Sunday, December 29, 2013

Author And Inspirational Speaker - Jordan Belfort

By Peter Jenkins


From a showy way of living in the 1990s to a crime conviction as the decade drew to a close and a new life as an inspiring speaker, the story of Jordan Belfort is maybe one of the most studied stories of Wall Street gone wrongâ€"-and how to make it right.

Born in July, 1962, Jordan Belfort was the boy of Max and Leah Belfortâ€"-Jewish accountants living in the Bronx and later Manhattan. Max Belfort was a major influence in Jordan's life, even going on to become the Director of one of the most successful, opulent and ultimately fake Wall St brokers, Stratton Oakmont.

Jordan Belfort studied to be a dentist, but dropped out of college to make his fortune. After many years of working tiny sales roles, he seemed to make a fast, worthwhile and doubtless illegal practice of brokering in low priced shares. As his operation expanded, he quickly scaled up his operation to make Stratton Oakmont, a shameful boiler room company that is declared to have cheated investors of over $200 million. Belfort's company finalised the plan of selling large quantities of penny stocks to trusting bankers, artificially climbing their price and then selling them for a profitâ€"-often named as a 'pump and dump' schemeâ€"-earning him over $50 million a year. Belfort is perceived as the inventor of this plan that is considered by analysts and finance corporate executives to be the predecessor to the modern Ponzi scheme. At its peak Stratton Oakmont employed over a thousand brokers dealing in stock worth over one bn. dollars.

Belfort's illegal empire directly came under the scanner of the Monetary Crimes Unit of the Federal Agency Bureau of Investigation and the office of the Alabama Stocks Commissioner. He was found guilty as charged of the white-collar crime and served just about 2 years in Fed jail for money laundering and instruments crime. In jail, he wrote the manuscript of what would be his hottest 2008 book, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' and in 2009 wrote a follow up titled 'Catching the Wolf of Wall Street'. As 1 part of his sentence, he was ordered to pay over $110 million of the money he had gained in fake trading. In 2013, he was charged with being tardy in meeting his amendment commitments and is claimed to be hunting for relief from the adjudication that ordered him to settle 50% of the money he took from backers.

Today, Jordan Belfort is a writer, consultant and motivational speaker who has written about the import of corporate ethics in one or two American and world papers and magazines. Through his firm Straight Line, Belfort trains and educates corporate management about the best way to use high-return sales methods to generate wealth in a moral demeanour. He also speaks at some of the most prestigious CXO-level meetings and conventions around the planet. His life has been portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2013 film 'The Wolf of Wall Street'.



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