Jordan Belfort Files Lawsuit Against “Wolf of Wall Street” Producers

The real-life man and legendary scammer behind Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street has filed a lawsuit against the film’s production company. Jordan Belfort is seeking $300 million in a fraud lawsuit against Red Granite Pictures and its CEO, Riza Aziz, Variety reported.

In the suit, Belfort claims he was not aware the film had been financed illegally with millions of dollars stolen from the Malaysian government. Red Granite CEO Aziz is currently facing corruption charges in Malaysia linked to allegations that he embezzled $248 million from state-run development fund 1MDB.

According to Belfort, the scandal has sullied the rights to his own story of scamming, and contends that Red Bank is no longer able to fully capitalize on the rights Belfort sold to his memoir and its sequel for the 2012 film.

“Belfort was completely blindsided to learn, after the fact, of the source of funding for Red Granite and the film based on his book/story, as Defendants concealed these criminal acts and funding sources from him,” the suit states. “Had he known he certainly never would have sold the rights.”

Back in 2017, however, Belfort suggested he was aware that all was not right at Red Granite, telling Finews.com that he knew the Red Granite execs were “fucking criminals” upon meeting.

“I met these guys, and said to Anne (his fiancee)‚ ‘These guys are f—ing criminals,’” Belfort said in the interview, adding that he knew the million dollar launch party the company threw a few months after buying the rights to Belfort’s story was an obvious red flag. “I said to Anne, ‘This is a f—ing scam, anybody who does this has stolen money.’… I knew it, it was so obvious.”

In a statement Thursday, Red Granite’s attorney, Matthew Schwartz, dismissed Belfort’s lawsuit as “nothing more than a desperate and supremely ironic attempt to get out from under an agreement that for the first time in his life made him rich and famous through lawful and legitimate means.”

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