Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison

PROLOGUE

CROCODILE TEARS

September 2, 1998

ou'd think that anyone who was facing thirty years in jail and a hundred-million-dollar fine would be ready to settle down and play things straight. But, no, I must be some sort of glutton for punishment, or maybe I'm just my own worst enemy.

Whatever the case, I'm the Wolf of Wall Street. Remember me? The investment banker who partied like a rock star, the one whose life was sheer insanity? The one with the choirboy face, the innocent smile, and the recreational drug habit that could sedate Guatemala? You remember. I wanted to be young and rich, so I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and headed down to Wall Street to seek my fortune—only to come up with a brainstorm that inspired me to bring my own version of Wall Street out to Long Island instead.

And what a brainstorm it was! By my twenty-seventh birthday, I had built one of the largest brokerage firms in America. It was a place where the young and the uneducated would come to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.

My firm's name was Stratton Oakmont, although, in retrospect, it should have been Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, it wasn't every firm that sported hookers in the basement, drug dealers in the parking lot, exotic animals in the boardroom, and midget-tossing competitions on Fridays.

In my mid-thirties, I had all the trappings of extreme Wall Street wealth—mansions, yachts, private jets, helicopters, limos, armed bodyguards, throngs of domestic servants, drug dealers on speed dial, hookers who took credit cards, police looking for handouts, politicians on the payroll, enough exotic cars to open my own exotic-car dealership—and a loyal and loving blond second wife named Nadine.

Actually, you may have seen Nadine on TV in the 1990s; she was that wildly sexy blonde who tried to sell you Miller Lite Beer during Monday Night Football. She had the face of an angel, although it was her legs and ass that got her the job; well, that and her perky young breasts, which she had recently augmented to a C-cup, after giving birth to the second of our two children. A son!

Nadine and I were living what I had come to think of as Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional—a sexed-up, drugged-up, hyped-up, over-the-top version of the American Dream. We were careening down the fast lane, at 200 miles per hour, with one fingertip on the steering wheel, never signaling, and never looking back. (Who would want to?) The wreckage of the past was astonishing. It was far too painful to look back; it was much easier just to plunge forward and keep speeding down the road, praying that the past wouldn't catch up with us. But, of course, it did.

In fact, I was teetering on the brink of disaster after a small army of FBI agents raided my Long Island estate and led me away in handcuffs. It had happened on a warm Tuesday evening, the week before Labor Day, less than two months after my thirty-sixth birthday. And when the arresting agent said to me, “Jordan Belfort, you've been indicted on twenty-two counts of securities fraud, stock manipulation, money laundering, and obstruction of justice …” I had pretty much tuned out. After all, what was the point of hearing a list of the crimes I knew I'd committed? It would be like taking a sniff from a milk container labeled spoiled milk.

So I called my lawyer and resigned myself to spending the night in jail. And as they led me away in handcuffs, my only solace was getting to say one last good-bye to my loving second wife. She was standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes and wearing cutoff jean shorts. She looked gorgeous, even on the night of my arrest.

As they escorted me past her, I stiffened my upper lip and whispered, “Don't worry, sweetie. Everything will be okay,” to which she nodded sadly and whispered back, “I know, baby. Stay strong for me, and stay strong for the kids. We all love you.” She blew me a tender kiss and snuffled back a tear.

And then I was gone.