US scammer sues Riza for RM1.2bil

LOS ANGELES: Jordan Belfort, the pump-and-dump scammer immortalised in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, said in a lawsuit that he was victimised by a far grander scam perpetrated by the film’s producers.

Belfort has filed a US$300mil (RM1.2bil) fraud lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against Red Granite Pictures and its chief executive officer Riza Aziz (pic), saying he had no idea they financed the film with millions of dollars stolen from the Malaysian government.

Riza is currently facing corruption charges in Malaysia for allegedly embezzling US$248mil (RM1bil) from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

His stepfather, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, was ousted as prime minister in the wake of the alleged theft of some US$4.5bil (RM18.3bil) from the fund.

Belfort – who served 22 months in prison after bilking investors out of US$200mil (RM819mil) in the early 1990s – alleged that the 1MDB scandal had tainted the rights to his story.

Belfort had sold Red Granite the rights to his memoir and the sequel, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street.

But in the wake of the 1MDB scandal, the suit contends that the company is no longer able to fully capitalise on those rights.

According to the suit filed on Thursday, Belfort believed Riza when he said Red Granite’s money came from legitimate sources such as high-net worth individuals and Goldman Sachs.

Ongoing case: Belfort had sold Red Granite the rights to his book.

“Belfort was completely blindsided to learn, after the fact, of the source of funding for Red Granite and the film based on his book/ story, as the defendants concealed these criminal acts and funding sources from him, ” the suit stated.

“Had he known, he certainly never would have sold the rights.”

In a 2017 interview with finews.com, however, Belfort said he knew upon meeting the Red Granite team that they were “criminals”.

A few months after he sold the rights, he said the company threw a multi-million-dollar launch party at Cannes.

“I said to Anne (his fiancee), ‘This is a scam, anybody who does this has stolen money.’... I knew it, it was so obvious.”

The US Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture suit in 2016 to recoup some of the proceeds of The Wolf of Wall Street, which grossed US$392mil (RM1.6bil) worldwide.

In March 2018, Red Granite agreed to pay US$60mil (RM244mil) to settle the civil forfeiture action.

Red Granite’s attorney Matthew Schwartz said on Thursday that Belfort’s suit had no merit.

“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, ” he said.

In 2017, the US government said Belfort had paid back only US$12.8mil (RM52mil) of the US$110mil (RM447.6mil) he was ordered to return to investors.

The government has sought to garnish additional funds from Belfort in the years since the film was released. — Reuters