PSA: Jordan Belfort Still Owes His Victims $100 Million And He Was Never Actually Called the "Wolf of Wall Street"

I keep my eye on the "real-time" live analytics of CelebrityNetWorth's traffic pretty much all day. Through this dashboard, I can see pages on CNW that are experiencing an unusual spike in traffic. A spike in traffic is a strong indicator that something important may be going on related to that person. Maybe they died. Maybe they are getting divorced. Maybe they just won a major sports event. More often than not, the person is just on TV being interviewed.

Last night at around 5:30 PM PST, we saw a huge spike in searches for "Jordan Belfort net worth." After a little bit of digging, I figured out that Jordan was appearing as a live guest on Jesse Watters' Fox News show.

During his appearance, Jordan was complaining about NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's apparent plans to enact policies like freezing rent and opening city-run supermarkets. Jordan calls these plans "outlandish" and part of a broader communist and socialist "infection" that needs to be "destroyed now, not just with antibiotics but with chemotherapy."

Here's a quick clip of Jordan's appearance:

'IT'S OUTLANDISH': Jordan Belfort, the original @wolfofwallst, slams NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's socialist platform on @JesseBWatters Primetime, warning it's a dangerous path for the city. pic.twitter.com/adwuZJL79B

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 17, 2025

Look, as a resident of a very socialist part of Southern California, where we spend ungodly amounts of money on social programs that appear to have ZERO impact, I don't actually disagree with Jordan's broader point.

HOWEVER, I'm not sure Jordan Belfort is the best person to be delivering a message on how anyone or anything should operate financially, ethically, or socially. Please recall that Jordan is a guy who orchestrated a massive financial fraud that caused severe damage to many victims. For his crimes, he served 22 months in prison (he was released in 2006). He would have served a much longer sentence, but after getting arrested, he obviously agreed to become an informant against his onetime business partners and subordinates.

And this is what really gets under my skin: While Jordan is on TV telling everyone what to do and how to be a responsible, non-outlandish capitalist citizen, HE STILL OWES HIS VICTIMS $100 MILLION.

Via Getty

A Made-Up Nickname

As we all know, Jordan Belfort became world-famous thanks to the 2013 Martin Scorsese movie "The Wolf of Wall Street." The movie, which was largely funded by money stolen from the Malaysian government, was based on Jordan's memoir, which had the same title. As it's portrayed in the movie, Jordan earned that nickname at the height of his empire when he landed on the cover of Forbes in 1991 under the headline "The Wolf of Wall Street."

That is false.

The actual Forbes article was titled, "Steaks, Stocks – What's the Difference?" – a reference to the fact that before becoming a stockbroker, Belfort sold steaks and seafood door-to-door on Long Island.

Later, the article described Jordan as a "twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers." The article also described his business model as "pushing dicey stocks on gullible investors." At no point is he referred to as a "wolf."

Jordan gave himself the nickname when he wrote his memoir while sitting in a jail cell with Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong. That's real. Apparently, it was Tommy who encouraged him to write the memoir in the first place.

Restitution Status

At his 2003 sentencing, Jordan was ordered to pay $110.4 million in restitution to roughly 1,500 victims. That's roughly half the total amount his victims reportedly lost. Some of the 1,500+ victims were retirees, small business owners, and working-class investors who lost life savings while Jordan was crashing yachts and popping Quaaludes. The government was immediately able to generate roughly $11 million towards the restitution by selling real estate Jordan agreed to relinquish at sentencing.

From that point on, he was supposed to pay 50% of his gross annual income to his 1,513 victims.

• Between 2007 and 2009, he paid $700,000 towards his restitution.
• He paid zero dollars in 2010.
• In 2011, he sold the film rights to his two memoirs for a total of $1.045 million. You might assume he paid his victims around $500,000 from that? Nope. He paid $21,000.
• In 2012, he paid $158,000.

In 2013, for reasons I can't quite fathom, the government agreed to adjust the restitution plan from 50% of all gross earnings to a minimum of $10,000 per month for life.

If you remove the $11 million worth of real estate that was relinquished at sentencing, to date, Jordan has only repaid around $3 million of the $110 million. In other words, he still owes his victims $100 million. And at his current bare minimum pace of $10,000 per month, $120,000 per year, it will take 70 years for Jordan to pay off his full debt. He is 63 years old. At that pace, Belfort would be 133 years old before his debt is repaid in full.

I Hate The Movie

I understand why people enjoy the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street." It's a debaucherous romp with lots of pretty people and insane cars/yachts/drugs/jets/parties. It has a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score.

I hate the movie.

It is unfathomable to me that this movie exclusively glorifies Jordan while providing not an OUNCE of perspective from his victims. How did Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and screenwriter Terrence Winter (writer/director/producer of "The Sopranos," creator of "Boardwalk Empire"), or anyone else involved in the movie, at any point say, "Are we just making a bad guy look really, really cool?"

Not only did that question apparently NOT occur to anyone, but they even gave Jordan a cameo in the film! That cameo and the film's success allowed Jordan to spend the last 20 years working as a public speaker, TV pundit, cryptocurrency promoter, social media influencer, and frequent YouTube/Podcast guest.

Let me put it this way:

Imagine if no one had ever heard of Bernie Madoff when he was convicted of orchestrating a $17 billion Ponzi scheme. Imagine if he quietly served his time, wrote a memoir from prison, and then a decade later, Martin Scorsese made a movie called "The King of New York" starring Timothée Chalamet as Madoff. And in that movie, we never see a single victim. It's just two hours of Chalamet-as-Madoff throwing parties at mansions in the Hamptons, Manhattan, and Palm Beach. Sailing around on one of his three yachts. Dropping tens of thousands on luxury watches. Flying private jets to Europe. All while living large on stolen money, without ever showing a single retiree who lost everything. No charities wiped out. No emotional wreckage. No consequences. Just Bernie having the time of his life.

That would be strange, right?

Bottom line, I don't think we should be celebrating or looking to Jordan Belfort as a folk hero or capitalist icon.