When you hear the name Jordan Belfort, you probably think of Leonardo DiCaprio. He played Jordan in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. But many people don't know that the film is based on true events. Jordan Belfort is a real person, and he wrote a memoir of the same name, explaining everything that went on in his crazy life as a stock market scam artist.
Belfort was sent to prison, although he served a reduced sentence of 22 months in exchange for ratting out his colleagues who were in on his company's scams. At the end of The Wolf of Wall Street, after Belfort served his time away, we see him hosting motivational seminars, which Belfort actually did in real life. However, the film didn't tell us how badly Belfort's net worth was affected by his criminal activity. Those seminars didn't quite allow him to bounce back from the scandal and replenish his net worth. Here's how much he's worth today.
His Net Worth Is Shocking
Belfort told The Red Bulletin in 2019 that he made about a quarter of a million dollars a day at the peak of his stockbroking days at Stratton Oakmont. That's $30,000 an hour and $5,000 a minute. Keep in mind that Belfort could have been exaggerating as he's done in the past.
Figuring out his total wealth during that time in the '90s is a bit trickier. A 2014 Independent article claims he was worth a whopping $93 million at the height of his stockbroking career. If this seems like a small estimation, we must remember that Belfort loved spending his money and living in luxury. He had all the things that DiCaprio's Jordan had in the film.
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What will surprise you is that at only 57 years old, Belfort's net worth is in the negative millions. It's rare to see a celebrity's net worth so low. According to Beating the Index, Belfort is worth $-100 million. But that's because Belfort was ordered to pay $110 million in restitution fees to the victims of Stratton Oakmont's "pump and dump schemes."
According to 2018 court documents, Belfort had reportedly only paid around $12.8 million since being indicted in 1999. Wealthy Gorilla claims he's paid off about $14 million as of 2021. So he has a long way to go before his debuts are paid off. At this rate, his great-great-grandchildren will still be paying them.
What Belfort Does Now
Belfort does have some steady-ish income, but it's not enough to pay back his debuts at the speed he could have paid them back when he was a millionaire. The publication of The Wolf of Wall Street, and his second memoir, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, has helped.
He received $500,000 in advance for the first memoir and $940,500 for the film rights to the book. Belfort allegedly claims he gave all of this money to his victims, but there's no proof he ever did.
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Belfort is also a motivational speaker still and charges a hefty fee between $20,000 and $75,000 per appearance. A one-hour speech can cost about $20,000, while his sales seminars explaining his "Straight Line System" cost a whopping $80,000. While this appears to be a lot of money, we must remember that Belfort makes that amount per appearance, not hourly. Which means that he makes this money whenever he has something scheduled, that is, if he has something scheduled.
So if you're wondering what the once-millionaire does with his (again) negative net worth, the answer is not a lot, except paying back those debts.
But he may have some extra income very soon. In March, Deadline reported that Belfort is set to host a Discovery+ documentary called GameStop: The Wall Street Hijack, which will follow "the current craze over meme stocks," something that Belfort will no doubt have some opinions about. What fans of the video game store recently did with the stock market is kind of the modern-day Stratton Oakmont.
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Not only does he have this upcoming gig, but he could also potentially win a legal battle with the production company that bought the rights to his book, which has been ongoing since 2015. In January 2020, Belfort sued Red Granite Productions for "fraud, negligent misrepresentation, violation of the RICO Act, breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing," Gossip Cop wrote.
The lawsuit came about after an investigation by the Department of Justice found that the production company had made the film using stolen funds from Malaysia’s government. Belfort allegedly "sought to void a contract that sold the rights to his memoir in addition to $300 million in damages," and ironically claimed he would have never had made the deal if he'd known the film would be made with dirty money. He'd put the use of dirty money behind him after all, and having his book adapted using such funds would be fraudulent once again.
So if he's awarded $300 million in the lawsuit, it would essentially wipe away his outstanding debt and give him a $200 million net worth when all is said and done. Plus, if he gets out of his contract with Red Granite, he'll be able to sell his second memoir and make even more of a profit. If he doesn't win the lawsuit, then it looks like Belfort will have to continue slaving away to pay everything back for years to come. He'll also be the only real-life scam artist that DiCaprio has portrayed that didn't come out on top... eventually. DiCaprio played Frank Abagnale, a con artist famous for check fraud in Catch Me If You Can. Abagnale was later picked up by the FBI and helped them find guys like him. It doesn't look like Belfort will be as lucky.
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