Jordan Belfort Net Worth: Inside The Wolf of Wall Street’s Riches

Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker and financial criminal, is one of the most famous names in finance, mostly thanks to his memoir, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and the award-winning film based on it. Belfort remains a wealthy individual these days, but he is not even close to being as wealthy as he was before he was arrested. In 2025, Jordan Belfort’s net worth is estimated at an impressive $100 million.

Belfort started modest but soon enough, he made a name for himself as one of the most notorious and controversial stockbrokers in history. He pleaded guilty to fraud (and related crimes) in 1999, but he seems to have turned his life around and he is now a popular public speaker (and best-selling author). He is also actively invested in the cryptocurrency world and often discusses the market and shares tips for investors.

In this article, we’ll tell you all about the original Wolf of Wall Street and his net worth.

Breaking Down Jordan Belfort’s Net Worth in 2025

Estimating Jordan Belfort’s net worth is tricky these days, given his controversial past and reluctance to disclose his various investments. The Wolf of Wall Street endured various legal challenges and setbacks for most of his business endeavors. At the peak of his financial success, which was in the 1990s, Belfort’s net worth was estimated at nearly half a billion dollars. After all of the scandals and criminal charges, Belfort’s current net worth is significantly lower – but he is still a remarkably wealthy man. Below, you’ll find a net worth breakdown of his wealth and major assets.

Jordan Belfort Net Worth: Childhood, Education, and Personal Life

Jordan Belfort was born in a Jewish family on July 9, 1962, in the Bronx in New York City. His parents, Maxwell Belfort and Leah Markowitz, were both accountants.

Belfort proved his entrepreneurial talent at an early age. In his memoir, he wrote that he and his close childhood friend, Elliot Loewenstern, sold scooped Italian ice from styrofoam coolers and earned $20,000 before they started college.

Jordan Belfort spent most of his childhood in Bayside, Queens. Belfort attended American University to study biology. Following his graduation, he wanted to use the money he earned to pay for his education at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. But, on his first day, the dean of the dental school said: “The golden age of dentistry is over. If you’re here simply because you’re looking to make a lot of money, you’re in the wrong place.” This prompted young Belfort to give up on his idea of becoming a dentist, so he decided not to attend the graduate program.

In 1985, Belfort married his first wife, Denise Lombardo. The couple divorced while Belfort was running Stratton Oakmont. He later married model Nadine Caridi and had two children with her. He divorced Caridi in 2005 following her claims of domestic violence, fueled by his problems with drug addiction.

In 2021, Belfort married Cristina Invernizzi, with whom he currently resides in Miami, Florida.

While he was managing Stratton Oakmont, Belfort led quite a lavish lifestyle. He was the owner of a luxury yacht, Nadine, originally built for Coco Chanel in 1961. In 1996, his yacht sank off the east coast of Sardinia.

Jordan Belfort Net Worth: Seafood Salesman Turned Multimillionaire Stockbroker

Jordan Belfort’s journey to becoming the Wolf of Wall Street was challenging and controversial at best. After college, he worked as a meat and seafood salesman before he founded Stratton Oakmont. Let’s see how his career progressed over time.

Early Gigs and Career

Jordan Ross Belfort was a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman in Long Island for several years. In his memoirs, he mentions that he was very successful at doing this. He reportedly grew his small meat-selling business to employ several people and sold around 5,000 pounds of fish and beef every week.

Still, this business eventually failed, and when Belfort was 25 years old, he filed for bankruptcy.

After the meat business’ downfall, Belfort started working as a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild. However, due to the Black Monday stock market crash in 1987, the firm had to let him go.

In 1989, Jordan Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont alongside Danny Porush. The firm was an over-the-counter brokerage house with Belfort as the CEO and his partner Porush as the President and Chairman. Stratton Oakmont was a franchise of Stratton Securities, but the partners later bought out the founder.

This is when Belfort’s reputation of playing dirty first showed its face. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Stratton Oakmont was a boiler room that defrauded investors and marketed penny stocks and small IPOs using “pump and dump” stock sales. These practices made the founders excessively wealthy, and, during his years at Stratton, Belfort lived a very lavish lifestyle and used recreational drugs such as methaqualone (better known as “ludes” or “lemons”) and quickly became addicted to them.

Stratton Oakmont defrauded 1,500 investors of $200MM

Jordan Belfort gave this 'sales script' to his 1,378 employees: pic.twitter.com/Xak3i3MHyH

— PitchDeckGuy (@BetterPitchGuy) November 19, 2024

At its peak, Stratton Oakmont employed over 1,000 stock brokers and handled stock issues of over $1 billion. However, due to the unconventional approach of the founders, the firm was often targeted by law enforcement officials. Its notoriety was the inspiration behind the film Boiler Room from 2000 and, of course, the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street film from 2013.

The Closure of Stratton and Belfort’s Legal Troubles

Law enforcement was one of the smaller issues for Belfort at the time since Stratton Oakmont was facing an even bigger challenge. The firm was under constant scrutiny from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (formerly the National Association of Securities Dealers or NASD). In December 1996, the NASD expelled Stratton and automatically put it out of business. Three years later, Jordan Belfort was indicted for money laundering and securities fraud.

The DOJ had him dead-to-rights on many of these charges, so he became an informant for the FBI in exchange for a lesser sentence. He wore a wire to help the FBI catch many of his partners and associates and later testified against them. This helped reduce his sentence, but due to the severity of his actions, in July 2003, he was sentenced to four years in prison. He signed a plea deal, which led him to serve only 22 months of his sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in California.

On top of his sentence, Belfort was ordered to pay back $110.4 million to the stock buyers he defrauded.

Later, he explained how he duped his clients, saying, “There was an element of my business where I had so much demand for stock that I would actually accumulate a stock, and then the stock would go up sheerly by the amount of demand that I had created. And I would sell the stock, and eventually, the stock would go back down, and investors would lose money.”

Belfort also said that he regretted the fraud as it lost him his family, friends, and business, and spiraled him into severe addiction. He even claimed that he would have made “10 times as much money by doing it legitimately.”

While serving his sentence, his cellmate, the famous comedian and actor Tommy Chong, encouraged him to write a book about his experience. Later on, Belfort credited Chong for his career success as a motivational speaker and writer, which led him to the lucrative public speaking business.

Belfort’s Restitution Obligations

The restitution agreement Belfort signed required him to pay 50% of his earnings toward restitution to the total of 1,513 clients he defrauded back in 2009. About $10 million of the restitution money came from a sale of forfeited properties.

During his parole, Jordan Belfort paid over $700,000. In 2009, he negotiated a new payment plan with the U.S. government. A judge ruled that he must pay a minimum of $10,000 a month for life rather than give 50% of his income.

At one point, Belfort shared that he wanted “100% of the royalties” from his books and The Wolf of Wall Street film to go to the victims, but U.S. attorneys denied this claim. They shared that he received around $1.2 million from the sale of the film but only paid $21,000 toward restitution. Belfort, in turn, claimed the government rejected his offer to allocate his book earnings to repayments, though he could have simply given them the money himself.

Belfort’s Investment Portfolio: Stocks and Cryptocurrency

Belfort was once a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies. He labeled Bitcoin as “frickin’ insanity” and a “mass delusion.” However, he has shifted his stance as he delved deeper into the crypto world and noticed the market surge.

At one point, Jordan Belfort received proposals to launch Wolf-themed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) but declined, saying that he “could easily make $10 million” but chose not to.

Still, Belfort has expressed strong support for the regulation of cryptocurrencies, emphasizing the need for more oversight in the sector. Additionally, he invested in various crypto startups over the years, including projects like Pawtocol, a blockchain platform for pet owners, and the Squirrel Wallet, a Web3 wallet solution.

In an interview not long ago, Belfort acknowledged his misjudgment against Bitcoin and admitted that he was wrong to predict it would go to zero. He now views crypto coins like Bitcoin and Ether as solid long-term investments. Still, he remains skeptical about the vast majority of other cryptocurrencies, maintaining that “99% of crypto” still aligns with his criticisms.

Beware of crypto scams pic.twitter.com/yLfey520rl

— Jordan Belfort (@wolfofwallst) March 18, 2024

Belfort has consistently cautioned investors about the nature of NFTs, which he believes is quite speculative. Despite the opportunities to profit a lot from creating his own NFT series, he refused because he was concerned about their long-term value and sustainability.

Today, the famous Wolf of Wall Street acknowledges that he is investing in Bitcoin and Ethereum. In a recent interview, he stated: “I’m long a lot of Bitcoin,” indicating a significant holding in this cryptocurrency. However, the specifics remain largely undisclosed.

Stolen Cryptocurrency

In 2021, while hosting a group of businessmen at his lavish home, Jordan Belfort revealed that a hacker had stolen $300,000 worth of cryptocurrency from his digital wallet, which confirms that had quite a bit of crypto. According to his account, the hacker siphoned large amounts of Ohm, transferring it to an external wallet.

This indicates that Belfort is investing not only in Bitcoin and Ether but also in other carefully selected cryptocurrencies.

Stock Portfolio

Some sources mention that Belfort owns stocks in companies like Visa, Walmart, Apple, FedEx, and General Motors, but these claims lack concrete evidence. Belfort is permanently banned by the SEC from participating in the securities industry, which raises many questions about his direct involvement in stock investments, if any.

Despite this prohibition, some reports suggest that Belfort’s investment portfolio includes eight stocks valued at around $15 million, as well as cash reserves exceeding $32 million. Still, these figures should be approached with caution due to many inconsistencies across sources. Given his SEC ban, Belfort cannot legally own or trade stocks directly. Therefore, if he is involved with the stock market in some way, it has to be indirect, possibly through third parties.

In recent years, Jordan Belfort has shifted his focus and now provides investment advice for long-term strategies, including investing in S&P 500 index funds and reinvesting dividends.

Jordan Belfort Net Worth: What Does He Earn These Days?

After his imprisonment, Jordan Belfort embarked on an entirely new path. He is no longer a stockbroker. He is now a motivational speaker and an author of memoirs, which contributes quite a lot to his net worth.

Speaking Engagements

These days, Jordan Belfort earns most of his fortune from motivational speaking engagements. He runs a sales seminar called “Jordan Belfort’s Straight Line Sales Psychology” and has toured for live seminars in Australia called “The Truth Behind His Success.”

All speaking engagements for Belfort go through his business, Global Motivation Inc. As of 2014, he was spending three weeks monthly on the road for such engagements. He reportedly earns between $30,000 and $50,000 for virtual speaking engagements, while his per-sales training programs cost $80,000 or more!

While Belfort claims that he left his unethical practices behind, his new career path hasn’t been one without controversies, either. In 2015, investigations by 7 News and The Sunday Mail revealed connections between Belfort and Career Pathways Australia, an employment company operated by Paul Conquest, who also holds a majority stake in Face to Face Training. These entities were featured during Belfort’s sales workshops at the Eatons Hill Hotel in Brisbane, where he conducted sessions specifically for Face to Face Training staff.

During the fiscal years 2014 and 2017, Face to Face Training received funding from the state government totaling $3.9 million and $6.34 million, respectively. However, reports indicated that the funds, which were intended for training and assessment, were not utilized as expected. A 60 Minutes segment by 9 News Australia criticized the training program, describing it as a scam.

Following the revelations, Face to Face Training faced significant challenges and had to liquidate in 2016.

Authorship

To date, Jordan Belfort has written two memoirs:

• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Catching the Wolf of Wall Street

Both books have been published in 40+ countries. In 2013, a film based on his book was released with great success, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, Margot Robbie, and Jonah Hill. The film was written by Terence Winter and directed by Martin Scorsese.

Belfort wrote his first book after his release from prison and received a $500,000 advance from Random House. He was later interviewed about the book by Premier Collectibles.

Assets

Despite his substantial wealth, Belfort still owes a ton of money in restitution, and a large portion of his assets were seized or sold to cover the outstanding balance. In the past, Belfort owned luxurious properties, several luxury cars, and a yacht and lived a highly luxurious life.

“Oh, you know I was living such an extravagant lifestyle that I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was stoned so much of the time. I had a yacht; I had private jets, I had mansions all over the world. All this sort of stuff, the trappings of wealth, and again, there’s nothing wrong with being wealthy, but not the way I was doing it.” – he said.

His former mansion in Old Brookville, Long Island, was seized by the federal government and sold in 2001 to help pay restitution to his fraud victims. As of 2022, reports indicated that he lived in a rental home in California, after which he moved to Miami.

Given these details, it appears that he currently doesn’t own any residences or luxury assets.

Jordan Belfort’s Path to Success: Valuable Lessons to Apply in Your Life

Jordan Belfort’s journey from a financial criminal to a motivational speaker offers powerful lessons we can all apply in our lives. His rise and fall emphasize the dangers of unchecked ambition, as well as the importance of having integrity in business.

While Jordan Belfort’s firm initially thrived through unethical practices, his story showcases the destructive consequences of prioritizing profit over integrity – and doing what is right. His story is a stark reminder that, despite temporary success, dishonesty can lead to several downfall and major legal trouble.

Belfort’s past mistakes continue to serve as a warning for those tempted to sacrifice values and ethics for personal gain. It is also a story that teaches us the importance of learning from our missteps, being accountable for our actions, and finding ways to use our experience to make a positive change.

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