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Topics: US News, Crime, Film and TV
Joe Harker
Topics: US News, Crime, Film and TV
The actual Wolf of Wall Street once tried to sue the producers of the movie for $300 million after one of the companies that financed the film faced charges of embezzlement.
Most people getting a movie about their own life directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio would be pretty pleased, but Jordan Belfort once tried to sue the people who made The Wolf of Wall Street.
You're probably quite familiar with the 2013 movie based off Belfort's book of the same name, and if you haven't seen it all the way through you've almost certainly watched at least portions of it via the internet.
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When it was released, The Wolf of Wall Street was a big hit both critically and commercially, with some buzz about it being the movie that would finally bag DiCaprio his Oscar - though it wasn't to be.
All seemed well until a few years after the movie's release when Belfort decided to launch a $300 million lawsuit against the producers of the movie.
Per The Independent, the lawsuit he filed in early 2020 claimed that Belfort was 'completely blindsided to learn, after the fact, of the source of funding' for the film.
For context, Belfort sold the movie rights for his book and its sequel Catching the Wolf of Wall Street to production company Red Granite, which faced allegations that it had funded the movie using stolen money from something called the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal (1MDB).
That was a conspiracy surrounding the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund where money from the country was embezzled around the world.
The US Department of Justice found during their investigations that about $4.5 billion had been lost from the fund through corruption.
In 2018, Red Granite paid $60 million to the US government to settle a civil lawsuit about the matter, money which did not come with an admission of wrongdoing or acceptance of liability on the company's part.
Belfort's 2020 lawsuit claimed that he'd never have sold the rights to his books to Red Granite if he'd known more about them and complained that they'd 'concealed these criminal acts and funding sources from him'.
However, according to ScreenRant, in a 2017 interview Belfort had called the company 'criminals' because of a big party thrown following the rights to his books being acquired where he said 'anyone who does this has stolen money'.
Attorneys representing Red Granite responded by saying: "Jordan Belfort’s lawsuit is nothing more than a desperate and supremely ironic attempt to get out from under an agreement that for the first time in his life made him rich and famous through lawful and legitimate means."
Belfort filed his lawsuit in January 2020, while in April of that same year lawyers representing Red Granite filed papers with the court denying the allegations, calling them 'morally bankrupt'.