Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The REAL Wolf of Wall Street Story - Fact vs Fiction

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Yesterday’s video had an issue during uploading and cut off early. To continue where it ended, please fast-forward to 1:10:17⁣ Sorry for the inconvenience!⁣ — Colby⁣ ⁣ Howie Gelfand reveals the real story behind Stratton Oakmont and The Wolf of Wall Street, sharing how his rise as a partner led to addiction and excess before he ultimately turned his life around through recovery and sobriety.⁣ ⁣ Howie's links- ⁣ https://www.instagram.com/howiegelfand/⁣ [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the movie, the character of Jonah Hill is made up of a composite of you and one other the person. Yeah. Speech was great that Scorsese put in there. You know, I'm not going. The show goes on. He's too much of a . . . to give a speech like that. We never threw a midget in the office.

He eats one of the goldfish. So I ate the other goldfish. People didn't quit. People slid under the door. They snuck out. It was that insane of an environment. They only knew that that was the mild version. The truth here is much stranger than anything you could possibly make up.

And it was really a relatively normal childhood until I got stabbed by a kid in the men's room with a lead pencil for my lunch money. And being the fat fuck that I was, that was the last thing I was giving up was my lunch money. So as soon as I came home, the overprotective mother said, that's it. We're moving to the suburbs. And that was it for living in Queens. We moved out to Long Island. And that's where I got my first sniff of real wealth. And your parents could afford that?

Yeah, it was a stretch. But at seven, eight years old, we moved out to Long Island. And I was definitely the poorest kid of the friends I had made. I had just moved out of an apartment house, and these guys were living in houses with limos out front and cabanas to pools. And it was a completely new world to me. But that's where the drive for success and the drive for money, that's where I first got the taste of it. During high school and everything, never got in trouble, anything like that? No.

I was always getting over on the system, you know, back in those days in the dinosaur age when I was in high school. the grades were kept on pieces of paper. And whenever the teacher used to leave to go to the bathroom, I would change my grades. You know, that's where it kind of starts. I had missed in my senior year of high school a quarter of the days by cutting. And a letter was sent out, but a physical letter in the mail. So what did I do? I intercepted the mail.

And my parents never saw it. And I got to graduate with my classmates. So I was always cutting corners. I was always cutting corners. And always trying to take the shortcut wherever I could find one. And I don't know how long I was in college. Well, I can't tell you that I lasted one test. That's the extent of my college career.

Someone said to sit next to two particular types of people. I did. And at that time, they just started switching up tests. So one would get one. the next seat would get another test and I'm cheating off the two to the left and the right of me. And I ended up getting a 30 something. And I immediately decided that's it. I'm done with college.

It's time to take over the world. Literally, that's what I said. So what was the plan to take over the world? You need a good plan to take over the world. Yeah. I didn't have one. But I kind of figured it would fall into place. I began working at my best friend's father's company.

And it was a market research company doing these annoying telephone surveys. Before you know it, I'm running the place and I'm 20, something like that. And then I get a phone call from a friend from high school who says, Howie, have I got the job for you? You were built for this. Come check it out. And I went there. And the guy I interviewed with was a guy with the name of Kenny Green,

who was one of the original partners of Stratt, no one's really heard of his name because he sailed into the sunset. I think he sold his piece for $5 million to the fellow Matt McConaughey played, whose real name is Mark Hanna. So I just interviewed with him. I knew him from high school.

And he said, all right, you got the job. I said, we didn't go over anything. You didn't ask me anything. It doesn't matter. I know you from high school. You got the job. And the beginning of Stratton was all made up of guys from the Siasat Long Island area and Bayside Queens. That's where it really all came in from.

And that's where I started that. That's where the plan to take over the world started to form a little bit. This is a stock brokerage company. But you're not a stock broker. No. This is a stock brokerage company that looked, smelled. everything like what I had seen on TV. So there was no indication that this was an illegal enterprise.

It looked like every firm I had ever seen. So I started out as a call caller. I was 350 pounds stuffed into a 250 pound suit, broke at a conference table with three other people. So I'm like this and, you know, dialing with my finger, 300 people a day. And the objective was to get 10 people interested. You then gave those 10 people who are interested over to your broker. Your broker then calls them and goes and attempts to open the account with them. I took to it, no pun intended, like a fish to water.

It's been a lot of fish jokes lately. I was going to say that the setup is, did you ever see the movie Boiler Room? Yeah, that was the first movie based on Stratton. And there was a guy camped out as a cold caller for about six to eight months and failed his test on purpose. So he never became a broker. He stayed a cold caller and just kept developing the story, the story, the story. And then that's when boiler room came out. Yeah, it's, it's funny that that is really, it really lays out exactly the whole, you call, you get the accounts, you give the accounts to the brook.

Like, it's a whole stepping process. Yep. It does a great job of explaining that. Yep. And I rose through the ranks quickly. I passed my series seven. It was the first test ever in my life that I actually studied for. 63, you got to get two licenses.

And then at one point when I was one of the yuckety yucks, I had to pass another test to be a principal of the firm. and I passed all those tests and I became a broker when your average broker, a good day would be opening up one account. Somehow I was opening up three to four every day. And people would say, you know, behind my back, he must be saying something illegal. He must be doing it. And the fact is, no one could have sold cleaner than me. And it was all in how I spoke, not in what I said.

And I just spoke with a level of confidence. I believed in the secret. You put it out there. It comes to you. So instead of imagining this three-pound bag of shit packed into a two-pound bag, I imagine this big broker smoking a cigar and a big office with windows looking out on Central Park. And they were lucky to have me call them instead of the other way around. So that's what I envisioned in my head.

And it worked. And then I got to a point. I guess it was about a year in that I had the first indication that something isn't kosher here. And that's when I went into one of the partner's offices at the time. Are we already at Stratton? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I didn't know.

Okay. Oh, yeah. That was my first. That's your first job. Entree. Yeah, once I was done managing my friend's father's market research company, it was straight to Stratton. Sorry, man, I missed that. No.

I didn't understand. I thought you went to another buddy's place and then to Strat. No, this was it. This was his place. Yeah. So that's why I didn't know any better in terms of what legitimate, illegitimate. But a year in, I had a client bought a lot of stock. I walked into the partner's office and I said, this guy bought a chunk of stock.

And I, now I'm really green. I don't know anything about the business. I don't know any of the ins and outs and the shortcuts, you know, at this point. I walk in, I say, if the stock goes up, I really think he's going to buy a lot more. I mean, really like an idiot. And he said, oh, cool. I walked back out of the office. I walked over to back in that day in the dinosaur age, it was a Quotron.

It was as simple as you can get screen that had some information on it. I got back and I saw the stock was up a half a point. I said, wow, I'm really that good of a stock picker. I can't believe it. And something then said, I don't think so. I think that guy in that office did something. And that was my first indication that something wasn't kosher here. Of course, I then called the client and he bought a ton of stock additionally.

So that was really my first step into, okay, what do I do? Now that you know it's a little bit, they all do it. And that's pretty much what I said throughout until the day it was closed, that all these firms do it. It's just that the bigger firms had more established, fancier names. I mean, that's why we came up with Stratt and Oakmont. You know, it sounds like we came over on, you know, the Mayfield. flower when we came over in a, you know, a Cadillac, uh, Biaritz, uh, from back in the day. Uh, and, um, yeah, we just, um, I just continued on raising money, opening accounts,

raising money and just surpassing pretty much everyone in the firm to the point where I was asked if I wanted to be a partner. So I have a question. At this point, I, are you realizing, like, are they coming to you and saying, look, this is the stock we want you to push. Or are you actually, are you actually doing research and saying, hey, you know, GM's coming up with a new product line, whatever? No. No, they're just, okay.

Yeah. The only A, I personally never did any research. The only research I did was how much commission was in it. And part of the program, if you will, was the first trade. was on a listed stock on the New York Stock Exchange. So it was something with some name recognition, Dr. Pepper, I remember, Eastman Kodak, which is no longer, a couple of other companies. So when an investor heard, that was the company I was recommending,

it would be a lot easier to buy that than to buy, you know, OOMP and the guy had no clue what it was. but at this point it shortly became hey after you open up that first stock here's the next stock you're recommending okay I guess they know best right so I'll recommend that stock and then after that stock you recommend this stock okay I guess they know best you recommend this stock and it was it was shepherds and sheep that's what it was you know do this do this and There was never a question from the sheep to the shepherds about, should I really do this? Is this the best thing for my client? You know, there really wasn't a lot of concern about that.

And I eventually got to the point where I had been asked by Jordan to be a partner. And I was kind of blown away. And I said, well, what's that going to, what's that going to cost? And he throws out a number of $90,000. And at that point, I think I had about $84,000. thousand dollars saved and i'm just saying to myself oh my god you know either he's seeing into my bank account or this is just a nightmare what do i do what do and uh i was always told i had you know balls of steel so i wrote out a check for ninety thousand dollars gave it to him next day he told me to buy a

particular stock bought it and i made a couple hundred thousand dollars the next day which proved to me it wasn't the money, it wasn't really a partnership. It was really a test of loyalty and commitment to the firm. You know, would I, would I do that or wouldn't I? Because the next day he made all that money up to me plus some. Right. So I was now, you know, officially a partner of the firm. How many people are at the firm?

How many brokers? By the time I became partner, I would say a few hundred. I would say a few hundred. Are they like in the movie? Are they in this one? Yes. This huge room. One of the few things in the movie that it got right was that boardroom.

Everyone was in one room. You had 400, I think the max was maybe 450, 500 people in that room. And on the outside, you had, you know, some private offices, Jordan, my friend Danny, myself, another Jordan. But it was just, you know, the minute you walked in, it was like you walked into adult, I don't know what you want to call it. Not Disneyland, but just you walked into Sodom and Gamora. A total, a total different reality. And that's how it always was.

It was like we lived in a bubble. Nothing outside affected us. And whenever there was any negative. news or anything, the spin that Jordan or one of the other partners at that time would put on it was amazing. It was amazing because we were constantly in the news and it was always good news. Okay. Meaning it was horrible news in the paper, but somehow these guys put a spin on it like,

what great news, publicity, this, that, the business that's going to come. And as a somewhat intelligent guy with common sense, I'd say, how is this possibly good news? But the sheep for the most part, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, good news, good news. So, you know, you just kind of roll with it. I mean, was there like a point when you got like, now that you're kind of like in the intersanktum, right? Is there a point where they basically you're in the boardroom or his office or something? They're like, listen, bro, this is what, this is what's actually happening.

Because you're saying up to this point, you're kind of like, they're doing something. I'm making money at it. There's no reason for me to ask a lot of questions. But now that you're a partner, that's a different situation. Absolutely. And as this is one of those situations where the truth is really stranger than fiction, which is what I've constantly said from the beginning, why a lot of the things were made up in the movie is beyond me.

Because if you just stuck to the truth, it would have been much wilder, maybe too wild for Hollywood. I don't know. But the morning meeting consisted of everyone taking their breakfast of champions, which was a bunch of pills and coming up with ideas for the day. You know, basically, how are we going to make money? How are the broker is going to make money? What's the scheme of the day?

What kind of scam are we running that day? Well, let's buy back all of this stock. at a cheap number, let's manipulate it higher with the other firms we're in cahoots with and then sell it to Mr. Jones. How are you in cahoots with other firms? What's... They were referred to as market makers. And back in that day, in order to manipulate a stock, move a stock in the illegal fashion

that it was done, you had to have other firms in on the, program in on the scam. Right. And they got paid for it, you know, but we would call these other firms, the trader, would call these other firms and say, here's what we're doing. Here's what we need you to do. And because we were the behemoth, these smaller market makers played ball because they knew they were going to make X amount of dollars playing along with us, enabling us to

manipulate the stock and make ourselves and the broker. and the brokers as much money as possible. No, did you ever see that Wall Street? So fucking disappointing, you're probably. There's so many great movies. He's always like, no. But Wall Street does a great job of explaining. Like they've got Bud Fox where it's Gecko is telling Bud Fox,

this is what needs to be moved. And then Bud Fox ends up calling multiple different, market makers, I guess, and saying like, hey, and it was what blue steel light. Yeah, Blue Star loves whatever. You know, it's like a code. You know, the Blue Star loves Canon, you know, and then they would go, okay, and then they'd start selling the shit out of Canon stock. And they'd go and they'd push it and, of course, the more they're buying and their clients

are buying, the more of the stock is going up, it's in demand. And then once it, you know, it hits the ceiling where everybody wants to get out of it, they pull their money out because they all bought in either they own the stock for nothing or they bought in at a hundred dollars and they drive it up to a hundred and seventy five dollars of the course of several days and then they just yank their they sell off all their stock and then it starts to drop but they just made you know 75 percent or whatever it was that they made or however they ended up buying it for they're not even buying it for a hundred buying it on uh what is how you're buying it you're getting the bank to linch of the money you're

not even paying for the margin you're buying it they're buying it on margin they're making it making 400% profit or something. So, and then, of course, it crashes. And all the investors that pump money into the stock lose their fucking ass. And maybe, maybe the company doesn't go under. Maybe it rebounds in 10 years or something. Right. Or maybe it just claim, they claim bankruptcy.

But either way, there's a massive loss to the people that weren't in on the scam. So I'm just trying to clarify it just in case somebody watching. And that's a difficult concept. If you don't really kind of understand it. A hundred percent. And specifically with us, if you weren't on the inside, that's it. You had no shot. Yeah, you're losing your ass. This was a blackjack game with no picture cards. What happens if some client says, yeah, yeah, I'll buy a thousand shares at $100. And then he sees it going up to 165. And at 165, he calls up and says, yo, sell everything. Do you guys sell it? A broker typically would come into an office,

one of the partner's offices with a sell ticket written up. Again, an antiquated system, but that's what it was during the day. And we would just turn around and say, not looking for it. Tear up the cell ticket. But he's got a sale. The guy called, but he's got his phone call. And the broker would come up. or we would tell him what to say to convince the investor not to sell. The only way an investor was going to be able to sell is if we wanted him to sell. I mean, so you want to talk about manipulation. That's it.

We manipulated the brokers. The brokers manipulated the investors. And 99% of the time, the investors bought whatever that broker had to say. So if someone was smart enough and sir, stock go from 100 to 165 and said, you know what, it's up 65 percent. I'm going to take my profits. If it wasn't in the firm's best interest, it wasn't going to be sold or a little portion of it. I mean, you know, they used to come in with sell tickets and not looking for it.

Rip, rip, rip, rip, and throw it at the kid's head. I was going to say, but the fact that this guy bought in at 100, now. it's at 165, I don't imagine it would be too difficult to explain to the guy. That's a mistake, bro. You don't want to sell now. I'm telling you right now. I can't tell you how, but they're coming up with it. They're about to announce a new product line.

And this is a, this is what's happening. I mean, this is a mistake. This is going to $2.50. You're going to fuck. You're going to really kick yourself. And then they're going to be like, fuck. Yep. You're hired.

Yeah. So that was it. So it was, it was rather simple to manipulate. the investors to do whatever was in the firm's best interest. And I always said that the whole system is screwed up. If they want to set this system up correctly today, it's very simple. Put the stockbroker on the same side of the page as the investor. If the trade works and money is made on the trade, then the stock broker should be paid

a commission. If the stock doesn't work and the investor loses money, the stockbroker, shouldn't make a dime. If you set it up that way, now the broker has a vested interest in making the client money. Otherwise, the only thing the broker has a vested interested in is continue to trade the account. Buy, sell, sell, sell, sell, buy. That's what creates commissions. Yeah, I was going to say, churning.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Where you're just making money off of the buying and selling of stocks, you could give a shit. So what they do is they buy, sell, they buy stocks, sell them, convince you to, sell the stock, pull your money out. There's a better stock over here. Buy that one.

Okay, that one's not working. Pull the money out. Buy this, but what they really do is, but they're getting a fee every single time. So they're making money no matter what. And it really could give a shit whether you make money or not. But they're just trying to get you to buy and sell more stock. A thousand percent. So I have a question, which is, how are you guys, you're basically picking finding a company,

some existing company, I'm assuming. You're finding an existing company. and you're going in and saying, okay, you've got a company here, you make, you make t-shirts. We want to bring you public. How are you, like there's a process that you have to go through

in order to back that public offering and make that company look extremely profitable, correct? I mean, you have to do, don't you have to do like profit and losses, don't you have to look at their accounting, Do you have to look at their, sorry, their last five years taxes, who's running the company, what contracts they have? What makes this company so valuable that it should be placed on the stock market and allow the public to buy into this company? Like, that's a process.

That's a huge process. Like, how are you guys handling that? I think it was a year and a half in. When the idea came to Jordan that the real money is in bringing companies public, not in what we were, not in the small potatoes that we were playing in. Which is still millions of dollars. Still millions of dollars. But this was the big money, you know. And as someone who's in recovery a long time and so.

my favorite number is more. Yeah. That's my favorite number. I've said that to my wife before. How much do you want? I want more. More. To this day, I was just ordering a coffee.

Did you say one shot of espresso or two? Two, three, what's the difference? You know? So most of the back end work to bring a company public, I wasn't interested in. I wasn't involved in. I was more on the front end, meaning, all right, the ball is now teed up and it's time for kickoff. The soldiers better be ready to buy a ton of stock. That was basically one of my primary functions, is that when it's ready to go public that day,

these guys better have both, you know, come out guns ablazing with a tremendous amount of buying power lined up because they've already built up with their clients. I have something very special coming out in the next one or two weeks. Just, you know, stay pat. And keep building on that story until, boom. It's, you know, it's game day. And that's where the most manipulation, the most money, the most of everything went down.

the most the brokers made, the firm made, clients made that day. Right, but you still have to get approved to bring the stock. And you're saying that that wasn't your department. It wasn't my department. It was an extensive process. There were a handful of legitimate companies, you know, maybe less than a handful that we ended up bringing public that to this day are still. either public. Some were so successful that the owners bought it back and turned it back into private.

What was the shoe guy? Steve Madden. Steve Madden. Yeah. And Matt coming. He's still around. Big time. He went to jail, right?

He went to jail. One of my dear friends while he was in jail helped him build this into a monstrosity of a company, a multi, I believe, billion dollars. business while he's walking around in, you know, orange, orange shower sandals in jail. He came out, you know, a very, very wealthy man. But I know so many people, it's amazing. I say this and people don't believe it.

So many people that went to jail, I may know more people that went to jail than not. Not one bad story. It goes from it was okay to it was unbelievable. The guy that helped, may he rest in peace, the guy that helped Steve Madden build his company, said, it's the greatest thing. No bills, no pressure. I ran the kitchen. I held the AA meetings.

I got into the best shape of my life. I said, you've got to be kidding me. You sound like you should write like a Zaget's guide of prisons around the country. And I was always shocked at that. I never heard any horror stories. And I guess that's because these guys all went to federal. You know, I know the word is camps. Thank God, I haven't had the pleasure of going to any of these camps.

Yeah, they went to a camp or a low. Yeah. That was kind of my thing. I was like, well, I'm here and the government's paying all my bills. What can I do to put together a plan? I'll never have this much time. Like, initially, I bitched for about three years in my cousin there. He's like, nobody wants to stop bitching.

Some of these fuckers are never leaving home or are never leaving here. They were going home in a box. And I was like, and he said, you know, and so I started thinking, you know, what, how can I stop looking at this is a horrible situation and look at it as a, as a, as a blessing. And I thought, you don't have any bills. You don't have they're feeding you. You don't have to think about doing it. You don't have to think about anything, really.

You should have to figure out, I had a guy who said, you really, the, the hardest thing about this is keeping yourself entertained. And then I was, I thought, you know, I started writing books. I started writing true crime stories, wrote my true crime story. Started writing these other guys. Maybe I could build like a library. Maybe I could do something with that when I get out. But had I not gone to prison, that was never going to happen. I was never going to have that opportunity.

And I know guys that built apps while they were locked up. You know, they've written programs, build apps, learned how to code, learned how to do all kinds of stuff, came up with all kinds of business ideas and walked out on something half, more like 80% of them walked out and did nothing with them. But the 20% that did go out and do something fucking have been hugely successful. Yeah. But you're right. It's, you know, you have to look at it like that. Like obviously Steve Madden didn't thought, how can I fucking do?

What can I do here? Because I am stuck here for a few years. How can I use this time wisely? Yeah. Where most people just bitch and moan. Steve Madden actually, while we're on that topic, had given me one of the greatest lines ever. We used to golf together in the morning. and we were all, the inner sanctum and a couple of other guys on the fringe like Steve Madden.

We golfed every weekend in the mornings and I was on one of the greens and I turned to Steve and I said, I got great news, Steve. He says, what is it? I said, I stopped doing drugs. I just do alcohol. I just drink. He said, Howie, that is fantastic news. You just changed tables on the Titanic.

Right. And at the time, I really didn't know what he meant, but that played out in my life exactly that way. I was sober for four and a half years from pills, which was really my thing. And once I relapsed a year later on alcohol, I became an alcoholic in a nanosecond. Unconscionable. Unconscionable. because I never drank alcoholically. And I was now deathly afraid of pills.

So I went to booze and boy, boy, boy. You're switching an addiction. It destroyed me. That's what really brought me to my lowest of lows, which is as low as you can get without dying. So in the movie, the character of Jonah Hill is made up of a composite of you and like one other person. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it. Did you see the movie? Okay, thank God. I saw it on Christmas Day. I think it might be when it came out. No, no, no, no, no. No? No. No, no. No, I was going to say.

Because we interviewed Nadine. Right. That's what I had heard. Yeah, yeah. So your character is, you know, base, or the character of Groner Hills loosely based on you. in that he he he he he he he he he's one who introduces steve madden right he's the one who says i went to school with this guy yeah did you go to school with him no it was the other part the other part of jonah hill right uh a bunch of guys grew up together on the south shore of long island and uh that's where the other character went to school with him these guys all grew up in the five towns steve started out selling shoes out of his trunk.

We had a friend. We put him together with another friend who was already established. The guy gave him a little bit of credit. Said here, here's a thousand bucks of shoes. Put him in your trunk, sell them. That's how he started. He's selling women's shoes out of his trunk.

And then in Stratton's infinite wisdom, we said, hey, that's a perfect person to bring public someone selling shoes out of their trunk. No, we bought him public because he was a friend of a friend. That's it. P.S., that one worked out big time. Right. Another one, you know, a friend of a friend was a big recruiting company, a headhunting company, brought them public, so successful that the two principles of the company bought the stock back and turned the public company back into a private company. We brought a company public, believe it or not, that the Pritzker family, which is a very, very, I don't know much about them, but I know they're extremely well.

fee like out of Chicago, hotel chains, this, that. We brought a medical company that they were involved with that I believe is still an ongoing successful entity. And then you had a string of companies that are laughable. You'd say, how could anyone ever buy this stock, even with its story? And we would come up with a great story from, you know, karate classes, which, you know, all the fun was when we were on our vitamins, let's call them, coming up with the stock symbol. You know, the karate school was kick, K-I-C-K, the cigar lounge that we brought public was P-U-F-F.

I mean, that's where Steve Madden is shoe, S-H-O-O. So, you know, you could kind of tell the level of intelligence of the company bringing them public based on the symbol. And, you know, some of these companies had no right being in business. You mentioned before, T-shirts. It just reminded me, we brought a dollar store company, a public. I forgot what that brilliant symbol was, but we brought that company public. You know, we were always able to build a story around any pile of shit, you know,

as long as they were on board with how we're going to manipulate this entire thing, how you're going to shut the fuck up and not say anything and just do what we say, and you'll be that much more richer for it. The company will have cash and what you want, but here's the rules you need to play by. Yeah, I, I, it's just, I'm just curious. I'm super curious as to like, what is the paperwork that they have to fill out? Because I've known guys that have brought companies public. And, you know, so there had to be, there had to be some lawyer involved.

There had to be a CPA involved that's, that's dumbing up all this doc. All these documents are getting dummied up. A hundred percent. Because at some point, you have to go in front of what the, is it the, it's not the SEC, but the board that it says, okay. this is a solid enough company that it can go public. And I'm wondering like, how the fuck is that possible? Like there's, but back then, there's just no. I mean, the oversight or, you know, the checking on is this valid is, well, oh, there's a phone number here on the form. Let me call it and they call it.

And you got some guy sitting there staring at the phone who answers it, you know, you know, ABC, you know, Corp. Oh, what? Yeah, let me switch you to our bookkeeping department. Click, you know, and some other thing. you know yeah what can i do for you and then they say yeah we're just just verifying blah blah oh yeah no absolutely absolutely yeah so i can imagine that that faking that wouldn't be that difficult uh and then of course you got to bring it public but that's a long process but the funny thing is is you know the pitch when you're talking

about getting on the phone and pitching what the issue is um in the movie uh in the boiler room where he's like, they've got a revolutionary new syringe or some bullshit or they've got this revolutionary this and this. And it's going to change the medical, you know, and they have this whole pitch that's just bullshit. Right. Like this is like, that product doesn't even have to exist. It's just completely made up.

But it makes you think that you're getting, you're getting on the inside track of a, you know, an IPO that nobody else has. I'm doing you a huge favor. And then I can only imagine the first few. weeks of watching that stock go up and up, you're thinking, I am. This is going to be amazing. Yeah. And they did.

You know, it was all these profits for the investors were on paper. So on paper, they'd see $6.00 IPO go to 12, 12 to 18, 18 to 20. And every time they wanted to turn around and sell, the broker had another great story. as to why they shouldn't. Yeah, big mistake, bro. Big mistake. Right, exactly. They've just come up with a revolutionary chip design

that's going to be out in about a month. And I'm telling you right now, you sell this stock, you're going to fucking kick yourself for the next 10 years. A thousand percent. And then when we no longer have a financial interest in it, and we kind of say, okay, let it go where it wants to go.

there's no interest from Wall Street. We're on Thief Street. You know, we're on Thief Boulevard. We're not on Wall Street. We weren't even in the city. We were in Long Island. So there was no interest in the stock. So as soon as we had no interest in it and the other companies that were in

cahoots with us had no interest in it, where is that stock going to go? It got to a point where, on every one, on almost every one of them, when the investors said, now it's starting to tank. I want out. Broker would come in and say, my guy wants to sell. Our next two words were, to who? Right. Yeah, there's no buyers.

You know, everyone likes to think there's a stock market. So there's always a seller. There's always a buyer. And with legitimate stocks, there is at a certain price. here, it was, there is no interest. So if your client would like to sell, have him find someone that wants to buy it. Otherwise, that company doesn't necessarily have to go under at all. If it's a, if it's an even semi-profitable company, you know, that they just end up with stock that's worth $8.50. They bought in at 50 bucks, but now it's worth $8.50. And at the

end of the year, there's almost the company broke even or made a little bit of money. So There's almost no money coming to them. And then they just, you're just fucked. You just lost, you know, $40,000. But you still have the stock and the company's still going. And maybe that chip design will work out. Maybe they will get that chip design going. And things will work out for you in a couple of years.

But for right now, you're just stuck with this stock and it's worth very little money. And you've lost a ton. Your best bet is to hold it. And if you wanted to sell it, there's nobody to buy it anyway. And one of the one of the. And that really happens. It's not like that. You know what I'm saying? That's the whole thing is that in this whole scheme is that this isn't like, hey, this is bullshit. It's absolutely a fraud. No, no, that happens. Legitimate companies, you know, have an IPO. You buy in. And then the stock drop. SpaceX just dropped a fucking ton. A ton. Now, you know, and it's a company that's not success. I mean, that has, that's never made a profit. So it's not a fraud, though.

So there are plenty of companies where they have an IPO. They buy in. It drops. The company continues to, you know, run. And then eventually it becomes profitable and it comes back up. And that doesn't mean it's a fraud. So, I mean, it's a great cover. It's a great cover because it's like, what are you talking about?

I can fucking find 60 companies last year that the same fucking thing happened. And they're all, they're up and running. They're still going. Yeah. And one of the, one of the, I guess you would call it a mischaracterization. or whatever. This whole wolf of wall, first of all, no one ever called him wolf. So that's a name that he came up with.

No one. And one of the few rules were the person opening up an account has to make at least 100,000, has to be worth at least a half to a million. a half a million to a million. It wasn't taking grandma's money. If, you know, you got a grandma on the phone who said, oh, my only income is Social Security and SSI and whatever the hell else I'll be getting shortly, you wouldn't open up the account.

So that was one of the few rules in there. So when they say, you know, grandma lost all her savings and this and that, it's really not true. Did investors get hurt? Absolutely. To what extent? You know, it always was different. What do they have to fill?

What's the form? You have to be a sophisticated, is it like a sophisticated? They would call it an accredited investor, which they didn't have to be. Right. But they had to be worth at least a half a million to a million. And the form back in those days was me asking you, hey, Matthew. How much do you make a year? Oh, 100, 150?

I write it down on a piece of paper. Right. You know, there's a form I fill out. And then, you know, just thinking about that form, it's amazing how manipulative the brokers could be. Because if you said, no, I don't really want to open up the account. I'd say, okay, well, if you did, let's just say you did for shits and giggles. Would it be an individual account or a joint account? No, it would be individual.

Now I'm taking you through the new account form without you really wanting to open it up. But by the time we're done with this conversation, I'm going to say, well, listen, Matthew, we have all the information already to open up the account. What's 200 shares? $8,000. Is that going to make a difference in your life one way or the other? No. He's basically given up a fight. Right. And I said, listen.

individual will buy 200 shares of this, does that, the guy basically resigns and says, fine. Plus he's now he's got 20 minutes into the conversation. So he's invested in the time, the more time you can spend with someone, the more likely they are to buy. Yeah.

And I know personally, either they bought the stock or they hung up the phone and ran to the nearest bar. I mean, it was a verbal torture change. It was a verbal torture chamber where the only way you're getting out is you're agreeing to buy the stock or you just hang in there as long as you possibly can until you hang up. No one has a gun to your head. Hang up.

And if they hung up, I did my job. So how long were you guys going until the FBI shows up or you or you get to hint that. maybe this isn't going as well as we thought very shortly into it I mean maybe three or four years into the business when I joined the company there was probably 20 people three to four years later there's probably 450 people and all you're really seeing more articles

which is then spun into good news occasionally you'd see them come to the office to do audits or whatever. This is the SEC, right? Yeah, the SEC or the NASD. But you saw more of that happening. What they're looking at, you know, these were, it's like a cartoon where they were looking and we said, oh, the guy, oh, he went that away. Right.

And that's literally how lost they were. You know, the whole scam was there. You just had to figure it out. But it was so complex and complicated that they couldn't figure it out. And it took them many years to figure it out. And once they did and brought Stratton down, eventually, you know, it came across that Quotron that Stratton has now been expelled from the Securities Exchange Commission and the NASD.

And it certainly looks to me, even though I'm quite inebriated 24-7, certainly reads like we're out of business. Right. So I would then pick up the hotline, which would go to my partner and I'd say, are you reading this? Ah, come on, it's bullshit. Hmm. That one seems pretty.

That one seems pretty convincing. And so it was. We were put out of business. His immediate reaction was he took a baseball bat to every fax machine and smashed them all. Why? Because investors would fax in cell orders instead of just calling a broker if they couldn't get the broker on the phone. So now all the fax machines were down. So, um, well, but it did you know there was an FBI investigation first or did the SEC just,

was it just an SEC investigation to close it down? Even to the bulk of the inner sanctum, it was just SEC and ASD. It wasn't FBI. Were you, and you weren't concerned about it at all? You were just shutting it off. I, listen, once I knew what I was doing was wrong. Right. illegal. I was a good guy that got caught up in a really fucked up scheme. There were plenty of

bad guys that really didn't give a shit about what they were doing, but I had to stay inebriated it on something every day to do what I was doing. One particular investor, you know, here I am churning the shit out of his account. He's sending flowers to my mother in the hospital who's recovering from open heart surgery. And I would just, you know, I remember when I would get so high, I would write down letters, thoughts, and when I would speak to shrinks, it would be a recurring theme. When is this war in my head going to stop? And the war was, I knew right from wrong, and what I was doing was wrong. And in order to continue to do it, I had to be out of it. completely out of it.

But once I knew it was wrong, I was making $100, $120, $150,000 a month, I would say to myself, what am I going to do? Where am I going? Am I just going to quit? I'm going to quit, right? I don't know, quit and go back to school. You know, I was helping everyone I knew with my, money because that's really all I had to give. So whoever I could help, I was helping, whatever I could

pay for within my own family, I paid for, let alone my own insane expenses, one guy, five cars, you know, 50 custom suits. And at my size, they charge you by fabric, you know, it's an expensive suit. Um, my personal monthly expenses were 25,000. 30,000 a month, bare bones minimum. This is what 30 years ago? Yeah. Plus. Over 30 years ago.

Yeah. I was, uh, it, when I was in my prime, making a million and a half dollars a year, I was in my mid-20s, I'm 59. It was 33 years ago, 34 years ago. Um, I would say I have golden handcuffs. I may know it's wrong, but I have so much. many people sucking on my teeth that where am I going? What am I doing? Back to school or maybe I'll get a job. Yeah. And what business are you going to own that's going to come even come close to $30,000,

you know, to make up for that. It's it's it's, you go to everybody and just say, fucking I can't pay you know the dime. You're on your own. Kick rocks. I used to, I used to tell these therapists, I'd say it was like Michael Jordan. It's a phone call early in the morning. He says, morning, Mike, how are you? Good. You can't play basketball anymore. Have a nice life. Click.

What do I do? Right. Where do I go? What do I do? And that's after the announcement. That's how you felt like. Yeah. One Stratton was closed and it sunk in that it's closed.

And with my record of wreckage, arbitrations, lawsuits, complaints. There was no way I was going to be able to get registered again at another firm. Some guys that weren't big producers didn't have too many complaints. They could go to another firm. The smartest guys in the world learned all the sales tactics and left, you know, before they did a lot of business and went to a legitimate firm. And at that time, they're retired by now because the stock market, when I started raising money, was like 1600,700, 1700.

At the pace that I was raising money, if it was at a legitimate, legitimate firm with listed stocks, I'd be retired a long time ago. But that was not the path for me. So I hung on until the end, and then when the end finally came, that's where the movie was all bullshit.

There was no FBI raid. None. That office, believe it or not, sat dormant for I don't know how many months. All the files, all the proof, all the buy tickets, the sell tickets, the folders for the clients, just sat there. For a couple of weeks, brokers sat there thinking that if they threatened the partners enough that they would get paid their commissions owed on the 15th.

The company was closed on the 6th. The money's gone, guys. guys, the money's gone. No one's getting paid. I was owed over $400,000 to that month. And something in me said, you're owed so much money this month. I don't know what it is, but you're never going to get paid. No, I can get a new friend. For $400,000, I can get a new friend. Even if you're a friend. I'm saying if you're afraid, you're friends, you know, you get into that when you're in business and it's 80 hours, it consumes 60 to 80 hours a week of your life. Those, those become friends.

They're business friends, their work friends, right? And you don't realize that that's all they are until you leave and you have the, you have the lunch and maybe you have a dinner and then it's over. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And then you realize, oh, I really like that guy. You know, I thought we were good, but no, we were just business friends. Outside of business, we have nothing in common and that's over.

So they can get a new friend. Yeah. Belford can get a new friend. For $400,000, I can get it. I can get a new Howie. I can rent a Howie. I can get an actor to play Howie. You ain't kidding.

He would just have to be fat and stoned. If we could get a suit. Belfort, you know, I never liked him then. I never liked him. I never hung out with him unless it was a big gathering. And he was just an asshole. when pretty much everyone else was like fun to hang around with. Right.

This was not fun. So I was never friendly with him. I never liked him. I put up with, you know, kissing the king's ass because I knew at times that's what I had to do to get what I want. Right. But when the end came, I had a place down in Florida. I had a duplex on the water. It was gorgeous.

And that was my plan. I'm going to figure it out by going to my duplex in Aventura, Miami Beach, where I have a Ferrari parked there, and I'm going to figure it out there. That's a good plan, Howie. Don't get sober. Go there and continue to get stoned every day and go to Florida, and you'll definitely figure out the rest of your life. That didn't quite work out the way I had planned.

So real quick, I want to go back to something. something because this is this is funny or interesting to me because I this is back to Belford so we before we get keep going so did you ever see there so there's a video of Grant Cardone and Belfort Belfort's interviewing him when he had his I don't know I think he might still have his podcast this is when I was in the halfway house this is probably six seven years ago and they're they're just talking about sales right so you know You know Grant Cardone's. I know who Grant Cardone is. So they're talking about sales. And apparently, because apparently in the internet, there was some kind of a thing like, like, who's the better salesman or whatever. And they're going back and forth talking about sales. And Grant Cardone comes off like the biggest prick ever. And Belfort, the entire time, they basically start saying, okay, well, I mean, like to take anything. Like if you wanted to sell this, right, like, you know, some people will say, you know, well, what you have to do is Grant Cardone starts. And then Belfort. Well, I mean, yeah, that's fine and dandy.

But I mean, if the guy has no interest in the product and he's like, well, he still has interest. He's like, no, I mean, he has zero interest. He said, I mean, how do you sell that? And he said, wait, he still has interest. If he has zero interest, there's, that's still a measurement of interest. And he like, and Belford goes, no, no, you don't understand. He has no interest there.

He's right. But he's still on the scale of interest. He's still, it's zero. He's right. But that's still a measure. of interest. He's still interested. No, he has no. And you could tell Grant Cardone during this ridiculously stupid argument that he is now leaning into, Belford gives him, I mean, one opportunity after another to get out of the situation. And instead of stopping and going, which any

intelligent person would have done, anybody who wasn't just completely engrossed in narcissism would have said, fuck, listen, cut that. Let's go. Let's go. back. I sound like a complete douchebag. Let me go back because you're right. And you can see Belford is desperately trying to help him. And Cardone is getting irritated. And in that interview, unfortunately, for me, because I know I'm wrong, watching it, I remember thinking, this is a good guy. He's trying to help this fucking retard get out of the position that he's leaning into. And this guy is so fucking stupid. He will not back off of the position.

And, I mean, he, Belfort's given him, trying to explain to him that zero was zero. Like, there's nothing in the bucket. You know, and he wouldn't do it. And, and so that went viral. And everybody was like, Grant Cardone, if he had any credibility at all,

he just lost all credibility. If you're following Grant Cardone after watching this video, you realize this guy's a complete fucking idiot. And you're an idiot for a ball and. And Belfort came off. amazing. And so I remember thinking, this isn't a bad guy. Like he's really, he's trying to help him. And I've watched a couple videos where he's having interactions and he always seemed like a good guy. And I've seen many videos. And I remember thinking he's a good guy. And however, every single person that I have met

that actually knows him says he's a douchebag. And I've met, I've met four, people that that know him, you know, I mean, obviously the ex-wife, you could say, okay, well, she's tainted, you know, she had a bad experience. All wives have a bad experience, whether the guy's good or not, but she could be the psycho in that, he's saying he's a psycho. So, but there have been three guys that I know that know him and not just know him like I met him at dinner one time and we had dinner and he was polite. Like, these are guys that knew him were in the part of the intersankton or have had a business arrangement with him and spent months and months with him. And every one of them says, this guy's a fucking, he's a fucking asshole, bro.

Like he's a complete fucking douchebag that, you know, one guy is a producer who was working with him, who at some point was trying to get, Belfort wanted to have create some kind of like a Netflix series or based on. And I think there's prior to Netflix, but it was like a. series that he was trying to get off the ground based on the excesses of Wall Street in the 1980s and he had a whole he had it written out and he was pitching it around Hollywood and the producer that was trying that was working with him was like he was such a fucking asshole in every single fucking meeting that he went to that nobody he's like had he not been at the pitch meetings had he not been a part of the whole process and we could have got it bought right we had many

people that love the idea, but when they realize that he was going to be intricately involved, they were like, I just can't. I just can't. I'm not going to deal with this guy. This is this guy at the beginning asking for money where he needs my help. Once it's greenlit, he'll be a monster. Once he's in there and we've provided him money, because, you know, once you get the money, now you can kind of be a doucheback because they've invested $4 million. Now I could kind of be a little bit of a shit. Yeah. But they're like, he's fucking asking for the money now at this point. he's asking for our help for the studio's help and he's a fucking asshole at the meeting. So everybody said, and you're saying is a douchebag.

And I just don't, I don't understand because he comes off, you know, it's like, and we've talked about this where some of these guys on film are vastly different than they are behind the scenes. And I'm, I guess that's what I'm seeing, right? Like, I mean, I must be saying that because a hundred percent. I mean, listen, when I see, and I guess every time he pops up on social media on my phone, I can't click, dismiss, ignore, block fast enough. Not interested. But as a result of that, it shows up more or something related shows up more. And I have a friend who was part of this.

He was the printer. He did all the printing and made a lot of money because there was a lot of printing to be done. and he was this is when you would print the packets and mail them all overnight them to the investors so they get these nice glossy packages and with all the

and they open up the brochure and it's got pictures of this amazing company you're investing in, yeah. They don't do that now. Yeah, and truth be told, Jordan didn't invent this game. A lot of people think

he might have invented it. He was taught. Ponzi didn't, and Charles Ponzi didn't invite the Ponzi scheme. It was called the, the Peter Paul scam before Ponzi. The guy who really taught him was First Jersey Securities, which goes way back. This guy was a master stock manipulator.

And at that time, it was so new. He came off as legitimate. He had TV commercials of him hopping on a helicopter. First Jersey securities. He was one of the originals. And then there was another original guy. So, you know, they kind of taught him he built a better mousetrap. He improved upon it.

But he just, I see him, I hear him, and I just see and hear like evil, evil that he's never showed any true remorse. He escaped, I think, $170 million in what he's. owed according to, you know, the government, the investors or whatever. And now, because of our wonderful judicial system, there's a statute. It's gone. It's finished. It's over. I think he paid $17 million towards $200 million. And, you know, go tell someone that crime doesn't pay. Try and convince someone when crime doesn't pay. Look at this guy. He's paying right now. Got a pain right now. There you go. It's funny because this is, this is funny. I was in prison and the Wolf of Wall Street had just come out.

I think we, I think we had watched it. I think we actually got it on the TV, on the media, sorry, the, the movie channel on, you know, we were in the cracker box. We were in the cracker box where all the white guys sit and that they've got

a room, the black guys have a room, the Hispanic, they call the Cracker Box. So I remember watching it and probably a month or so later, I want to say it was inside edition and they were they did a whole piece on him they're showing his

this is when he lived in California he had a he was living in a beach a beach house he was driving you know probably a 200,000 dollar Mercedes maybe it was 150 either way it was nice right and he was doing the, I figure what's called the streamline, whatever that course he came up with.

He was doing the straight line, straight line method or whatever of sales or whatever. So he has a whole course that he does and he does a presentation and he comes in on the weekend, teachers, your guys and everything. So he's doing that. He's also doing keynote speeches. And so they do a whole thing on this is what this guy is doing and yet he owes a couple hundred million dollars. And he has no idea anything of this is how. They're following him. They're showing him. They're showing him. getting out of the Mercedes, walking into the golf course. He's got his little white shorts on. He's walking in.

And it's like, living a pretty fucking good life. And they're showing him going through the airport to the private flights airport. And so one day they come up to him. And they're standing there as he's coming. And they kind of like turn around and say something. And then they go to him. And so it seems from his perspective. It seems like he's just walking through the airport to the private airport.

So he get on his private plane because he's flying private, of course. And they see him. So he sees them. To him, it looks like they're there for some other reason. And so they turn around. They're like, oh, hey, you're Jordan Belford. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I am. And they go, hey, oh, my gosh, we're here.

Hey, can we interview real quick? And he's like, yeah, I got a few minutes. Sure, what's up? And so they say, yeah, yeah, we're a. We love to, you're with the news and you would like to talk to you. Okay. And he said, yeah, I said, so what's going on? They sit down real quick in the middle of the airport.

And they said, so how's it going? Oh, it's going good. So I understand you're doing, you're doing this, you're doing that. So it's my understanding that you charge like 30, 40,000. Like how much you charge for these keynote speeches, 30,000? Like I heard it was like, is it like 20, 30,000? Like, he's like, well, he said, since the movie came out, it's around 80,000. And they're like, wow, that's amazing.

And how are you doing? of you really you know you're doing great oh yeah yeah yeah this is going on this is that and they start talking and so he's leaning into it like wow you're amazing you've made an amazing comeback what a great movie what a great life the book was phenomenal you're doing great things you're and so he's really leaning into it and then they're like and then they say something along the lines of you know that's that's amazing and you're living in this three and a half million dollar house on the beach and teach at that, and he, you could suddenly it's kind of like, and I don't know exactly what they said, but whatever it was at some point, he's like, and they're like, how much did you, or, and the book

is doing amazing in the movie. He's like, he goes, I didn't make anything off the movie or the book. I didn't make anything. You see now where it's going. Right. They said, I mean, how are you doing all this when you owe $200 million and you even paid a dime to your investors? And he goes, and he goes, I've never met my investors. And they go, would you like to? And they have an investor there. And the guy stands up and he goes, oh, my name is Stan Johnson. And, you know, I don't know. what his name was. But my name is Stan Johnson. You took $30,000 of my life savings.

And I've never seen a dime. And he goes, okay, this is over. Stands up and almost does a full run through the airport with them chasing him. And I remember sitting in the cracker box watching it and thinking, I'm, that is, that is, this is how not to handle this. Yeah. And he did the same thing on the Forbes. It was Forbes.

he said she finally, you know, she reeled him in with some easy soft balls and then started throwing some curve balls. And he says, whoa, whoa, whoa. He gets up and leaves and then they get him to come back. I thought this was going to be a friendly conversation. Was that Forbes? I think that. Are you sure it was Forbes or was it 60 minutes?

It might have been. Listen, it was. Because I've seen several. And every time I thought, I thought, you know, and then he came out with, and we'll get, we'll go back to the story. I'm sorry. This is all it. He came out with, I remember reading an article when I was locked up how he came. This is after he got he got ambushed. He came out with the $100 million dollar, $100 million tour or something like that, where he was talking about how he was going to raise $100 million to pay back to his victims or something. And then, of course, I never heard anything about that because I'm not sure how you're going to raise $100 million doing, you know, speeches. Right. I mean, I'm not Jordan Bell for. But I'm not making an idea right now. That's not going to happen. So, but yeah.

And then the other thing is he had, you know, he had a YouTube channel called the Wolfstead. And he was interviewing people. And it's obvious that he does not want to interview criminals. But that's what you're known for. He's trying to interview other entrepreneurs, salespeople. and it's going, you know, big time sales people. And they're getting some views. And you could, if you watch, if you know anything about YouTube and you pay attention

to it, it started off pretty strong. And he was doing okay. He was not doing really long for him. They're 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And there, but you knew who these people were. Some of them are Grant Cardone. Like some of these are big names. And then he stopped for like six months, six or eight months, something like that.

And then suddenly he starts interviewing people that like own a waterbed warehouse. Or they own, you know, just some startup software company that is making something that's, you know, whatever. So something that you're like, eh. Like these are very small. And you watch it and you start to real. And these are getting 500 views. 1,200 views, 1,400 views. They're getting nothing.

And you realize right away, there's nowhere near the caliber of people he should be interviewing. And I remember thinking, he's charging these people. And so that's actually, there's, you know, there's the model where you just do interviews and you hope that YouTube pays you.

You hope that YouTube puts AdSense on your videos and maybe you get some sponsors and you have to wait, you work a couple years and eventually you're making a decent living. that's kind of one business model, right? You have the other business model and there are guys out there. And what they do is they trade on their name. They'll have a big guy come in and they'll interview a couple of big guys.

And then they start running kind of a scam where they say, hey, I understand that you've got this company where you re-apolster old cars. Why don't you can, do you want to come on this podcast? we've got 150 or 250,000 subscribers. I'm Jordan Belfort or I'm, I almost want to say the other, because there's like two that I really want. I know Colby's like, don't say it.

There's two other guys that do this. And they have 150, 200, 300,000 views. I mean, subscribers. And they've got videos that have hundreds of thousands and everybody that's on them know, that you know them and you know who they are. And then, but you can come on

and it's $15,000. I know one guy pays charges $25,000. The other guy I think is up to $15. And what they do is you're, and you think you're a business guy. You've been watching these. And you know who Belfare. So you come on.

My God, what a deal. I'll pay $20,000. I don't know what they're charging. But I've given you $20,000. I'm going to be on my God. That's amazing. It's going to be great for the company. You don't know anything about YouTube.

And you're not a big name. You're a guy that owns four insurance agencies. you are not and you do not have a spectacular story. I mean, it's a great story. It's an American story. You started small. You built up. You're doing great.

You're living upper middle class. And, you know, not taking anything away, you're the guy that's actually making this entire country run. But you're not going to pull in a million views on YouTube. But for God's sake, Belford is interested. And if I just give him 20 grand. And so what happens is you come on. He talks to you for 30.

minutes, you pay the 20 grand, you get 4,000 views. Another guy, 3200, another guy, 3,700, another guy. And then every once in a while, the way, if you do it right, you run this scheme correctly. And the scheme doesn't necessarily mean it's illegal or, you know, it's whatever. But if you run this correctly, you still bring on some big names. But I noticed that all of a sudden, all the guys that are on his thing are just Right. Nobody's, nobody's, nobody's, nobody's. Successful, but they're not names. And all the videos went from making $200,000, $150,000, $400,000, $300,000, $3,000, $2,200,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $3,000, $1,000. He's putting $4 up a week.

So I'm thinking he's probably bringing in $200,000. thousand to 250,000 a month. And he did that for like six months. And then he stopped doing it. And then the channel went, it went dormant again. And I don't know what he's doing now. But I just, and I know, listen, I know guys that are doing 20 of these and they're fucking making a ton of money. And there's one guy that actually will do the video and then pay a couple hundred bucks to get 200,000 views on it because you can go to these bot farms and they'll and literally within a 30 minute period of time you go from 1100. They always do it at two or three o'clock in the morning. And so it's got 1100 views over the course of four days and then suddenly overnight, boom,

it's got an extra 150,000 views or 200,000 views or maybe if you were really smart, you'd do 50 and then wait a day and do 50 and wait a day and do 50 and wait a day. Like if you're smart and then maybe do 30 and 40 and 50 and the guy would have 350, 375,000 views. And the guy that paid the 20,000 or 25,000 would they think, man, I did pretty good, bro. Yeah. Of course, they got nothing for it. Right. And with their own money, I paid for the views.

So we know a couple of these guys. And it just, it's like he had a chance to have a fucking successful YouTube channel and just crushed it. You know, I just. I don't think. He enjoys, it reminds me of when I knew things were, I knew that we had this room of salespeople then would never be reconstructed. You would never have this powerful, talented sales force that if you used it towards something legal, it would be unstoppable. And at that point, I brought my brother in, who's an attorney, I was smart enough to say of counsel,

so he was never an employee. Right. And he started making deals with all the states so we could go back into these states that had banned us. So things started, I started turning the ship almost behind Jordan's back. And my brother was having big checks cut to settle with Mississippi for a million and a half dollars,

to settle with Georgia for two million. And then once him and another partner, the other partner that was higher than me, looked at it and they said, now, this is ridiculous. We're spending way too much money on trying to do this legitimate thing of yours. We're going back to stealing. But you already made, they've already made, you know, hundreds of, or at least tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. These guys are already, I've already pocketed. They probably have already got, you know, $5, 10, $15 million in the,

their bank accounts, what, what, what's enough? And you could still make half a million to a million dollars a year legitimately. Right. And they had no interest. And that's really when I knew, you know, this was the beginning of the end. It was a conscious decision to go back to the old ways. Is your brother ever at some point tell you, listen, you got, wait, this is, this is no good. Well, my brother told me, my brother is the reason I never got arrested and died and charged while every other partner did. And that's because at the time, I mean, my life story really is insane. You can't make this shit up.

I'm dating the top narc of New York City. Number one guy in charge of all narcotic busts and everything for the NYPD. I'm dating his daughter. And it looks like I'm going to marry her. And we get a phone call and it's my brother and we are on our way to dinner and he says, my brother's very much unlike me. He's very straight-laced to the point and says, asshole. Yeah.

Listen carefully. Every partner has been arrested. You're in the batters box. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to hire the biggest and the best. criminal attorney and we are going to them before they come to you. And I'm like, hello, is this a bad line? Hello?

You know, and that's the strategy we took and that's the very reason I was never arrested, indicted. We took the ball out of their court, came down to them and said, here I am. What do you want to know? Yeah. No, that's the... And they couldn't... That's the only strategy that's going to work when you're 100% guilty.

It's foolish to fight. when you're guilty and they have all the facts. You can only mitigate the circumstances at this point. You can't. You're not going to beat them. Yeah. And it's paperwork. That's what's so funny about it.

It's paperwork. There's no, there's no confusion here when you got $5 million and you got $2 million, you got $2 million, or that's more than $5 million. But, and then the company goes under. Like, what's your defense for that? The irony is that we, we, we used to tee off at the country club, we'd see helicopters. We'd laugh.

He'd say, they're probably taking pictures of us. They were. Right. Because now when I'm sitting down across from a couple of FBI agents, they're showing me these pictures. I'm going, holy shit. This was like the real deal. Did you ever get a target letter?

No. No. Okay. No. No, no target letter, no nothing. And unfortunately, they just knew people were getting knocked off of your brother. I was like, hey, your best bet. Absolutely.

Or you can go to fucking, you can do, God, if you were hit with all the fucking money, because you know how they'll hit everybody across the board. Yeah, I was actually, at the end, there were six investors who really, you know, had it out for me or was willing to spend a lot more money on attorneys to ruin my life or whatever. And for some reason, I learned more about our great country's laws. basically I can rob you with a mask on at gunpoint, steal everything, but my retirement money is safe. I don't know how that works, but that's how it works. And the attorneys from the opposing clients said, if he's willing to give up his retirement account,

the six of us will whack it up and leave him alone. I said, take it all. It's fucking blood money. and everyone was blown away. And I settled all six of those cases. I have nothing open. I don't owe anybody. They were taken care of.

At one point, I owe the IRS over a million. New York State a quarter million. Back child support a quarter million. Every single entity and agency has been paid. And that's kind of my, you know, my life is a dummy's guide to how to get through every asteroid in life that could come your way. You know, I wasn't just, as I was mentioning before, I wasn't just a mailman whose life got turned upside down.

I was, you know, kind of like the Prince of Long Island making insane amounts of money, spending insane amounts of money, crashing 18 cars. Not one of those crashes was sober, and there were 18 cars. And fast forward, I'm walking into social services for welfare to pay for a sober house. And I got a Louis Vuitton briefcase and Farragamo Loafers. I walked in, it looked like a fucking comedy act. What are they saying? And they can't believe what I'm writing on a piece of paper because I'm filling out the form and everything is zero.

It's not like I have to think about math. I am zeroed out. Do they ask you like, well, what did you make last year? And you're like, oh, 1.4 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, where's that money? And, you know, I remember the girl saying you qualify for everything. And I was now, instead of living as this multi-millionaire driving these cars, I had nothing to my name.

And the reason I bring up the Louis Vuitton and the Farragama, because that's all I owned. That's all I owned. I owned a lot of expensive shit. So what was I going to do? Go somewhere and spend money I didn't have on poverty-stricken clothing before I walk into the welfare office. And that's kind of where the bounce starts. I'm living in a sober house for six months. I'd spend 20 minutes in the shower bleaching it before I touched anything.

Is this in Florida or is this? No, this is in New York. Okay, because I remember you had gone back to Florida to try and figure it. it out, but it didn't work. I came back. And you're sober. How do you get sober? Do you just decide that's it? I can't. No, I was out of moves. You couldn't even afford to be a drunk anymore. I was a master of moves. You know, even when I was drinking 24-7, I'd convince this one to give me enough money to pay cable on that month and get a bottle of booze that day. I'd convince, I mean, it was just, it was insanity, total insanity, until

I literally had no more moves left. There was nothing left. Orange sticker on the front of my apartment from the sheriff. It says you have 48 hours to move your shit out or we'll do you the favor and move it out, you know, ourselves. And I hadn't answered the phone in a while, which is a telltale sign. Shit's gotten really bad. My brother and sister-in-law show up and I'm covered in black and blues. and they're like, you know, who can get the shit out of you?

They're talking to me as if I can talk. I've been in an alcoholic stupor for months. I can't talk. And the black and blues that I had from head to toe were from me bouncing around the fucking apartment like a pinball. No one beat me up. I beat myself up, including one time bouncing into the oven and turning the gas on.

The gas had been on for days. So the first people that had to be called was the hazmat crew. And they said at the levels here, if your brother smoked a cigarette, blow up the whole building. No question about it. And then my brother kind of walked me through the paperwork. They would give me paperwork to fill out at the hospital. You know, this is, I was, my brain was that commercial back in my day with a scrambled an egg in a pot in a frying pan at three o'clock in the morning, they'd show this commercial. It was an egg and they'd say, this is your brain on drugs.

Yeah. You know, that was my brain, you know, on drugs. I was scrambled eggs. So I couldn't, I couldn't talk side effect of the gas lost my voice for a while for a few weeks. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak and I shuffled as I walk. I couldn't really walk. Um, and, like a good alcoholic, two weeks in the hospital. And one of the head surgeons brought all his residence. And like you see in the movies, he stands over and says, this is an addict. And if he drinks or drugs, one more time he's going to die.

And after two weeks in the hospital, I left there and I immediately drank. It's unconscionable when I think back on it. But that's what I did. only to get sober a couple of months later. I ran out of the moves. My brother filled out the paperwork, got me into a sober house.

I walk into this sober house. It's like walking the, walking up to it was like the green mile. I was walking the green mile to the electric chair. It looked like the amity of Elhara house. I said, this is where it ends. It's over. You had a good run.

Now you did. I walked in. I'm filling out the paperwork in the sober house. and I hear out of the manager's office, I hear, Gelfand? What the fuck? A kid that I knew from high school was the manager of the sober house,

and he walks out and what's in his hand, the book, The Wolf of Wall Street. You got to be kidding me. He said, he's fucking bullshit. Come on. Right. Who's got where to cameras? And that's where it started.

I lived there for six months. Twelve guys in a house, no air conditioning. You know, so today, I'm the idiot that when I hear central air kick on in a house, I like giggle to myself because I know what it's like to live without air conditioning. When, you know, the most simplest things, a car, I don't have a license for years. years. It didn't stop me from driving. But, you know, I couldn't get a car. Once I was able to get a car, I tried getting a used Honda, used this, use that story in my life. What could I get? Only a Mercedes. Huh? How does that work? Well, because I had such a great track record with Mercedes Ben's credit,

I had successfully bought and paid off, eight Mercedes, they're the ones that approved me. I could not buy a used car for five grand. So my first car after I got sober was a low end. Nonetheless, it was a Mercedes. And it was just, you know, this whole ride has just been completely insane, going from that life to this life. And as I always tell my kids, it's not the road I would have chosen, but nonetheless, it serves me well today. Because when I hear that air conditioning on. When I look to my right and I see some woman with a, you know, with the resting bitch face on because she's not in the newest Mercedes or she's not in the roles that she wants, I look at my car and I'm like, I'm driving illegally. Look at me. So it puts everything into perspective

pretty, pretty well. What I did, I did. But I also turned my life completely around coming up on 14 years of sobriety, sole custody of my kids, who's with a mother. They say I should refer to her as my former bride. My former bride had a master's degree, a teacher, she married a top-ranking lieutenant in the police department, white fence, everything from the outside looked great. This lunatic won sole custody, because that's how much I had. turned my life around. Well, what are you doing for a living?

Yeah. I somehow find myself owning a private jet company. I love what I do. You know, I said to myself, I flew a lot of private jets in my life because I was a big gambler back in the day. And they would always send jets and helicopters, jets and helicopters. That's a big piece that Scorsese missed out on. There was no gambling in the movie. and that was a huge part of the insanity.

I mean, if you wanted to hear a story or two about what they do for big gamblers, I'm happy to share that. Tell me that. Okay. So I'd sit with my friend at Mr. Kay's famous Chinese restaurant in the city. And I love Doc. What city?

New York City. Okay. And it would be me, my wife, him, his wife, and I would go to order duck. And he would give me the sign like by the neck. And when you like you're slitting someone's throat. But all that meant was order half a duck because we're not going to have time because I want to go to Atlantic City. I'm like, oh God, here we go again.

And that particular night I remember she sees him and I making Google eyes because she knows what's up now. And she says, no way. There's no way we're going to. to Atlantic City tonight. We're not taking a helicopter. I'm not going. I'm not going. He says, name it.

Name it. Just say what you want. She looks and she goes, a horse. I want a horse. Well, P.S. We end up taking a helicopter that night to Atlantic City. Two days later, Davis, the horse, got delivered to his wife. That's one thing that they would do for a big gambler.

Another great one was we were at the showboat. The showboat. casino had a bowling alley. And it's two, three o'clock in the morning. The bowling alley is long shut hours ago. But I have my band of idiot brokers with me. It was a broker trip. I took 20 and all infinite wisdom they came up with the idea, we want the bowling alley open and we all want personalized balls. Oh my God. Are you guys kidding me? How to call the casino host at 3 o'clock in the morning, tell him we need the bowling alley open. All these guys need balls drilled with whatever their nickname is, and we want to go bowling. And he got out of bed and came to the casino and made

it happen. You know, it was just, you know, living. I'm assuming this isn't because you guys are all going there winning. Like what kind of losses? These are huge losses. They're desperate to keep you there as long as possible. As long as possible. I mean, one of my friends who used to gamble very big, they pulled the old, oh, we can't fly. It's foggy. You know, to not fly, just to keep him there. Yeah. And he was smart enough, at least that trip, to say, okay, I'll go back to my room.

And he literally had to lock himself in his room until they were able to fly him out. But it works with most people. You know, they do that to this day. Too foggy, bad weather. Just don't gamble. Don't gamble. Just come back to the hotel. Come on.

The water's warm. Come on in. What's the most you've lost? I lost a quarter of a million dollars in a small casino in Puerto Rico and only as a result of selling the president of the casino on lending me another $50,000. Did I then take that $50,000, turn it into $10? I'm down $2.40 now and turn the $10 back to $250,000 in one. hour in one day.

So that wasn't the biggest loss. Losses would be $60,000, $70,000 in a weekend. It could be a night. And then the way I would justify it to not literally think about listing ways to myself is, well, I'll just call that client. I'll call that client. Between the three of those trades, hey, hey, it's like I broke even tonight. That's how I would get through it.

or think about which watch, which car I could sell and punish myself, but get the money back. Right. It was, it was, you know, it was a life you only see in a movie. You know, I saw the movie with my brother. I went with a paper bag. I was like the unknown comic. I had a hoodie on. I strapped myself in.

My brother's a straight-laced attorney. And as we walked out of the movie theater, we heard all the chatter. oh, that's just Hollywood, that's bullshit. My brother said, if they only knew that that was the mild version, and that's the truth. That's why I said, you know, the truth here is much stranger than anything you could possibly make up, you know, landing in your own backyard in a helicopter, which Jordan did. just all of it, me driving a Bentley into Brian and Cooper,

one of the nicest steakhouses in Long Island, into their brick wall because I thought it was a drive-thru. That's how high I was. Thankfully, these were friends that own a bunch of restaurants in Long Island, but literally driving a Bentley right into the wall. You know, when I first got sober, I told my sponsor, I said, I had 18, car crashes. Howie, howie, this is a program of honesty. Hang up the phone now and I want you to

think about how many car crashes. I then took pen to paper, wrote the car, and, you know, where it was and that somehow I remember. I said, I'm sorry, Andy, but it was 18. And I listed all 18 cars. And it was everything from Ferraris to Jaguars to every Mercedes on the planet to everything you could name other than a McLaren, which I couldn't fit in. So, you know, I mean, my Ferrari seats were screaming as it was. They were crying. Can you tell the story of the goldfish? And did that really happen? Yeah. In the movie, there's a scene where Joe Swallows the goldfish. Yeah, that seems to be the only question every single interview, podcast, anyone I've ever spoken to talks about is the goldfish. I wouldn't even going to ask that.

And it's not one of my proudest moments, but there was, you know, our job as the head honchos, so to speak, was to motivate this room of 400 to 500 assassins. Right. to get motivated for the day, to go out and make money and make phone calls and drive them. So we would come up of all sorts of crazy ways to do it. And this one day, my partner looked down at the beginning of the meeting. It was a podium. You were a little raised up with the microphone. And he looked down and he noticed on this poor kid's desk, wasn't a big producer.

He was always a little bit off. He wore a bow tie. I mean, you're basically working in a UFC gym. That's what it was like. And here's a guy in a bow tie. And then my partner notices a goldfish bowl with two goldfish in it. And bing goes off on his head how we're going to drive the animals today. And he starts ripping into this kid.

Your production sucks. Your work sucks. This sucks. That sucks. Your life sucks. And what the fuck is that? Oh, those are my pets. Oh, my God.

You talk about an invitation to get knocked out. Your pets. We don't have pets here. Pets don't belong in this office. He walks down off the podium. He promptly grabs the fish bowl. And there's a black goldfish and an orange goldfish. and I can't tell you which who ate what,

but I'm standing next to him on the podium and he eats one of the goldfish and turns to me, what am I going to do? Say, I'm not hungry. So I ate the other goldfish. Not a proud woman of mine. You know, I remember dating a girl afterwards who my kids were young at the time

and we used to go to fairs. And what do you win? Always win the goldfish. So the kids would be in the back. She'd say, keep it away from your father. You know, he's got an appetite for that. this poor kid, you know, and in hindsight, it's just, that makes me sick, you know, because God knows what that kid did after.

Those were literally his pets. He just got fired from the job. And people didn't, people didn't quit. People slid under the door. They snuck out or they never came back from lunch. It was that insane of an environment. And when I think back, some of these stories, you know, one dinner, one of the inner sanctum, big intersanktum guy, we had dinner, the bill came, bill was like a thousand bucks. He says, I got the tip.

You guys take care of the bill. He proceeds to rip up $10, $100 bills and sticks it in a glass. Waiter comes over. says everything all square here. Yeah, yeah, all good. This guy says, I got good news and bad news. The good news is, if you can figure out how to put all those bills together, you got 100% tip.

It's a thousand bucks there. If you can't, you're fucked. And it was just such a gross, gross thing. But it's honest. This same guy, one last story. that's definitely a must. This same guy, he ran a very large men's clothing company. But he was the chief degenerate.

You know how they say C-suite executives? He would be chief degenerate officer. He taught us from everything to bet on ants, running across the carpet, to fly his poker with a hundred dollar bills, all sorts of shit. So we're on a flight out to Belford's Bachelor Party. And at the time, we're not all flying private at the time. So we basically take up most of the first class space and a lot of the brokers are in the coach.

And we're flying commercial. And he is passing around goodie bags to everyone to take their vitamins. And then when they got a little too tired, he passed around more packages so that everyone would wake up from those packages. and this was pre-9-11. We get off the runway, and he turns to me and says, Howie, do you have my Louis Vuitton bags? And I said, why would I have your Louis Vuitton bags? He says, that's going to be a problem.

He is so out to lunch, he doesn't know which way is up. Again, it's pre-9-11. I give the guy, it's not even a security guy. It's a worker for the airline. I said, listen, my friend left something on the plane. I got to go back on the plane. Yeah, no problem. Go back on the plane.

It's two Louis Vuitton duffel bags above where he was sitting. I grabbed them. I bring them. I said, here, Elliot. Oh, thank God. We get to the casino. I don't even ask. I don't want to know what's in him.

We get to the casino. And in perfect Las Vegas fashion, he dumps one bag. He dumps the other bag. bag. One bag is half filled with clothes. The other bag is half filled with clothes. One bag has a million dollars cash in it. And the other bag is filled with a certain type of powder that keeps you up for very long hours at a time. Right. And typical Las Vegas, the account out the cash. When she came across a package of the powder, she just put it to the side, counts the cash. And just, I mean, he left this on the plane and just the thought of it this was after 9-11 something like that would

never happen left a million dollars on the plane and enough powder to kill a small family you know in one of these countries where it's made um so that was just a story i had to share with you but what they do for big gamblers they mentioned in the movie that uh jordan lost two million dollars at his bachelor party, that he had to pay $100,000 to have damages fixed in the room. All bullshit. His bachelor party was in my suite because I was the only single partner and everyone was afraid if the phone rang, if it was one of the wives and a hooker picks up, oh boy, I'm single if the phone rings, who cares?

So the circus took place in my suite. He didn't lose $2 million. in one of the interviews I had mentioned, I said the only $2 million he could have lost was building lifts for his shoes so he could see over the crap table. And that was his, is, was, and will always be his,

I don't know what the word is, his thing, was his Napoleon complex. I mean, he used to sit at this big desk and all you'd see is a head. I mean, it was hysterical to walk in. Here's this big Wall Street guy. All you see is a head, like a hand and a pen.

He didn't lose $2 million. This degenerate who left the Louis Vuittal bags. That's the one who lost $2 million. Lost a million, made a million, broke even, and then proceeded to lose two. And that was his bachelor party. It was an interesting party. Who was the, because you weren't married, who was the guy that married his cousin? Is that true?

Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's my friend Danny. Oh, okay. That's the other part of Jonah Hill. Okay. And unlike Jordan, Danny was a friend. Yeah. We're friends to this day.

Because he was a fun guy. He was a good guy, nice guy, you know, nice guy. He was insane. He's still insane. But he wasn't like, he was likable. Right. Jordan was never likable. But yeah, he did.

And all kids somehow came out. I don't know. Listen, when my kids were born, if they came out looking like an octopus, I would not have been surprised with the amount of substances I had taken. When they told me healthy, two hands, two arms, two legs, two eyes, I was blown away. Literally. This guy. He seems okay. Yeah.

And I have a gorgeous 19-year-old daughter, and that's when I said, I had two healthy kids. Shop is closed. That was the biggest gamble of them all. But yeah, he did marry his cousin. That's hilarious. Without a second thought. And she. That scene, I was going to say that scene in the movie where he's explaining why it's how it came about.

You're thinking at the end of it where he's like, no, you have to understand these guys, they're trying to fuck my cousin. And I'm like, wait, you're not fucking my cousin. If anybody's fucking my cousin, it's me. You know what I'm saying? And Belfer's like, like, I'm thinking it's going to make sense in a second. Nope, doesn't make sense. Yeah. Doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense. But, you know, it was a lot of interesting stories, times we were on this boat. I call it a boat, 180 foot yacht. Right. Not to be believed. and it was a guy's trip and as most of the trips were it was guys and hookers you know so we uh he said we're gonna have a meeting tonight at nine o'clock

eating we're you know this is the roman empire this is bacchanal this is whatever you know eat more drink more snort more do whatever you want more meeting okay nine o'clock we all meet in the living room I mean, gorgeous, gorgeously, decor, the whole thing. He hands out Cuban cigars to everybody. Just spark them up. Everyone that's smoking the cigar and starts bullshitting.

He's high as a kite. Can't make out word. He's in the drool phase, which Scorsese got right in the movie. There is a drool phase. Then there's a completely handicapped phase where I would, I can't tell you how many times, I didn't leave the office. I was literally rolled out in my office chair down a loading dock into my passenger seat so someone can drive me home because I couldn't walk. But about five minutes into this unintelligible talking of his, now everybody put your cigars out on the

couch. This was a gorgeous white, I think they call it Mohair, gorgeous couch in the middle of a $8 million yacht. You could just imagine. Put your cigars out on the couch. And everyone's looking at each other like, is this just stone talk as you really want? And then he gets loud about it. So what does everyone do? They take these cigars and they put it out in the couch, making these huge cigar burns. He says, that's what she gets for one of redoing the inside. So that was his way of saying he didn't agree with redoing the interior that we had to put out cigars on the couch.

So we did. And he got his laugh. And then she got a new couch. So it's just, you know, you tell these stories, I think of these stories. To this day, stories come to mind that tell my son. And he's like, how did you never tell me that story? I don't know.

It was 10 years of my life. It's a long time, especially under the influence. You know, by buying all these crazy cars, never, ever being able to drive any one of them home. So I was stoned. These salesmen wouldn't let me. I walked into the Ferrari place and I said, I got good news and bad news. The good news is I'm paying cash. The bad news is I don't know how to drive stick.

and I'm not learning on mine. I got two days of lessons on a brand new Ferrari. Even with that, I went through three clutches in 9,000 miles. How do you do that? You're stoned. You're a Jew. You're from New York.

I mean, all you want to do is drive a car and have the top down and it looks good. What's with these, an extra pedal I got to figure out now? Didn't work for me. So the guys of Ferrari said, I think you're the only person that ever got a reduced rate on a third clutch. I said, thank you very much.

I appreciate that. You good? Yeah, I'm good. Unless there's any more, is there any more like major scenes or major stories that people would recognize from the movie that you think, that's not really how it happened or that's a total fabrication.

Well, certainly at the end of the movie, there's no FBI raid. It sat dormant. Right. That was all made. made up nonsense. And in terms of the movie, yeah,

when we couldn't figure out how to motivate the room, we came up with these rather extravagant ideas. One was a guy who all he was about was his hair. He was a male model.

And if one hair was out, forget it. And we offered him 10,000 to shave his head for a brand new vet. And he did. and all the partners got a chance to, you know, take a whack of the buzzer.

I mean, he was bleeding to death by the time we were done. He had to go to a barber to get a real. So, yes, we did that. In the movie, they did it to a woman. It really doesn't matter, but in hindsight, you look back, and it's like, it's sickening. It's nauseating. These two brothers, you know, they mention it,

or I think I mentioned it in the documentary, that they hooked themselves up to a car, battery for 10 grand. Yeah, yeah. And they literally hooked themselves up to a car battery. The cables were on each other's tongue. And the guy running, let's call it, the contest was one of those bad guys who didn't mind what he was doing for a living.

He was just a bad guy. And these twins were basically like, you didn't see them smoking, but you knew they were electrocuting themselves. Right. They dropped the cables. He looks at his watch. He goes, that was only seven seconds, not ten. And walked away and didn't give him a penny.

And then I sat with a couple of the other guys and said, we got to give them some severance. Come on. They electrocuted themselves from seven seconds. That's got to be worth something. So we gave them some money. So, you know, we never threw a midget in the office. No midgets?

No midgets. No small people. None of that. We knew, you know, we knew where to draw the line. Yeah, well, the real Belford would have been, you probably would have been sensitive about it. Well, he would have looked around and said, oh, my God, how did my family get here? Yeah. Yeah, that was always his thing.

He always wore cowboy boots. Really? Always never wore anything else other than cowboy boots, because I guess that gave him an extra two or three inches so he could actually see over the desk. Because if he didn't have those two or three inches, now he'd be, you'd only see, like, the top of his forehead. So trying to freeze the pumping the cold air into the conference room? Yeah, true. That's true. That's true.

Where the SEC was turning it down to 40 degrees or whatever it was to freeze them out. You know, we're all wearing shirts and pants and suits and they're in there and parkers and hoods. And, you know, one thing they definitely missed was an interesting gathering. The NASD was in for an audit. it. And it was the day of the sentencing or the ruling, the ruling, I guess, on the verdict for OJ. Simpson. And the only TV in the office at that time, it wasn't like these days, this is a TV everywhere, was in Jordan's office. So the NASD people ask us if they can watch the verdict with us. And we say, of course. So here's five people on one side of the room. You have the

The inner sanctum of insanity on the other side of the room. And when the verdict come out and they say, not guilty, the inner sanctum goes wild. Like we just won the Super Bowl and we forgot that these regulators are in there and they're like they have their mouths open between the fact that OJ was just found not guilty and our reaction to it. It was one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen. I kind of stepped back, looked at it and I go, this is pure insanity. he's not guilty we're cheering like we just won the super bowl and these people are horrified um the taping system you know they they instituted a taping system every call had to be taped oh well so that's a tough one to get around so we now had two phone systems for 500 people

one that would be for taped calls and one that would be for not taped calls you know it just always seemed to me the regulators were always five steps behind like which way did he go boss he went that away just you know

but so there was some truth to the movie some not truth you know the speech was great that Scorsese put in there you know I'm not going the show goes on

he's too much of a pussy to give a speech like that. Never in a million years. He was just out of the business. There was no speech. That was a great part that Scorsese put in. That never happened. That would have been great,

but that never happened. When he got thrown out of the business, he just ran things from his house. Nothing changed. Real quick, I'm just curious. So what you were, was probably a year or so, you were contacted by the documentary people

and asked to do to doc? Yeah. A year and a half, a year and a half ago, there were two parties contacting me. There were two parties working on basically the same project. Right. Which I believe one is still in the making, and that's going to be on Netflix at some point. I don't know. But I was contacted by Paramount.

It was originally Maxine. That's the production company. Paramount own them, part of CBS. part of this whole conglomerate. And I said, you know what? Yeah. You know, I'd like to show the real remorse that I have. I'd like to not apologize, but maybe help people understand a little bit more how I was

stuck in this golden handcuff situation and also tell the insanity of my life, of addiction, of obesity, being 350 pounds, losing the wage. overcoming, you know, every obstacle known to mankind, but keep plugging away. Keep plugging away to the point where I built a life that I could look you dead in the eye and say, I'm, you know, pretty proud of. I never thought I'd be able to say those words, you know. So the documentary certainly tells a much truer side of things.

It explains things as the, they really were, not like Hollywood would have them. And a lot of the truth came out. You know, certainly a lot of the truth that he would burn anyone for a dollar. It didn't matter. You know, this friend of mine was one of his best friends from back in the day who happened to be the one moron who carried around a big video camera. So he had videos.

No one else had videos back in those days. If they were smartphones, we would have been arrested in five seconds. thank God they weren't so he he got burned and he was basically one of Jordan's best friends he just he as they say in addiction and recovery he'd walk over the dead bodies he'd kill him and walk right over him and I don't think a thing has changed that's his life I don't really give a shit it's how I live my life today hey you guys I appreciate you watching do be a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, please share the video to anybody that you think might be interested.

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