The Best Business Stories of the Year: 2002 Edition (Vintage Original) by Andrew Leckey

Author:Andrew Leckey [Leckey, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-01-17T14:00:00+00:00

PITS FULL OF LOBSTER TAILS

All those investor dollars supported lifestyles for Stratton's two top honchos that at times seemed to resemble scenes from the 1987 movie Wall Street.

Belfort, who made at least $50 million from Stratton during its seven-year-life, held parties for employees at his home in the Hamptons that one former Stratton worker said were “kind of like a teaser—all this could be yours if you work hard.” People who attended said Belfort served gourmet food, including caviar and pits full of lobster tails, dispensed unlimited top-shelf liquor, and offered swimming in his pool and at a nearby beach.

Belfort owned a Westhampton home that he bought for about $ I million and later sold, and a Southampton property for which he paid $5.5 million. His main residence was a gated mansion on several acres in Old Brookville. When he turned over the Old Brookville and Southampton properties to the government in 1998, Belfort said they were worth a combined $11 million.

His fleet of cars included a Mercedes-Benz, a Porsche, and a Ferrari. He was driven to work in a limousine, complete with a bar and television set. He wore a Bulgari watch, and his wife, Nadine, a former model, had accumulated so much jewelry that she was able to turn over more than $800,000 worth of it to help make his 1998 bail.

Then there was something even the Wall Street character Gordon Gekko didn't have—a 166-foot-long motor yacht originally built for the French designer Coco Chanel and remodeled by a Texas millionaire before Belfort bought it in 1993. It had a helicopter, seaplane, kayaks, personal watercraft, and a trapshooting gun used for shooting at clay pigeons. After it sank in the Mediterranean in 1996, Lloyd's of London, the yacht's insurer, paid Belfort between $6 million and $7 million.

Porush, who said he made about $30 million from Stratton frauds, led a slightly less ostentatious, but still affluent, life. He owned a home in Oyster Bay Cove, a house on Dune Road in Westhampton Beach, and a condominium in Palm Beach, Florida. Like Belfort, he had a taste for expensive cars, driving at least two Mercedes-Benzes, two BMWs, a Porsche, and a Bentley.

For all the possessions, loose money was plentiful. Belfort, who kept money in sock drawers as well as a safe, regularly ordered $100 bottles of wine and once bought Gaito, the accountant, a $5,000 bottle. One ex-employee said that as a prank, Belfort offered colleagues $10,000 if they would shave their heads. And Porush told federal investigators that while the yacht was sinking, Belfort, who was on board with his wife, called and told him there was between $5 million and $10 million buried in the yard of his Old Brookville home that Porush could use to take care of Bel-fort's children. Belfort denied burying any money.

The two men took lavish trips. One, on a chartered jet paid for by Stratton, included a stopover in Scotland and golf at two world-famous courses, Turnberry and Troon, on summer days when it was light until midnight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.