Jordan Belfort

The Queens-born son of two accountants, Belfort earned a biology degree from American University. After failing in the meat business, he learned the stock brokerage business at a succession of shops — L.F. Rothschild, D.H. Blair and F.D. Roberts Securities. His postgraduate work came at Investors Center, the 850-broker penny stock house, where he went to work in 1988, and which was shut down by the SEC a year later. In 1989 Belfort teamed up with 23-year-old Kenneth Greene, an Investors Center graduate who had occasionally driven one of Belfort’s meat trucks. In early 1989 the lads opened an office in a friend’s car dealership in Queens, then set up a franchise of Stratton Securities, a minor league broker-dealer. Within five months, Belfort and Greene had earned enough in commissions to buy out the entire Stratton operation for about $ 250,000. As Belfort’s righthand man, Greene owns a 20% stake in Stratton Oakmont. Belfort’s brat-pack brokers quickly came to idolize him. One 28-year-old broker is said to have gone from laying carpets to earning gross commissions of $ 100,000 his first month, $ 800,000 his first year. He got to keep about half of that. On average, Stratton Oakmont’s brokers make around $ 85,000 a year. In 1999, Jordan R. Belfort, 37, and Daniel M. Porush, 42, who served as chairman and president, respectively, of Stratton Oakmont, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of securities fraud and money laundering. The guilty pleas involved companies that Stratton Oakmont helped to raise money in public stock offerings from 1990 through 1997.