FBI agent has tales of 'Wolf of Wall Street'

The FBI agent who arrested the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” regaled the audience of an anti-money laundering conference in Cayman last week with his tales of tracking and bringing down Jordan Belfort.

“This guy Belfort is making millions of dollars a year and he has a tremendous amount of power because of his money and so he is very arrogant,” said special agent Gregory Coleman, recalling Belfont’s heady days of living the high life on Wall Street.

Mr. Coleman was speaking during last week’s Global Compliance Solutions AML/Compliance and Financial Crime Conference at the Westin resort.

Moviegoers may remember the 2013 film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, a New York boiler room kingpin who made millions by aggressively selling penny stocks in questionable companies to unwitting investors in the 1990s. Award-winning shoe designer Steve Madden went to prison for securities fraud and money laundering after investigators found out his company’s initial public offering had been launched through the Belfort’s firm, Stratton Oakmont.

One of the scenes in the film that highlights special agent Mr. Coleman, who is played by Kyle Chandler, is set on Belfort’s 175-foot mega-yacht, which once belonged to French fashion designer Coco Chanel.

“So what Belfort decides to do is bribe me, he wants to corrupt me to make the investigation go away because he knows I’m tracking him. Now what I like about Belfort is, he calls me special agent OCD – obsessive compulsive disorder,” Mr. Coleman told conference guests on Thursday.

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