Judge Orders The Wolf Of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, To Pay Restitutions To His Victims

You may have heard of Jordan Belfort, which is best known for the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, in which he was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. The man, which has been known in the crypto circles for his negative opinions of Bitcoin, has only paid about $12.5 million USD from the $110 million USD that the court has originally made him pay to all the victims he hurt with this penny stock pumping scheme.

Belfort is a self-proclaimed scammer. If you saw the movie, you know what his life was like, but if you did not, then you can read the story here. He pleaded guilty in 1999 for manipulating investors into buying worthless stocks.

At the time, the man was sentenced to 42 months in jail and he had to repay the people he scammed in $110 million USD. However, so far, he was not even paid a full $13 million USD, meaning that he paid just 10% of what he needed to and his debt with society is far from paid.

The government then tried to take his equity interest in Delos Living, a private company, to pay the investors he scammed, but he attacked back and cited the Consumer Credit Protection Act as an argument for the government not seizing his assets. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for everybody else in the world, his appeal failed.

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly has decided to deny his objection and let the government take all the equity to pay back the scammed investors. Donnelly has affirmed that the Congress “did not have situations like this in mind” when the law was originally devised and this is why the appeal was not granted.

According to Donnelly, nothing about Belfort’s arrangement with Delos Living was consistent with the goal of the law, which was adopted to “relieve countless honest debtors driven by economic desperation”. Basically, there is simply nothing desperate about Jordan Belfort except the fact that he fooled people and now he is desperate to not pay them back.

While Belfort can try to appeal to the court, he probably will not get his victory this time.

Belfort’s relationship with Bitcoin is not one of the best ones. During an episode of CNBC’s Bitcoin: Boom or Bust, he affirmed that Bitcoin was a scam and that the Bitcoin investors were stupid and brainwashed by a worthless asset.

CCN has published an article talking about the relationship between him and Bitcoin today. According to the original article, Belfort might be well better off today if he invested in Bitcoin instead of simply bashed it to the media.

The news site affirms that if he invested $1 million USD in Bitcoin in 2011, now he could have paid the investors all the money that he owes. Now, he lost Delos Living because he did not decide for this course of action.

CCN has also affirmed that he could have used Bitcoin to store his assets in a way that it would be harder for the government to “simply snatch and grab his money”.

The article ended by stating that Belfort, had he invested in Bitcoin at the beginning of 2017, could have paid his debts to society and would be free today and it mocks him affirming that if he simply used the asset that he called a scam, he could have saved himself, something that the scams that the perpetuated in the 90s would never do.

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