Jordan Belfort - Catching the Wolf of Wall Street

And he was the one who’d taught me.

So, like Al, I had been careful too, covering my tracks with the zest and zeal of a sniper deep behind enemy lines. From the earliest days of Stratton, I was well aware that every trade I made, and every deal I consummated, and every word I spoke on the telephone would one day come under the microscope of a securities regulator. So, whether my actions were legitimate or not, they had damn well better appear to be that way.

In consequence, I had driven the SEC up the wall after they sued me in the fall of 1991, expecting an easy victory. They even went as far as setting up shop in my own conference room to try to intimidate me. Alas, things did not go as they planned: I ended up bugging my own conference room and setting the thermostat at alternating extremes—freezing them out in winter and burning them out in summer. Then I hired their ex-boss, a man named Ike Sorkin, to protect me, defend me, and undermine their investigation at every juncture. Meanwhile, between 1991 and 1994, I was making $50 million a year, as each of these young investigators (all of whom were making $30,000 a year) resigned in frustration and disgrace, and with terrible cases of frostbite or dehydration, depending on the season.

Eventually, I settled my case with the SEC. “Peace with honor,” my lawyer had called it, although, to me, it was a total victory. I agreed to pay a $3 million fine and then walk off quietly into the sunset. The only problem was that I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. I had become intoxicated with wealth and power, hooked on an entire generation of young Long Islanders calling me king and the Wolf. The buzzword of the day was instant gratification, and the ends justifying the means was the instrument of its assurance. And just like that, Stratton spiraled out of control. And I along with it.

By the early nineties, the Wolf of Wall Street was bearing his fangs. He was my devilish alter ego, a persona far removed from the child my parents had sent out into the world. My sense of right and wrong had all but vanished, my line of morality having moved toward the dark side in a series of tiny, almost imperceptible steps, which together landed me firmly on the wrong side of the law.

The Wolf was a despicable character; he cheated on his wife, slept with hookers, spent obscene amounts of money, and viewed securities laws as nothing more than shallow obstacles to be hurdled in a single bound. He justified his actions using absurd rationalizations, as he buried Jordan Belfort’s guilt and remorse beneath obscene quantities of dangerous recreational drugs.

And all the while the government kept coming. Next it was NASDAQ, refusing to list any company in which the Wolf was the largest shareholder. The Wolf’s solution—as insane as it now seems—was to smuggle millions of dollars to Switzerland, using their legendary bank-secrecy laws to try to turn himself into the invisible man. Through a series of shell corporations, numbered accounts, and expertly forged documents, the plan seemed perfect.

But from the very start it also seemed to be jinxed. The problems began when my chief money courier was arrested in the United States with half a million in cash, and the problems ended (in disaster) when my Swiss banker was arrested a few years later, also in the United States, at which point he began cooperating against my money courier.

Meanwhile, a young FBI agent named Gregory Coleman had become obsessed with the Wolf, vowing to take him down. In what would turn into a game of cat and mouse that became legendary within the FBI, Coleman followed my paper trail halfway around the world and then back again. And, finally, after five years of dogged legwork, he had connected enough dots to secure an indictment.

So here I was, six days post-arraignment, a victim of my own recklessness and Coleman’s persistence. And there was Magnum, moving onto option two, which was a plea bargain. “…And while I can’t promise you an exact sentence, I don’t think it’ll be more than seven years, or maybe eight at the most.” He shrugged. “Let’s use eight to be conservative.”

“No fucking way!” I snapped. “Let’s use seven and be optimistic, for Chrissake! They’re my years—not your fucking years—so if I want to use seven of them, that’s my fucking prerogative!”

The Yale-man said, “Okay, seven years is a fair number to work with. It’s eighty-four months, before deductions, and—”

I cut off the Yale-man: “Ah, good, let’s talk about my deductions! And feel free to exaggerate if you like. I promise I won’t sue for malpractice.”

They both smiled dutifully, and then the Yale-man continued: “The first deduction is for good time. You get fifteen percent for each year served. So, that’s fifteen percent off eighty-four months—” He looked up at Magnum. “You got a calculator?”

“Forget the calculator,” sputtered I, the math whiz. “It’s seventy-one and a half months. But let’s call it seventy-one, just to be fair. What’s next?”

The Yale-man went on: “Well, you get six months in a halfway house, which is almost like being home. That brings you down to sixty-five months.”

Now Magnum chimed in: “And then there’s the drug-treatment program, which”—he let out a chuckle—”given your past history you’d definitely qualify for.” He looked over at Nick. “He could probably teach the course, Nick, right?”

“One would think,” replied the Yale-man, with a starchy shrug. “You’d make an excellent teacher, Jordan. I’m sure you’d make the class very interesting. Anyway, you get twelve months off for the drug program; so now you’re down to fifty-three months.”

Magnum said, “You see what I’m saying here, Jordan? It’s not nearly as bad as you thought, right?”

“Yeah, one would think,” and I took a moment to consider my fate. Four and a half years—well, it was certainly better than going to trial and risking becoming Mr. Gower. I would serve my time in Club Fed, playing tennis and golf, and be released around my fortieth birthday. I would have to pay a hefty fine, of course, but I still had enough money squirreled away to emerge from jail a wealthy man.

And then all at once it hit me: I might even be able to sell this package to the Duchess! Perhaps she would stay if she knew I was facing only four and a half years… although I could reduce that a bit, tell her that I was facing only four years. How would she know I was lying? Maybe I should say forty-eight months. Which sounded shorter? Probably forty-eight months, or maybe I would say forty-seven months and then follow it up with “That’s less than four short years, baby!”

Wow, what a pleasant ring that had to it! Less than four short years, baby! It would be no more than a hiccup, something that could happen to any man of power. Yes, I would explain that to the Duchess, and she would understand. After all, I had been a terrific provider over the years. So why should she waste her time searching for a new gold mine when the gold mine she already had would be back in operation in less than four short years, baby!

“…could always cooperate,” said Magnum, raising his eyebrows two times in rapid succession. “Now if you go down that road, you might not even spend a day in jail; you could get straight probation. Although you’d probably have to do a year or so.”

I had been too busy fantasizing about the backstabbing Duchess, so I’d missed the first half of what Magnum said. Apparently he had now moved on to option three: cooperating, also known as ratting. Call it what you will, I chose to ignore the latter part of Magnum’s sentence prediction, and I said, with a trace of hope in my voice: “I won’t have to do even a day in jail?”