You may have seen the movie *The Wolf of Wall Street*, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance really was phenomenal. But what’s truly interesting is that this blockbuster hit from 2013 was actually adapted from a real story—about a guy named Jordan Belfort, who in the 1990s used a classic scam called “pump and dump” to swindle more than 1,000 investors and took in over $200 million.

When it comes to Jordan Belfort’s path to wealth, this guy already had a business mind when he was young. In the summer right after finishing high school, he made $20,000 selling Italian ice cream on the beach. Later, he studied biology, and for a while even thought about becoming a dentist. But when he heard his department head say dentists can’t make big money, he dropped out. He then turned to the meat business—selling 5,000 pounds of beef and fish a week—which looked promising, but in the end he lost money and went bankrupt at 25.

After shifting to the stock market, Belfort’s life trajectory changed completely. He worked as a stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild, and later founded Stratton Oakmont himself. At its peak, the company had more than 1,000 brokers, managing over $1 billion in assets. But this wasn’t a legitimate operation—Stratton Oakmont was a typical “boiler room” scam that specialized in pushing junk stocks to ordinary investors through cold calls. Jordan Belfort’s scheme was simple: first, hoard penny stocks at low prices, then use high-pressure sales talk from the sales team to lure retail investors into buying; once the stock price rose, he would dump everything and cash out big. With this strategy, by 1990 he had accumulated net assets of about $25 million.

By the late 1990s, Jordan Belfort’s wealth reached its peak. Around 1998, his net worth was estimated at about $400 million. But good times didn’t last—by 1996, the U.S. National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) shut down Stratton Oakmont, and in 1999, Belfort and his partner Danny Porush pleaded guilty, facing charges of securities fraud and money laundering. Belfort was sentenced to four years in prison, but because he cooperated with the FBI investigation, he ultimately served only 22 months.

What’s interesting is that while in prison, Belfort wrote a memoir, and later the book was adapted into a movie—suddenly thrusting him into the mainstream spotlight. The film rights were sold for $1,045,000, and the book itself was published in more than 40 countries worldwide and translated into 18 languages. The movie even gave him a cameo role, almost like it helped whitewash his image.

After getting out of prison, Jordan Belfort began his second life. He founded Global Motivation Inc. and started doing motivational speeches and sales training. He charged between $30,000 and $75,000 per speech, earning roughly $9 million a year. On top of that, with book sales (estimated at around $18 million per year), this guy could no longer make money by scamming stocks, but he still lived quite well by telling his story.

As for Jordan Belfort’s current net worth, the matter is highly controversial. Some say his net worth is now between $100 million and $134 million. Others argue that considering the compensation he still hasn’t paid off (the court ordered him to pay $110 million, but he only paid about $14 million), he’s actually in the negative. In 2018, he was also sued for failing to contribute from $9 million in speaking fees to compensate the victims.

To be honest, Jordan Belfort is a pretty contradictory figure. The movie portrays him as incredibly cool, but in reality, he defrauded middle-class investors—people who couldn’t afford to lose. Now he makes money by recounting his own story, yet he’s only paid a small portion of the court-ordered restitution to the victims. That’s why many people feel this story is both a warning and a slightly bitterly ironic reality: a former scammer who, by packaging his story, ends up making a huge fortune again.