The Wolf of Wall Street

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This book is a work of memoir; it is a true story based on my best recollections of various events in my life. Where indicated, the names and identifying characteristics of certain people mentioned in the book have been changed in order to protect their privacy. In some instances, I rearranged and/or compressed events and time periods in service of the narrative, and I recreated dialogue to match my best recollection of those exchanges.

PROLOGUE

A BABE IN THE WOODS

May 1, 1987

You’re lower than pond scum,” said my new boss, leading me through the boardroom of LF Rothschild for the first time. “You got a problem with that, Jordan?”

“No,” I replied, “no problem.”

“Good,” snapped my boss, and he kept right on walking.

We were walking through a maze of brown mahogany desks and black telephone wire on the twenty-third floor of a glass-and-aluminum tower that rose up forty-one stories above Manhattan’s fabled Fifth Avenue. The boardroom was a vast space, perhaps fifty by seventy feet. It was an oppressive space, loaded with desks, telephones, computer monitors, and some very obnoxious yuppies, seventy of them in all. They had their suit jackets off, and at this hour of morning—9:20 a.m.—they were leaning back in their seats, reading their Wall Street Journals, and congratulating themselves on being young Masters of the Universe.

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