.

And little by little, I started to see

how the other half lives.

I was, by far and away, the poorest kid

in a very wealthy neighborhood.

And I said to myself, I need to make money.

After high school, a friend called me and said,

Howie, I have found a job that is right up your alley.

This is built for you.

When I joined the company, I was 22.

I was the baby of the bunch,

and there were probably 20 to 25 people

at the company at most.

- I don't know who said it, but,

if you remember the '60s,

that meant you weren't really there.

And you could say the same thing about Stratton.

My name is Richard Bronson,

and after working on Wall Street for several years,

I ended up working at Stratton Oakmont.

[lilting orchestral music]

The company that I first started at

was Shearson Lehman American Express,

which no longer exists.

And I moved to Bear Stearns,

which, of course, is no longer there either.

But then I worked for Lehman Brothers,

and that's another firm that no longer exists.

As a stockbroker, your commissions are

paid on a monthly basis.

So every month, you're starting from zero.

♪ ♪

And I'm thinking, if I'm gonna take this sort of heat,

I gotta at least make sure I'm gonna earn a living.

I was out of the business for a few weeks,

and I happened to run into this guy who I used to work with.

And he said, I'm at a firm called Stratton Oakmont,

which I had never heard of.

It's in Lake Success, New York.

And he's talking about sort of a warehouse area.

It's amazing what's happening there.

He goes, let me show you something.

And he opens up his wallet, and he pulls out a paycheck.

And it was something like for $80,000 or $90,000.

And I said, do these checks clear?

[car honks]

- Before Stratton Oakmont, I spent years getting sober.

I was a drug addict.

I had a heart attack when I was about 25 years old.

I was almost homeless, and I got sober.

The miracle of it is, I'm the only one that

was sober at Stratton Oakmont.

I'm the only one who could tell the truth.

[chuckles]

My name is Jordan Shamah.

I worked at Stratton Oakmont for around six or seven years.

I was working in the Garment District,

selling dresses, sportswear,

and a very old friend of mine called me and said,

would you like to become a stockbroker?

I said, yeah, right.

[chuckles] Yeah.

He showed me a paycheck for, like, 80,000 for the month

and said, come work for this company

called Stratton Oakmont.

The parking lot was full of nice cars.

And Danny Porush brought me in.

- Danny Porush was Jordan's partner at Stratton Oakmont.

He was an ex-garmento, as were a lot of Jordan's brokers.

So Danny, in the film, was played by Jonah Hill,

who is multiple characters.

There was a part of Howie Gelfand as well.

And Danny was a wild and crazy guy.

He was married to a girl who, ironically--

it is very true-- was his first cousin.

- Yeah, my wife is my cousin or whatever,

but it's not like what you think.

- Is she, like, a first cousin or is she--

- Her father is the brother of my mom.

- Danny had three children with his first cousin.

Fortunately, all three children are OK.

Danny loved, loved, loved to party.

Jonah Hill played Danny really well in the movie.

- Here's what we do with subpoenas at Stratton Oakmont!

- As far as just his wild and crazy stuff.

[cheering]

Jordan was the brains behind the business.

Danny ran the daily routines and controlled the brokers.

- Danny immediately said, you gotta come work here.

Jordan had an office next door to Danny.

I walk in, and Danny introduces me.

And Jordan wasn't impressed with me at all.

He's not very tall, 5'7", maybe.

But he was wearing cowboy boots,

which was sort of funny.

- I thought if I kissed this fucking guy's ass,

you know, I'm gonna move up quicker in the ranks.

And in terms of the interview,

I was 3 pounds of sausage in a 2-pound bag.

But I did very well.

He said, Howie, of course you're hired.

And that was my entrance into hell.

- Hello, sir. This is Jordan Shamah.

I'm calling you from Stratton Oakmont.

How are you doing today? I know you're busy.

I'll get right to the point.

Are you familiar with Stratton Oakmont?

- When I first got to Stratton,

I didn't know if I was gonna succeed, fail.

You start out as a cold caller.

- Sir, with your permission, all I would like to do

is introduce myself and my firm.

- You're going to be making 300 calls a day.

- And the cold caller's role was to generate

leads for the broker.

The one thing the movie, I think, got right was

when he was teaching them the sales pitch.

That part of the movie was accurate.

- Welcome to Stratton Oakmont.

- I think he was telling them the name Stratton Oakmont,

they flew in on Plymouth Rock or something.

- Our very founders sailed over on the Mayflower

and chiseled the name "Stratton Oakmont"

right into Plymouth fucking Rock.

You got it?

- He brought out a script, and he went through the script

with them, and that script was very accurate.

- You finally found a broker on Wall Street that you can trust

and who can consistently make you money.

Sound fair enough?

- I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed.

- All you had to do to be successful

was follow the script and use the rebuttals.

They would give you a Xerox copy

of objections and rebuttals for the things

that the person that you were pitching would inevitably say.

And as depicted in the movie,

it was very, very similar to the way we would

do it at Stratton Oakmont.

- I don't know you. You cold called me.

You're a total stranger.

- I am in complete agreement with you.

You don't know me. I don't know you.

- Let me introduce myself to you.

- One of the typical rebuttals was,

I get a lot of these calls.

Mr. Jones, you should be very happy about that.

You're a successful businessman.

It's when you stop getting these people calling you

is when you really have to worry.

The guy says he's happy with his broker.

That's great.

I'm only asking that when I share an idea with you

and you can make money, you have an open ear.

Is that fair enough?

- You sound like a pretty sincere guy.

- Like in the movie, Jordan would teach us,

you put your hand on your heart.

If we really, really knew each other,

this wouldn't be a yes or no.

This would simply be a question of how much.

- When I would train stockbrokers,

I would say, if you were going into the ring with Mike Tyson,

you would certainly expect that he would

try to hit you in the head.

Would you not have a plan for that?

- I remember I say to a guy who said no to me--

I said, listen, just say no ten times.

Just do it. You're gonna do it anyway.

Say no ten times, and let's talk business.

- When the guy goes, well, I gotta ask my wife,

you better have an answer for that.

- Are you kidding me?

You talk to your wife when you got

to hire the landscaper too?

- You make every decision with your wife?

Be a man.

[tense music]

- Mr. Jones, could you do me a favor?

Put your right hand in your right pocket.

Move it over a little bit.

Now take a good squeeze.

What do you feel, grapes or grapefruits?

I get it, fine.

You know, buy 100 shares.

You wore him down.

- When you got the yes, you'd hang up the phone,

and there'd be a cheer, because you just went to war,

and you won the war.

- The first time I walked into Stratton Oakmont,

I remember it very vividly.

You pulled up, and you saw all the luxury cars--

you know, Mercedes, a Ferrari, a Testarossa,

car after car after car.

You walked in.

It was exactly like the movie, men on the phone

yelling, screaming, hustling and bustling, mayhem.

You have to understand, I had only worked

in legit professional environments.

So was this typical?

Was this normal?

This was not.

My name is Donna Schlessinger,

and I worked at Stratton Oakmont

in the corporate finance department.

I met Jordan through a friend of mine.

He said, I want you to come work at Stratton,

which I thought was a little strange.

I don't have any background in finance.

I have zero interest in finance.

I was a young, married person, and I knew

that we wanted to start a family.

And he dangled a very attractive salary

in front of me.

- Since the beginning of Stratton Oakmont,

there was always a meeting in the morning

and a meeting when the market closed.

- They were inspiring, and I think

that really, really set the tone

for the brokers for the day.

- I was at a couple of the morning meetings.

Jordan would go, Joe Blow, what did you gross last month?

And Joe Blow would say, I grossed $250,000.

And Jordan goes, that's outstanding.

Come up here.

And the broker would come up to the front

where Jordan was giving the speech,

and he'd hand him a brand-new Rolex watch.

These young brokers were rewarded.

They all wanted to live the same lifestyle.

And that's how he got them motivated every day.

- In the meetings, I had them visualizing their success.

I would talk about the life.

None of the kids went to college, okay?

They were not the lucky sperm club members.

And the first thing I said to them was this.

You sit behind this desk, you say the words I teach you,

you can become as powerful

as the most powerful CEO in America.

- We had training every day.

I used to give motivational meetings to the cold callers,

and I used to tease them.

I used to take a $100 bill and say, I could rip this.

They'd freak out.

They'd freak out.

- How am I gonna motivate 500 animals

to be phone terrorists today?

- The cold callers were paid very, very little.

And if they were willing to do crazy things to entertain us,

we'd be willing to give them money.

- These two twins offered to hook themselves up

to a car battery for ten seconds for 10 grand.

Well, the partners looked at each other and said,

you know what?

We're in.

You could see them shaking,

and they could only hold on for 8 seconds.

- Did they ever get paid?

- No, they never got a dime.

- For a couple hundred dollars,

you'd have to eat a cup full of wasabi.

And there was always takers.

- The goldfish story is one of the few true stories

out of that movie.

They just showed one person eating the goldfish

when the truth is it was two--

Danny eating the black goldfish,

and yours truly ate the other goldfish.

- There was a sales assistant,

and just like in "The Wolf of Wall Street movie,"

if she would shave her head,

she had a chance to get $5,000.

That actually occurred.

- I don't think anybody realizes that they're

a part of a cult while they're in the cult.

[somber music]

The sexism, the condescension,

the objectification of women--

I mean, none of that would fly today.

Women really weren't put in important positions of power.

All of the decisions got made by men.

♪ ♪

- I would say the first big change that I saw was

when we started making money.

Even though he was married to Denise,

his first wife, that's when he started--

you know, womanizing, I'll call it.

And that's how he met Nadine.

Right away, he was mesmerized by her.

I think she was a model or something.

- Nadine was a beautiful girl.

She was on commercials.

She was from Brooklyn.

She had a very cute smile, good personality,

and he was smitten by her.

Nadine in the movie was played by Margot Robbie,

who did a phenomenal job with that Brooklyn drawl.

- Cheers. - Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

You've got an awesome place here.

- How'd I meet the Wolf? - Yeah.

- He had a party at the beach, at his house.

I went with my boyfriend at the time.

And unfortunately, just like they show in the movie,

one of his friends exposed themselves to me.

And then I said to my boyfriend,

we got to get the hell out of here.

And we left.

Jordan then made somebody $15,000 in the stock market

to set me up to go out with him and her as friends,

and I had no idea that it was a whole setup behind the scenes.

- So he was working it from behind the scenes.

- Very early on, yes.

Now, that should have been a red flag,

but I was 22 and clueless.

- At Stratton, the way the day typically started was

we had the quaaludes delivered like a Domino's pizza.

Quaaludes was usually the first drug you took

because it was a downer, and then you took cocaine

because then that lifted you back up.

Jordan would be the ringleader.

Not even nearly close to the amount of sales

would have been made without the drugs.

- Quaaludes were, I think,

originally designed as a sleeping pill.

Quaaludes are no longer made, as far as I'm aware,

which is probably a good thing, despite the fact

that they were really and truly a great drug,

and we all loved them.

- People realized that if you took more

than the prescribed amount, you can get a high.

You can get a buzz.

[upbeat disco music]

They called it the "I love you" drug.

You really-- you loved everybody,

and you told them.

I fucking love you!

- And it's not like doing cocaine

where you're up all night, and you crash,

and you feel miserable.

You end the night with a great night's sleep,

and you're ready to do it again the next day.

- These guys were doing drugs like it was candy.

I remember guys would come in on a Monday

and say, Jordan, look, can you help me get sober,

'cause I can't take it anymore.

He said, yeah, I'll help you.

They used to throw their drugs in my garbage can.

By Tuesday, they were getting high again.

A lot of brokers did drugs to give them confidence

to get on the phone and do the trading.

- I'm a stranger to this guy.

How could I possibly suggest that he invests $1 million

into this sketchy stock?

Whereas if you're under the influence of quaaludes,

you have no inhibitions at all.

You'll say anything.

[mellow music]

- I would literally paint a picture as if I was

this 25-year veteran smoking a cigar

with a $25,000 Rolex

in a big glass office in Manhattan

and that this guy was lucky to have me on the phone.

That's why they gave me that nickname, Velvet.

Often, when I would transfer them to my sales assistant

to confirm the trade, it was relayed to me

that a lot of these clients would say to her,

I don't want to bother him, but what did I buy?

- If you think about what Stratton Oakmont was doing,

their business model was

cold calling thousands of people,

selling them what's called penny stocks.

Calling it a penny stock is a misnomer

'cause the stock is not valued in the pennies.

It can be valued up to $5 a share.

Penny stocks aren't traded

on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.

They're sold over the counter,

meaning they face less oversight,

which allows aggressive brokers to mark up the prices

and then pocket the difference.

- The firm tells the brokers to sell it

and offers a big commission.

- You know, you could do so much volume

and have such a markup on these penny stocks,

whereas instead of making $200 on a trade,

you could actually make 2,000 or 5,000.

[suspenseful music]

- The broker could have generated commissions

of $5,000, $10,000

for that 15-, 20-minute, maybe half-an-hour effort.

For someone that only completed high school,

that was not a bad half an hour's day work.

- Did you ever think any of the techniques you were using

were unfair or manipulative

or have second thoughts about any of it?

- No.

Never even occurred to me.

I thought this was the way--

I thought this was Wall Street.

I knew nothing about the stock market.

I never bought a stock in my life.

I didn't do anything.

I thought, this is the way the stock market works.

I wanted to believe it badly

because of the life it was gonna give me.

[phone ringing]

- Stratton Oakmont.

How may I direct your call?

- When I started out with Stratton,

I had a close group of friends that I, little by little,

dissociated from because they could never understand

what I did and the values that I had

and the money I was making and the life I was leading.

[laughter and chatter]

So naturally, I gravitated to the people I was working with.

We ended up spending a lot of our free time together.

- I had a girlfriend at the time, very serious.

We were engaged.

And I said, boy, this is crazy, but I'm gonna make money.

This is gonna be great, you know, very excited.

And...

Unfortunately, my girlfriend and I didn't work out,

but I was having fun.

- Jordan had a separate wild life with the brokers

and entertaining them,

being out without his first wife, Denise.

With Nadine, I don't know how they started dating,

but I know it was going on for a while.

- I was dating all these rich playboys

and having the time of my life.

So he really wasn't on my radar.

But I'm from Brooklyn. He's from Queens.

And we just really hit it off.

And then the next day, as the movie shows--

- You're crazy.

- 1,200 square feet of flowers

in my little 800-square-foot apartment.

Yeah, he's "go big or go home."

- He was still married, though.

- He's like, I'm separated.

I have an apartment in the city.

And I'm like, OK.

- Like in the movie, Jordan was getting out

of a limousine in front of his apartment,

and Denise happened to be waiting for him.

- Get out of the fucking car!

- Jordan's first wife ripped open the limo door

and said, you get the fuck out of the car.

That is total fact.

- I think he was mesmerized with this Nadine gal,

and he probably made the decision, like, listen,

I'm becoming very successful.

I think a showpiece would be nice

for me to have under my arm.

And he aggressively pursued it.

- Oh, my God, it was amazing.

I totally got swept off my feet.

We fell madly, madly in love.

It was just so fast and furious.

Fancy dinners, $2,000 bottles of wine.

Bulgari watch would just show up.

It was glamorous and exciting.

Nobody talked about love bombing

all those years ago.

I just was like, oh, he loves me so much.

And that could have been a piece of it too.

But now, in retrospect, I say this very simply--

if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

[intriguing music]

- At my office, I always had a saying that said

my investigators would rather work cases

and go after bad guys than sleep or eat.

It becomes almost a personal mission

because we see the affront that's going on to the public--

ruining people, whether it was Stratton Oakmont

or any of the other companies.

- Can I get a little personal with you, if I may?

- Go ahead.

- Well, my name is Joseph Borg.

And back when this all started, I was director

of the Alabama Securities Commission.

A lot of folks don't understand

what state securities regulators do.

We're sort of like the local cops on the beat

if somebody has a financial problem.

We license and register the stock brokers

who sell to the public.

My office in Alabama-- yes, in Alabama--

we got a call one time from a gentleman who got fleeced

by some broker out of New York,

but he couldn't remember who it was.

So we started an investigation.

That grew into a multi-state investigation.

We start with the victim, get all their records,

asking them to remember what the conversations were like.

We're trying to determine at what point

does Stratton Oakmont or any of these companies cross the line.

What sounds wrong here?

[tense music]

- I've never shared this story before,

just with my wife and my children.

- Why don't you want your identity to be seen?

- I don't want the whole world to know

that I got, you know, taken advantage of.

You know, I lost almost all the money I had at the time.

I owned and operated a restaurant in the '90s.

I think I was out front in the dining room.

I was having my lunch, and someone handed me the phone.

He says, you know, I'd like to introduce myself.

I'm from Stratton Oakmont.

We're a stockbroker.

They were talking about some stocks,

and I think he mentioned Dr. Pepper.

He told me they expanded some flavors,

and they were adding desserts.

All the feedback was very positive.

And he said, we're a very successful firm.

We've generated a lot of millionaires.

I thought, oh, this is how people, you know, get wealthy,

investing in stocks.

I didn't have any experience prior to that.

I bought--I don't know how many shares it was.

I thought it was a good investment.

So that was a big mistake.

- Usually, if somebody is guaranteeing something

and there's very little facts that they actually represent,

they'll say, we have a history of making tons of money.

♪ ♪

- And then a few weeks later, he called and said

he had sold the Dr. Pepper.

And I said, whoa. I didn't authorize that.

He bought some other stock.

I think it was, like, a penny stock.

We started to have, like, a little bit of an argument.

And he said, oh, you'll be fine.

Just stick with me, you know.

It's an amazing company.

It's going to be worth ten times what it is today.

You'll be so thankful.

He had nothing but good things to say about it.

So I agreed to buy that.

- It is lying, cheating, and stealing

any way you look at it,

because under the securities laws,

brokers have a duty to understand

not only the client,

but the stock that they're selling.

That's an inherent duty.

It's required.

- I think you can steal a lot more

with a briefcase than a gun.

- The problem with a lot of Jordan Belfort's

boiler room operations is the brokers,

these young fellers,

probably didn't really have an idea of exactly

what was going on, and it gives them an air

of plausible deniability.

But the problem with "I didn't really know"

means that you probably had an inkling

that something was wrong.

They had to balance my lifestyle,

my current Mercedes, nice apartment,

and money to burn,

with, do I really want to know all the details?

[soft music]

- It took me about a year, year and a half

to realize that something wasn't right.

Christmas Eve, I opened one of the largest accounts

Stratton ever saw.

Who's calling anyone Christmas Eve?

A chubby, broke Jew.

Sure enough, I got this guy on the phone.

I then walked into one of the partner's offices.

I was as green as they could be and said,

I have a funny feeling if that stock goes higher,

like I just told him, he'll buy more.

And the partner said, oh yeah?

Oh, good job, Howie.

I walked back to my desk,

and the stock was up 3/4 of a point.

- ♪ It's gonna be great ♪

- I thought to myself, am I that fucking smart,

or did that guy in that office just do something?

[dramatic music]

What did I do?

I immediately called the guy back.

- ♪ There's nothing I'll let get in my way ♪

- And he bought double the amount

he had just bought five minutes ago.

- ♪ Oh, it's starting today ♪

- And that was the first sign that there was some--

there was some funky dunky going around.

♪ ♪

- So this is now 1991, and in those couple of years,

Jordan built himself up a big empire.

He had a lot of brokers working for him.

- When Jordan started making money,

he and the brokers would go out,

and he would wine and dine them.

It was almost like a harem that would follow him.

[percussive music]

We would frequently go to Atlantic City.

- It could be a regular Tuesday after the market closed.

- We'd have helicopters take us to casinos.

- We would land on top of a helipad.

- And the casino hosts would meet us

and take us to some, like, ridiculous suite.

- The butlers had already rolled all the joints,

laid out all the quaaludes.

We then got fucked up.

♪ ♪

- Belfort's there, and Danny's there.

And they would gamble

thousands of dollars a hand in blackjack.

♪ ♪

- We'd have what we refer to as a hoedown.

It was hookers. It was drugs.

It was Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was gambling.

It was more of this, more of that.

- We were all walking around with a lot of cash,

and they'd pull out, you know,

50 grand out of their pocket in hundreds.

[somber music]

And we would seek to get these poor women

to do the most disgusting possible things

a human being and a human body could do.

And we would just keep pulling out hundreds

until the price was reached.

And it was such a tragic thing just to see

what money could make somebody do.

We would do stuff like that all the time.

I just hate myself for acting that way.

And I paid the price for it, rightfully so,

which I'm sure we'll talk about.

♪ ♪

- The lifestyle was incredible.

Jordan was absolutely on top of the world.

And that was his whole demeanor--

keeping everybody happy,

giving them enough to keep them going.

- That's my number one post on TikTok and Instagram.

--beautiful five-carat emerald ring.

He proposed to me in front of my favorite fast food place

in Sheepshead Bay, Roll-n-Roaster.

I mean, at the end of the day, I'm still a Brooklyn girl.

So there's all these grand gestures.

And yeah, it was fun.

- At Jordan's house in Westhampton,

he would have parties.

- Those parties could be filled with people by the hundreds,

and 99% of these people didn't even know who he was.

- The Hamptons, you typically had normal families,

and here was this house where it was Sin City, 24/7--

drugs galore, hot chicks galore.

- Then at one point, Jordan decided

to give one of his speeches that he would do

at Stratton Oakmont every morning,

but here it was on the back balcony of the house.

- It was exactly as it appears in the movie.

He had an upper deck outside of the master bedroom.

- It's gonna take this company

into the fucking stratosphere!

- He would be up there motivating, talking them up.

- It was a wild scene,

and the movie depicted that pretty well.

[tape whirs]

- This is the big Hampton party where Jordan gives a speech

and gets everybody riled up.

[cheering]

- I was down below on the pool deck,

just looking up and listening to Jordan's speech.

Everyone else around him is on the string.

- The brokers really felt like they were

part of something big,

and it was a privilege to be included.

People revered him,

and he made sure they looked up to him.

You're in my home,

and I'm serving you lobsters and champagne.

I don't think anyone really believed that there

was something coming, looming.

And even if they did know,

I don't think they really thought that it would ever end.

[pensive music]

♪ ♪

- Jordan Belfort and me,

we sort of had parallel careers in some respect.

When he was beginning his fraudulent career,

I was beginning my career catching the guys

who were doing what he was doing.

I think we both underwent a learning curve.

In my case, it was really all about the hunt for me,

unwinding the best scam

that a very intelligent guy could put together.

I knew I was going to take him down.

I never doubted it.

And he hadn't counted on that.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- In the early '90s, the money that was flowing

into these guys' hands was just unlimited.

- We were loaded and powerful and famous.

- That alerted the authorities.

Time to really look into what these guys are doing.

- The FBI sets up a group of agents.

- Now you're under full investigation.

- The organized crime guys knew what kind of money

Jordan was making.

- Pressure started to take its toll.

- Jordan was ripping apart furniture, looking for drugs.

- These cracks are forming,

and there's going to be a reckoning.

[dark music]

[dark music]

♪ ♪