Jordan Belfort and I have something in common. And it’s got nothing to do with being played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the hotly anticipated movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” based on Jordan’s memoirs about his years spent gulping Quaaludes, hiring teams of hookers, and doing more psychological damage to little people than “The Wizard of Oz” by hosting dwarf-tossing contests while engaging in financial rip-offs so wickedly audacious, he landed in federal prison alongside celebrity pothead Tommy Chong of Cheech & Chong fame.
I haven’t got that kind of energy.
Jordan and I both grew up in Bay Terrace, a soulless collection of identical six-story, red-brick co-op buildings and attached garden apartments that sprouted in the late ’50s on the eastern reaches of Queens, marketed to Jewish families fleeing The Bronx. There, thousands of kids grew up trapped between our richer cousins on Long Island and “the city,” as we called Manhattan, separated from the bright lights by lack of a subway line or exit strategy, in a neighborhood as intellectually stimulating as a Cialis commercial.
Most bored teens I knew got rip-roaring high by the time they hit junior high school.
This might help explain why Jordan, who’s again riding high after his 1998 indictment for ripping off investors to the tune of $110 million, is experiencing epic mood swings — joyful one minute, painfully glum the next.
“It’s not the greatest time of my life,’’ Jordan, 51, motormouthed in a Queens accent, though he now lives in a plush oceanfront house in California’s Manhattan Beach.
“I was like a complicated character. I can’t figure out why I’m doing what I’m doing,’’ said Jordan, a lifelong insomniac. (Like me.)
“I did some stuff I’m not proud of. Good stuff I did. Awful stuff I did. “I’m different now,’’ he protested. “I’m not a different guy than I was. I’m back to the person I’m supposed to be. It’s a weird journey that I took. It’s surreal.”
I wonder: Is the new, legit Jordan Belfort just playing another scam?
He’s gone from a loathsome criminal to something possibly worse. The guy who paid for a hedonistic lifestyle, including buying a 166-foot yacht built for Coco Chanel (which sank), a helicopter (which he almost crashed while high), and mountains of cocaine, boasted to me that he stands to rake in $20 million to $30 million (he’s already made $2 million) off a movie and a pair of memoirs made possible only by his stealing the money of ordinary chumps.
Jordan insists he wants to give away every penny to his victims:
“I morally don’t want to make a profit from the books.”
Then, with a chuckle, he repeats that “Wolf’’ will make him enough cash to finance a small country. “It’s crazy, right?”
Things are going well for Jordan. He’s engaged to marry his third wife, and pulls down five figures per appearance as a motivational speaker, teaching people how to “create wealth for the greater good,” according to his Web site. It’s a career that allows Jordan to use his talent as a fast-talking con man for entirely legal purposes. He no longer ingests money. “I’m sober 16 years!”
Even his Hollywood alter ego — “Hey, being played by Leo is better than being played by Danny DeVito!” — stands 6 feet tall. At 5-foot-7, Jordan would mortgage his soul for that kind of height.
But he can’t shake Bay Terrace, which helped mold an upwardly mobile middle-class kid into an amoral, drug-loving crook. “There’s something in the water there,” he told me.
As Jordan wrote in his second memoir, “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” the nabe was fertile ground for recruiting young, voracious salesmen who worked in the cult-like firm he started in a Long Island used-car dealership in 1989, Stratton Oakmont, a “pump and dump” outfit whose pushy brokers bought up shares of penny stocks, thus “pumping” up their price, and sold them to unwitting clients. Then the brokers “dumped” their own shares en masse, rendering the stocks nearly worthless. Brokers got rich. Investors were ruined.
Jordan’ s mom, Leah, 80, a retired accountant-turned-lawyer for the poor, still lives in Bay Terrace with Jordan’s dad, retired accountant Max, 82. “I wanted to deny he was my son,” Leah Belfort told New York magazine.
Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie opens Christmas Day. Jordan is consumed with dread:
“It will forever change the way I’m perceived for the rest of my natural life.”
Like most of his Teflon-coated existence, his downfall was more cushioned than one might hope. As played by DiCaprio, Jordan is seen in a movie trailer tossing $100 bills into a garbage pail, taping money to a woman’s breasts to smuggle from the country, and whining that the year he turned 26, he made a measly $49 million — less than $1 million a week.
The easy money, drugs and dwarves vanished as Jordan faced two decades in federal prison for securities fraud and money-laundering convictions. But he served just 22 months in a California Club Fed after he wore a wire and ratted out friends and associates in a bid to win a lenient sentence.
In the pen, he played lots of tennis and befriended Chong, who was sentenced to nine months for selling bongs online. Chong encouraged him to spin his losses into gold by writing.
Where’s the money? Brooklyn federal prosecutors accused Jordan in an October letter of being a deadbeat, paying just $11.6 million of the $110 million he owes to the more than 1,500 people he bilked. Jordan denies he hid money, and the claim was withdrawn. Jordan is now negotiating a settlement with the feds.
These days, Bay Terrace is a graying ghost town, as kids have grown up and moved on. But an influx of Korean families is breathing new life into the neighborhood that spawned the Wolf of Wall Street.
And still, Jordan Belfort can’t stop money from flowing in his direction. I guess a guy never really escapes his upbringing.
Mandela’s humanity
Hours after landing in South Africa in 1994 to cover the country’s first all-race election, I banged into a tall, courtly gentleman in a hotel lobby in the port city of Durban. It was Nelson Mandela.
The freedom fighter, imprisoned 27 years for fighting South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation, was not separated from the people by layers of muscled security guards at the time. He walked with an aide.
Mandela took my hand, and apologized for the unfortunate collision, which probably was my fault.
South Africa’s former president, who died Thursday at age 95, is remembered as a great statesman. But I remember him as a humble and gentle soul. A good man.
May he rest in peace.
Captivated by killers
Sentenced to death in California for killing his wife and their unborn child, convicted murderer Scott Peterson has had dozens of women ask for his address. Lyle and Erik Menendez, doing life for the shotgun executions of their parents, are married to women they met while behind bars. Lyle’s first prison wife was a Playboy model; his second is a lawyer.
I guess women so desperate to catch husbands like it if the guys can’t run.
Bidder taste
Don’t they have whales to save?
Philip Seymour Hoffman is auctioning off an acting lesson. Susan Sarandon is selling two hours of pingpong and two rounds of drinks at her table-tennis club, SPiN, to the highest bidder.
Glitterati are banding together for a silent auction whose proceeds will go to “Save the Village,’’ a fight against NYU’s planned $6 billion expansion in Greenwich Village, which includes sorely needed dormitories, classrooms and a gym. I suggest they find something more useful to do.