Tales from Stratton Oakmont

I showed a lot of initiative, and I stayed late. I was now in Armani suits, Ferragamo shoes, Valentino ties. I would stay all night. I would adjust my hours to call potential customers at home. All you had to do was get past the wife. The guys were more relaxed to talk at home. They were willing to listen a little more.

Danny offered to buy a car if I opened up 30 accounts in a month. I ate dozens of Quaaludes, pounded my clients, and got the 30 accounts — but two wound up not paying. So Danny said, “I’ll lease you whatever sports car you want.”

I picked a red Porsche 911 — I still didn’t have a driver’s license.

All of us brokers who started in the 1990’s on Long Island or in NYC can relay similar stories to this one, although the majority of brokers did not work for The Wolf at Stratton Oakmont. Stratton, the firm Jordan Belfort founded on the North Shore of LI is history’s most notorious boiler room, the Ground Zero of cold-calling fraud, the place where it all began. It didn’t last long, but the legends you’ve heard are almost all true.

Josh Shapiro returned home to Long Island from the Marines at 22 and wanted to make some money. It was 1993, there was no such thing as internet brokerage and the markets were booming. The telemarketing brokers of LI were in their heyday, dialing for dollars with no competition, little regulation and nothing to stop them.

Today in the New York Post, Josh tells his tale of working for Jordan Belfort at Stratton…

Read the whole thing:

Welcome to my life working for the real ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ (NYP)

More on The Wolf of Wall Street here