Jordan Belfort owed 1,513 victims $110.4M and the clock ran out in April 2026 with $96.65M still unpaid.
The tape is from December 1994. Lake Success, Long Island. A 32-year-old grabs a hand mic in front of a room of brokers who are standing on their chairs, and he screams at them about a telephone.
He is not hiding. He is being filmed. On purpose.
That's the part everyone misses.
By that Christmas, Stratton Oakmont had been under NASD scrutiny for 5 years. 1,378 employees. 35 offerings. The largest over-the-counter firm in the country, built on one move: buy the stock cheap, scream it up the phone, then refuse to place a client's sell order.
He threw a party and taped it.
In April 1996 regulators barred the firm from retail transactions. In December they expelled it. In 1999 he was indicted for manipulating at least 34 companies across 7 years.
Then he wore a wire on the men in that room.
4 years. He served 22 months.
The court ordered $110.4M back to 1,513 clients. By 2018 they had been credited $12.8M, and roughly $11M of that came from government seizures, not from him. His own payments over 11 years: about $1.8M.
He sold his life rights for $1.2M. $21,000 of it reached the victims. The film about him grossed more than $390M.
After 2018 the obligation was $10,000 a month. 95 months of that is $950,000.
On April 28, 2026, exactly 20 years after his release, the federal collection window closed and he posted that he had completed his restitution.
He didn't pay it off. He outlasted it.