Posted on 09/15/2014 10:56:09 PM PDT by shove_it
Hundreds of people (mostly men) packed the house at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan's Upper East Side to see the real-life "Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort.
Belfort is the author of a best-selling tell-all memoir that chronicled his boozy, drug-fueled, high-flying Wall Street lifestyle running 1990s-era boiler room Stratton Oakmont. The convicted felon’s book was adapted into a film directed by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Belfort was arrested in 1998. In 2003, he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering. He served a 22-month prison sentence after being sentenced to four years. He was also ordered to pay $110.4 million in restitution to victims of Stratton Oakmont's. He hasn't finished paying them back yet, either.
Wednesday night's "Trial & Error" program at the Y was co-produced by NYU Law's Forum on Law, Culture & Society. In addition to Belfort, the panel featured former federal prosecutor Daniel Alonso and CNBC anchor Kelly Evans. The program was produced by attorney Joel Seidemann. He's a former assistant district attorney in New York. His LinkedIn profile says he now works at JPMorgan Chase.
Seidemann gave a train wreck of an introduction. It really set the tone for the evening, which was uncomfortable. First, he joked that there wouldn't be any "scantily clad girls" at the event. "It's just going to be stimulation from the neck up." He also threw in a Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson joke.
"We never had a defendant who was actually convicted. It's not for lack of trying. ... I did invite Casey Anthony, but she was looking for Zanny the Nanny. We did invite O.J., but he wouldn't leave his gated community in Nevada."
It gets worse ...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I’d rather see The Expendables 3 and the Hobbit 3.
It is also wildly inappropriate and rated a hard R.
I thought the movie was quite well done and totally disgusting. There are a lot of truly repulsive people out there.
The ethics that NYC breeds.
Saw the move, hated it, thought it was excellent. Perfect portrait of a sociopath, like many successful men.
I watched Ivan Boesky eat dinner alone in a booth in a fancy restaurant/hotel in Southern California. It was the late ‘80s. I was sitting at the bar with a friend, about ten feet away from him. What do you say? We made eye contact for about a third of a second, and he looked back at his food. I left him alone.
The title of the book and movie is a misnomer. Belfort’s firm, Stratton Belmont, was located on Long Island, not Wall Street. The pumping and dumping of OTC penny stocks still goes on, mainly on the internet. I still get a lot of unidentified phone calls every day which are likely from boiler room operations of some type, probably get rich quick on your computer at home operations that I thought would stop when signed up for do not call.
Watched the movie and came away with the impression that white collar crime is incredibly lucrative, leads to excessive ‘fun and games’, and isn’t punished very hard.
After reading the story in Slate, my conclusion is that he wouldn’t change a thing in his past because the fruits of his crimes outweigh the punishment.
Let’s be realistic. How many of us would trade a hedonistic life style fueled by millions of dollars for a couple of years at Club Fed working on our backhand?
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