A former partner at Stratton Oakmont, the stock-trading firm that inspired The Wolf of Wall Street, is talking publicly as a new documentary about the company premieres on Paramount+.
Howie Gelfand told CBS Mornings that his time at the firm was marked by excess and regret. “My lifestyle was insane,” he said, adding that he rose quickly after joining the company at 19.
According to Gelfand, he went from earning $35,000 a year to making more than $100,000 a month within a year, and later brought in more than $1.5 million annually. He said he initially viewed the illegal activity at the firm as normal for Wall Street.
Gelfand said the pace and pressure of that life eventually caught up with him. The three-part docuseries, The Real Wolf of Wall Street, features new information from more than 15,000 internal FBI and government documents obtained by investigative reporter and executive producer Jason Leopold through the Freedom of Information Act.
The series is streaming now on Paramount+, which is owned by Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.
