Jordan Belfort Case

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

White-collar crimes are just as prevalent today as ordinary street crimes. Studies show that criminal acts committed by white-collar criminals continue to increase due to unforeseen opportunities presented in the corporate world, but these crimes are often overlooked or minimally publicized in reference to criminal acts on the street. Many street crimes are viewed as unnecessary, horrendous crimes because they are committed by lower class citizens, whereas white collar crimes are illegal acts committed by seemingly respectable people whose occupational roles are considered successful and often admired by many (Piquero, 2014). These views often allow white collar crimes to “slip through the cracks” and carry lesser charges or punishment.

Bernie Madoff began his career as an investment broker in 1960, where he legally bought and sold over-the-counter stocks not listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). From the 1960’s through the 1990’s, Madoff’s success and business grew substantially, mainly from a closed circle of known investors and friends through word of mouth. In the 1990’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities traded up to 10 percent of the NASDAQ on any given day. With the success of the securities business, Madoff started an illegal money-management business, promising his investors consistent returns from 10-12 percent, unheard of returns at the time, which should have tipped off most investors that something was amiss.

The question before our society is not whether corporate crime is a victimless crime, rather the question is what should be done about it? Corporate crime doesn’t just do harm to the investors that can be unknowingly damaged by these crimes, it has a much more insidious nature to it as it has done harm on global scales. Corporate crime is almost a misnomer because many of these criminal wrongdoings are for the most part legal, when not taken to their ultimate conclusion. Society within the United States has been taught that the man in the brief case, yelling at other men in dark coats on the flow of the stock exchange are the smartest guys in the room. This paper will attack that idea on many levels, the first salvo will be

Similarly, Jordan Belfort committed illegal acts within his business, including selling penny stocks disguised as blue chip stocks to wealthy individuals and generating

In this political cartoon, you can see that there are 8 people on land, just on the edge of land, calling out for a ship that has just sailed called “Corporate Greed”. Above their heads are some text bubble saying, “Don’t go!” “Come back!” and, “Our jobs!” There are even two people chasing the ship by swimming after it.

In 1998 Jordan Belfort was indicted with 27 counts of International Securities Fraud and Money laundering. After cooperating with the FBI, in 2003 Belfort was sentenced to four years in prison and fined and ordered to back approximately $110 million that he had defrauded from investors. He served 22 months in federal prison and was ordered to pay investors 50% of his income until $110.4 million was collected (Kolhatkar, 2013). According to federal prosecutors, Belfort has not kept up his part to fulfill the terms of his agreement. After his release in April 2006 Belfort’s income has consisted of $1,767,203

As said in every economics class, the reason every business goes into business is to make money. The same can be said in criminal cases involving businesses. In the majority of cases, executives and people highly ranked in the company tend to bend the numbers in the financial/accounting areas of the business or corporation. They do not do this for fun, but rather to make money. Something needs to be done before corporations really get out of hand.

In one particular evening of self-indulgence, Belfort describes his misgivings as such “I felt like I was being driven to do things, not because I really wanted to do them but because they were expected of me” (130). Jordan Belfort becomes the embodiment of his ruthless business, while successful it causes great pain and damage to himself and those around him. This misconduct becomes both accepted and expected because this was the key to his success. Belfort ’s crude demeanor and personality are continually rewarded and tolerated due to his exuberant fortunes and the constant encouragement from his employees:“And everyone around me...is scared to confront me about it. In one way or another, they all rely on me for their living, so they enable me.

Christopher Buckley novel shows us the truth behind corporations the corruption and self-deceiving going on to expose who they really are some key words are corporations corruption self-deceiving and self-interest. My research question would be how to expose corruption and morality of corrupt corporations. would be end of corporations in order to make profit and cells. I have chosen to do this topic to expose his cooperation because we need to do a change I would like to know what does the government think about this and what are they doing to change it. I want my readers to think about the corporation to today and what he can do to make the

Just like people, corporations have the capability of committing criminal acts. The Enron scandal in 2001; the Bernard Madoff ponzi-scheme of 2008-2009; both of these examples show that despite internal and external controls, regulations, and oversight, corporations still are a multi-faceted entity that have the propensity to partake in crime. That being true, that criminal entity must be punished and held responsible for their actions. One tool in the prosecutorial tool belt is the use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements. According to Lanny Breuer, the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, “over the last decade, deferred prosecution agreements have become a mainstay of white collar criminal law

Kerviel’s case and his actions are not unusual in the realm of white collar crimes. However, to the extent of $7 billion monetary loss created by Kerviel is new, and has left many question unanswered. For instance, how was he able to pull off such a large amount of bad trades without the banks knowledge? This can be explained through differential association also this can be explained by the structure of our corporation where profits out weight ethics. Although strain theories and the notion of white-collar crime have historically been diametrically opposed at a fundamental level, Agnew's general strain theory (1992) provided the materials for potentially bridging the gap between the two ideas. Recognizing that extant research had not yet taken

To an audience of students at the University California, Berkley, Ivan Boesky at once stated, “Greed is all right, by the way. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself (Homans, 2012, p.1; Kay, 2003, p.1).” Greed is what lead Boesky to Insider Trading and ultimately huge illegal profits and the scam he created was hidden in plain sight. Boesky wanted everyone to believe that he was doing the world a service, but he was actually stealing (Homans, 2012). Ivan Boesky was considered to be a leading man on Wall Street during what James Stewart called the “Greed Decade” of the 1980’s, and Boesky’s specialty was insider trading (Stewart, 1991, p. 15). Ivan Boesky and the insider trading cases of the 1980s are very significant white-collar crimes as companies and communities were directly impacted; they were torn apart due to the leverage buyout era Boesky orchestrated with the help of his corporate raiders. (Meserve, 2012) In addition, the cases of the 1980s would be the first time the SEC got tough on insider trading, and Ivan Boesky was the window into the securities frauds of the era (Stewart, 1991).

Recently, the public take notice of corporate lawbreaking because of scandals on Wall Street in past years (Jaboub, 1995) and headline of prosecution to global organizations on the media, for instance, Exxon, Nippon, IBM and Samsung (Corporate Crime Reporter). These corporate criminal activities not only raised remarkable economic losses for stockholders (William et al., 2000) but also eliminated benefits of the public (Jaboub, 1995). Therefore, the researches of corporate crime are argued for many decades in different fields, such as criminology and sociology (McKendall and Wagner, 1997). What this essay attempts to illustrate is to briefly summarize the article stated by William et al. (2000) and examine the main argument within the

It was a major upswing phenomenon that increased disproportionately the wealth of the minority; the rich in this case, that as investors they made sure that their lawyers paved the road and that it was also lubricated by the corrupted politicians. In the other side, the tax-payer saw an upsurge of the corporate power in the international marketing area, at the same time witnessed a widespread of the so-called white-collar-crimes that resulted in a colorful array of lawbreaking instances that reverberated as fraud, money laundering, insider-trading, cyber-crime, forgery, a list too painful and too long to recall.