this ability to sell? the first time, it really started in the meat business. a i went to dental school, i was there for a day and i dropped out, i realized the golden age of dentistry was over. i left, my mom wanted me to be a doctor. that s how that happened. day one of dental school, you bailed? yeah, i bailed. you couldn t get rich doing it? yeah, i always wanted to be rich. i did. i always i was a hardworking kid, from a paper route at the age of 8. and i hit it big for the first time when i was 16 selling ices on the beach. i made a lot of money, put myself through college that way, my parents were always really really supportive of me. i went to dental school and dropped out, i answered an ad for selling meat and seafood door to door. the first day i broke the company record. i opened up my own business within a month after that, i
the movie version. the securities fraud and money laundering he spent time behind bars. tweets pouring in, good, bad, ugly. someone here, jake craussen tweeted me with your views, it looks like he really misses his old life. do you? no. listen, again, there s some aspects of the camaraderie in the early years when it first started year one, it was pure, it was beautiful. we invented a system for training sales men, we were trying to make our clients money, that was great, i loved that. it spiraled out of control everything that happened. i don t miss that, especially the drugs, i ve been sober now for 17 years, i almost died because of the addiction. i think people mistake that for me being happy about it, i don t
for that is an amazing thing, i m giving 100% of all the profits from the movie, and both books, the books are really you are compelled to give, unless i m wrong, 50% of all your gross earnings straight to no. that s not the case. was that ever the case? yes, when i was on probation. you re not compelled to legally. not legally. are you continuing to do that? i m giving 100% of the books and the movie. you can t say how many copies of a book will sell in 15, 20 years i think it will be many millions of dollars. i m really happy about that. when i asked you earlier about shame. you said you didn t feel shame. there are real people, many, many people, tens of thousands who lost a lot of money, if not everything to your company and to you. that s not true, though. why is that not true? because we were calling rich people. we were not calling.
that s another journey in itself. are all those people on wall street? one little step at a time. are you surprised more people on wall street haven t gone to prison since the financial crash? yeah, i m a little bit surprised, but i understand why it happened. i think it s very difficult for the u.s. attorney s office to make these cases, and it s very, a lot of the props were arcane. and a lot of it is the relationship between wall street and the government. they changed laws that allowed loopholes to exist for the people on wall street to jump through and make money. you were ordered to pay $110.4 million to a victim compensation fund. as of now you ve paid back how much? about 12. 12 million. do you have any expectation or hope you ll ever pay them all back? listen, i think this movie,
then, the attitude was like, people thought it was the next great depression, no one knew the economy would bounce back, people thought it was going to be 1933 all over again. on the subway ride home, the gloom and doom, i was absolutely devastated. when i was working and i was broke, and that was i had no money, i was working for $100 a week, and it was costing me more than that to commute into the city back then. i knew i could do the job. i would be a great salesman. i said, my future s bright even though i m broke. you thought you had the skills in some other way to make money doing what these guys had been doing to make money? correct. every hope and dream i had was dashed. i thought it was over, i went home that night. for about one day i was paralyzed, i was so upset about it. we picked up the help wanted section, i stumbled on an ad for a brokerage firm in long island. you end up going there, this is the pump and dump operation it was to become. and a lot of victims, so