In the early 1980s, 19-year-old Jordan Belfort who would go on to become known as the Wolf of Wall Street, a title he bestowed on himself in a tell-all memoir had a fortuitous encounter on Jones Beach, on Long Island, with another teenager selling ice cream named Stephen Drescher.
The two became friends. Prosecutors would later note their shared hustling spirit, a drive for entrepreneurialism that curdled into a drive for grift. Within a few years, Mr. Belfort started building a pump-and-dump stock-scam empire. He took Mr. Drescher under his wing as he built a boiler room brokerage that would go on to defraud more than 1,000 investors, later memorialized in Martin Scorseses box office hit The Wolf of Wall Street.
Mr. Belforts enterprise …
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