How the "Wolf of Wall Street" Is Still Screwing His Real-Life Victims

[steve2470]

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/jordan_belfort_victims.php

Robert Shearin of Manhattan Beach is planning to see Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street when it comes out next week.
But it's not because of the felonies-are-fun billboards or the total-testosterone trailers inviting moviegoers to join Leonardo DiCaprio on a rollicking ride of wild sex, pharmaceutical-pure drugs and stock-we-stole.

No, Shearin, 66, is going to see The Wolf of Wall Street because he lived through it - as vulnerable prey of the real-life Wolf, Jordan Belfort. Belfort still owes Shearin and more than 1,000 other victims millions of dollars -- even as he's making money as a motivational speaker and living high on the hog in pricey Hermosa Beach.

Belfort was founder and president of the New York investment banking firm Stratton Oakmont. From 1988-96, Stratton Oakmont targeted investors like Shearin in a classic "pump-and-dump" scheme: Its brokers would buy up large blocks of penny stocks, convince people like Shearin to invest in them to drive the price up, and then ignore their sell orders - even while dumping their own blocks of stock for huge profits, leaving their investors with worthless stock when the price inevitably plummeted back to where it started.