| Net Worth | $117 million |
|---|---|
| Source Of Wealth | Entrepreneur |
| Born | 9th July 1962 |
| Birth Name | Jordan Ross Belfort |
| Height | 5ft 7in (170cm) |
While you might not know Jordan Belfort by name, you likely know him from his self-given nickname - the Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan Belfort is infamous in the financial world and became immortalized in pop culture after a film about his life, The Wolf of Wall Street, became a box office and critical success.
Jordan Belfort started as a small-time broker trading penny stocks but quickly went on to become one of the most notorious men on Wall Street. So what was Jordan Belfort's net worth at his highest highs and lowest lows?
Keep on reading, and we'll take you on Jordan Belfort's wild wealth ride you need to know about.
Early Life
Jordan Belfort was born on July 9, 1962, to Jewish parents in the Bronx borough of New York City. His mother, Leah, and his father, Max, were accountants.
He grew up in Bayside, Queens. He got his first taste of business after graduating from high school. Before he went off to college, he and a friend made money by selling Italian ices at a nearby beach.
After high school, Jordan graduated with a degree in biology from American University. He then used the money he saved from selling ices to attend the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.
On his first day of classes, a teacher told him that he wouldn't make much money in dentistry. Belfort dropped out soon after that conversation.
Early Career Starts and Finishes
Belfort started his professional life as a door-to-door salesman on Long Island. He would sell seafood and meat.
At the start, the business was actually successful. He got to the point where he was selling thousands of pounds of fish and meat each week and hired several employees to help.
Ultimately, the business failed, and he went bankrupt. A family friend then helped him get a job as a stockbroker trainee.
Soon after the company hired him, the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 happened. The company quickly fired him and many other employees.
Stratton Oakmont
Jordan Belfort is most well-known for his time at Stratton Oakmont. He started the franchise and later bought out the other founders.
If you've seen The Wolf of Wall Street, you should be well aware of the extravagant life that Jordan Belfort led. He would throw huge parties, buy expensive boats and cars, and do drugs recreationally and often.
The company even helped take the shoe company Steve Madden public.
Legal Trouble
Almost from its inception, Stratton Oakmont was being watched by law enforcement officials. Aside from being the center of The Wolf of Wall Street, it also inspired the movie Boiler Room.
Stratton Oakmont was being watched carefully by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (formerly known as the National Association of Securities Dealers), starting in the late 1980s.
A few years later, the government charged and indicted Belfort for money laundering and securities fraud.
Prison Sentence
The judge ordered Belfort to stay in prison for four years but only stayed behind bars for just under two years. He was being held at the Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, California. Thanks to Jordan's crimes, investors lost more than $200 million.
Belfort was forced to pay back a little more than half that amount.
While in prison, he shared a cell with actor Tommy Chong. Tommy suggested to Belfort that he should write a memoir about his time as a stockbroker.
The two became friends and remain so to this day. Jordan even credits Tommy as his inspiration for turning his life around and becoming a writer and motivational speaker.
By the Numbers
After he was arrested, Belfort signed a plea deal in which he would give half of his income to the restitution of more than 1,500 clients. This equated to around $110 million.
After he left prison, Jordan Belfort paid around $700,000 in restitution to his victims between 2007 and 2009. After that year, he stopped paying restitution entirely. He tried renegotiating restitution payments with the federal government.
It was finally decided that Belfort would pay a minimum of $10,000 every month for the rest of his life.
Jordan Belfort Net Worth
When you go from Wall Street hot shot to federal prisoner, your net worth will likely fluctuate in a big way. And that's exactly what happened to Jordan Belfort.
At his most successful, Jordan Belfort had a net worth of around $117 million. As the film states, he was making $49 million every year. That's almost $1 million each week.
A few years later, Jordan Belfort owed $110 million for restitution payments. He lost most of his assets. But he is at least attempting to make payments.
Writing
Belfort has so far written two memoirs. These books are The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street.
The memoirs are available in dozens of countries and translated into twenty languages. The Wolf of Wall Street film is adapted from Belfort's book.
Jordan wrote The Wolf of Wall Street in the days after he was released from prison. He wrote more than one hundred pages while in prison but wasn't satisfied with what he wrote, and he destroyed the pages.
Random House gave Belfort an advance of half a million dollars for the book. Before it was released, there was already a bidding war going on for the film rights.
Motivational Speaking
Since leaving prison, Jordan Belfort mainly supports himself through motivational speaking. He did a tour of live speeches in Australia under the title "The Truth Behind His Success."
Jordan also runs sales courses under the title "Jordan Belfort's Straight Line Sales Psychology." In his speeches, Jordan likes to focus on ethics, motivation, entrepreneurship, and sales skills.
He runs his speaking tours through his company Global Motivation Inc. He spends most of his time traveling to give talks.
In his speeches, he tends to talk about how important business ethics are and what he learned from his mistakes. When he speaks to charities, he sometimes won't charge any money at all to speak. However, for some corporate events, he is known to charge up to $100,000 in speaking fees.
Personal Life
While he was running Stratton Oakmont, Jordan was already divorced from his first wife, Denise Lombardo. He went on to marry Nadine Caridi, portrayed by Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Caridi is a model who was raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but who was born in the United Kingdom. The two met at a party.
Belfort and Caridi had two children together. However, infidelity and drug addiction on Belfort's part ultimately led to the couple signing the papers for their divorce.
One of the most famous parts of Belfort's life was the incident involving his luxury yacht Nadine. The boat was originally by Coco Chanel in the 1960s. Jordan renamed the ship after his wife.
In the summer of 1996, his boat sank off the east coast of Italy. Sailors from the Italian Navy special forces had to come out and take everyone aboard the ship to safety.
Despite the high winds and warnings from the boat's captain, Jordan demanded that they keep on sailing. The ship eventually sank.
Jordan Belfort is also an avid tennis player. You can even see his character playing tennis while in prison in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Cryptocurrency
Originally, Belfort was a prominent skeptic of cryptocurrency. He even called bitcoin delusional.
After seeing how lucrative digital money could be, he changed his mind. He's now linked to several crypto start-ups and often talks about the potential of cryptocurrency.
Learning Lessons from Jordan Belfort's Career
Hopefully, after reading the above article, you now understand what can happen when you consume yourself with unrealistic expectations. While Jordan Belfort's net worth was extremely high at one point, it has also been extremely low.
As we can see, in the end, crime doesn't pay. But by learning from Jordan Belfort's mistakes, you can strive to have a career that is ethical and lucrative.
Our net worths are for entertainment purposes only. We do our best to provide accurate figures, but we cannot guarantee their accuracy. The figures are based on public information and estimates, and may not reflect the true value of assets or liabilities.
