The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort

The supposed facts related by Belfort must be taken with a large dose of salt. He readily admits with some pride deceiving everyone he deals with including his wife and supposed friends and business partners. We would be quite gullible to then take his writing at face value.

He portrays himself as generous to a fault, but of course the money he passes out is mostly stolen. The judgement against him included a requirement to pay over 100 million in retribution to those he defrauded. Most of that has never been paid even though his income from books and movie rights is quite substantial. By the way his sentence was lighter than those of all his cohorts because he turned against them when the law caught up with him. This after spilling a lot of ink in his book about loyalty, trust and "omerta." Does he still have hidden assets that rightfully belong to the victims? You guess. I bet he does.

He tries to present himself as a reformed bad actor who has seen the light and conquered his addiction. I hope he has conquered his addictions, but that wasn't his only problem. He is quite intelligent and seen as such by all around him. The schemes he ran were carefully designed and couldn't have been conceived and executed while stoned, so there is more to this than addiction. The most important part of the story is left out. How did a broke guy starting at the very bottom of a major brokerage firm get to be a criminal millionaire? That's the guts of the real story, and it was left out. We only see him at the climax just before the downfall.

Sex and drugs sell books and movies and that's the new scheme, and it is lawful even if only partly true and even if the main facts are left out.

The schemer and deceiver is still at work.