Insider at "The Wolf of Wall Street" firm opens up: "My lifestyle was insane"
The Paramount+ documentary "The Real Wolf of Wall Street" gives an inside look at Jordan Belfort's scandal-ridden firm, Stratton Oakmont.
A former partner at the scandal-ridden stock-trading firm that inspired the blockbuster movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" is speaking out as a new documentary about the firm premieres on Paramount+ .
"My lifestyle was insane," Howie Gelfand, who rose to become a partner at Stratton Oakmont, said in an interview on "CBS Mornings."
The three-part docuseries " The Real Wolf of Wall Street " gives an inside look at the firm run by Jordan Belfort , who was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the feature film.
Gelfand joined Stratton Oakmont when he was 19. He told "CBS Mornings" that within a year of starting he was making over $100,000 a month — far more than the $35,000 a year that he had been earning.
Eventually, he was making over $1.5 million a year. When he found out that what the firm was doing was illegal, he thought it was just business as usual for Wall Street.
But Gelfand learned that his fast-paced lifestyle came with a cost.