Jordan Belfort

Jordan Belfort was born on July 9, 1962, in New York to a Jewish family. After briefly attending dentistry school, he dropped out and launched his first business selling meat and seafood door-to-door on Long Island. A family connection then introduced him to stockbroking; he started as a trainee at L.F. Rothschild in 1987 but was laid off after the Black Monday crash. In 1989, Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont, an over-the-counter brokerage that exploded into the largest of its kind in the U.S. The firm specialized in penny stocks, using high-pressure sales and fraud to generate over $1.5 billion while defrauding investors. By 1992, the SEC investigated Stratton Oakmont for securities fraud. Operations continued until 1999, when Belfort pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering. Post-release, Belfort authored *The Wolf of Wall Street* and *Catching the Wolf of Wall Street*, both adapted into media. He now runs sales training seminars globally.