Entertainment
Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures
They were also the family members of the firms' employees, who sucked them into their world.
For Christina McDowell, the daughter of a former colleague of Belfort's who was also convicted of fraud, the "Wolf of Wall Street's" leading players, director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, are guilty of leaving out both.
Writing in LAWeekly, she says her dad helped set up IPO's for shell companies that were then billed as the next-big-thing to investors. Even though the companies went nowhere, Belfort's firm made bank on the commissions.
Eventually they were caught, and her dad was convicted - at which point, McDowell says, she learned how she'd really been raised.
"I drove a white Range Rover in high school, snorted half of Colombia, and got any guy I ever wanted because my father would take them flying in his King Air. And then I unraveled the truth. The truth about my father and his behavior: that behind all of it was really just insidious soul-sucking shame masked by addiction, which we love to call ambition, which is really just greed. Greed and the desire for fame (exactly what you've successfully given self-appointed motivational speaker/financial guru Jordan Belfort, whose business opportunities will surely multiply thanks to this film)."
For celebrating this behavior, she says, Scorsese and DiCaprio are guilty by association.
"You have successfully aligned yourself with an accomplished criminal, a guy who still hasn't made full restitution to his victims, exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior."