Insider at ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ firm opens up: ‘My lifestyle was insane’

July 14, 2026 | 2:01 PM

▶ Watch Video: Ex-firm partner says “people would be blown away” by real story of “The Wolf of Wall Street”

A former partner at the scandal-ridden stock-trading firm that inspired the blockbuster movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” is speaking out as a new documentary about the firm premieres on Paramount+.

“My lifestyle was insane,” Howie Gelfand, who rose to become a partner at Stratton Oakmont, said in an interview on “CBS Mornings.”

The three-part docuseries “The Real Wolf of Wall Street” gives an inside look at the firm run by Jordan Belfort, who was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the feature film.

Gelfand joined Stratton Oakmont when he was 19. He told “CBS Mornings” that within a year of starting he was making over $100,000 a month — far more than the $35,000 a year that he had been earning.

Eventually, he was making over $1.5 million a year. When he found out that what the firm was doing was illegal, he thought it was just business as usual for Wall Street.

But Gelfand learned that his fast-paced lifestyle came with a cost.

“I was the most miserable millionaire — 325 pounds, drugs, booze,” Gelfand said. “I couldn’t figure enough ways to subconsciously kill myself because what I was doing was horrible, so I had to anesthetize myself every day to do what I was doing.”

The docuseries includes new revelations from over 15,000 internal FBI and government documents obtained by investigative reporter and executive producer Jason Leopold using the Freedom of Information Act.

“The Real Wolf of Wall Street” is streaming now on Paramount+, a division of Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

What we know about Hayden Panettiere’s sudden death and who was with her

By CNN
August 19, 2026 | 5:02 AM

(CNN) — By all accounts, Hayden Panettiere’s new life was just getting started.The actress who shot to fame playing an indestructible cheerleader in the NBC show “Heroes” was far more vulnerable in real life. Mental health challenges, postpartum depression and addiction plagued her young adult years and temporarily halted the career that began when she was less than a year old.But this year, Panettiere addressed her struggles in a memoir and spoke publicly about losing her brother. And her career was making a comeback, with her latest film released in January.So when the 36-year-old was pronounced dead in a South Carolina apartment where police reported she was with a man identified as her boyfriend and his brother on Sunday, shock and grief stretched around the world.“I just feel that she’s with her brother and they’re at peace,” Lesley Vogel, Panettiere’s mom, told NBC News through tears on Tuesday.Panettiere said there was no relationship between her and her mother earlier this year on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast.Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Panettiere’s death:She suffered cardiac arrest at a home she was temporarily staying inMedics responded to a 911 call about a “reported cardiac arrest” around 1:51 p.m. Sunday at a residence in Greenville, the county coroner’s office said.The report came from the Judson Mill Lofts on Easley Bridge Road, Greenville police said. The coroner’s office said Panettiere, a California resident, “had been temporarily staying” at the apartment complex, but authorities did not say who lived at the residence.First responders arrived and found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, the coroner’s office said. Dispatch audio obtained from Broadcastify.com references a possible overdose and CPR in progress, though authorities have not addressed whether an overdose actually took place.Medics tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Panettiere, who was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:32 p.m., the coroner’s office said.Panettiere’s reported boyfriend and his brother called 911, police sayA Greenville police officer arrived at the scene and interviewed brothers Brian and Zach Hickerson, who said they called 911, a police report states.“I spoke with Zach Hickerson first, he advised this was his brother’s girlfriend,” the officer wrote in the report.Brian Hickerson showed the officer a bag of Panettiere’s medications, the report said. But many details of the police report are redacted, including a list of Panettiere’s medications.CNN has reached out to Brian and Zach Hickerson for comment.No obvious signs of trauma were foundAn autopsy performed Monday revealed no signs of trauma that would have contributed to her death, the coroner’s office said.The official cause and manner of death have not been determined, pending the results of additional testing. Toxicology tests, which are standard in many death investigations, can take weeks to complete.Panettiere detailed domestic abuse in memoir months before deathIn a candid memoir published less than three months before her death, Panettiere detailed the evolution of a once-exciting, new relationship that quickly escalated into years of domestic violence by a man she referred to only as “Brian.” The actress wrote about heated, many times drunken, arguments ending with him slapping and hitting her between screams: “One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks.”“You never forget the first time someone slaps you,” she wrote. “Nor do you forget the last.”According to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office, in 2019, a Brian Hickerson was convicted of two felony charges of “Injuring a Spouse, Cohabitant, Fiance’s, Boyfriend, Girlfriend or Child’s Parent,” and sentenced to four years of formal probation.Panettiere also wrote about at least three different instances where “Brian” was arrested after he’d hit her during a fight, including on Valentine’s Day in 2020 while the couple was on vacation in Wyoming.In May 2026, Brian Hickerson did an interview with TMZ, saying he had read Panettiere’s then-new book, acknowledging that he “had a lot to drink and I got physical with (Panettiere) and I got arrested,” on February 14, 2020. He called the parts of the book detailing domestic violence “my chapter. Everybody should read it.”CNN’s Lisa Respers France and Sara Smart contributed to this report.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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