Son of Maltese migrants who hunted down ‘Wolf of Wall Street’

The son of two Maltese immigrants whose zeal for justice brought down the man dubbed the 'Wolf of Wall Street', features nowhere in the new Martin Scorcese movie, starring Leonardo di Caprio in the role of the ruthless Jordan Belfort.

But it was Joseph P. Borg, a New Yorker born to Maltese immigrants Philip J. Borg and Dorothy Chircop, who as Alabama Securities Commission chief targeted Belfort's firm Stratton Oakmont in 1995.

Borg had then led a multistate task force that shut down the noted New York boiler room that perpetrated one of the oldest scams in stock market history: buying up tonnes of shares in small, start-up companies whose shares traded thinly and at just a few cents each, then hard-sell these shares to retail clients and innocent investors to raise the share value; and finally sell the stock before the new buyers catch on to the fraud.

Belfort's 'pump and dump' scheme is illustrated in Scorcese's new movie, enduringly portraying the way he devised his 'Kodak pitch' to reel in investors to buy the cheap stock.

But Borg thinks that Belfort, whose memoirs were recently published and provided the script for Scorcese's movie, says he never heard Belfort being reference by the nickname 'Wolf'.

"He thinks Belfort invented the 'Wolf' nickname himself. 'I have to give him credit,' Borg says. 'He's not stupid'," Borg told CNN.

"If we're going to glorify the Wolf of Wall Street maybe cockroaches of Wall Street would be better," Borg told Redding.com. "I think by glorifying this we're sending the wrong message to especially our younger business folks that, hey so he spent some time in jail, maybe it's worth it if I can get a book deal or movie deal."

In a Forbes profile in 2002, the former corporate and personal injury lawyer from Queens, New York, was described as having averaged 28 criminal convictions a year since 1998, one of the highest rates in the nation for a securities enforcer. He was dubbed 'Wall Street's Worst Nightmare', with Smart Money magazine citing his 98% conviction rate to include him in 'The Power 30' of financial players.

He was then leading a coordinated states' investigation of wrongdoing and conflicts of interest on Wall Street as president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, an NGO representing regulators from all the states, plus Canada, Mexico and other United States territories.

"If I find lying, cheating, stealing, that calls for jail time," Borg famously had said.

While state regulators in the United States often ran after 'boiler rooms' - typically cheap set-ups using hard-sell tactics on low-income people, usually selling penny stocks rather than blue-chip shares - Borg targeted Wall Street and even companies like Lloyd's of London and Prudential.

In 1994 Borg was named the Securities Commissioner of Alabama. He currently oversees approximately fifty employees. In Alabama, the office of Securities Commissioner is a non-partisan post, and consequently Borg has served under five Governors of Alabama.

He primarily prosecutes Ponzi schemes, unregistered brokers, and penny stock dealers, prosecuting any cases in which Alabama residents are directly affected, regardless of where the offending company is located. During his tenure, he has received a number of death threats, which have led to the installation of armed guards outside his office.

In 1999, he prosecuted a Christian faith healer named Don Hall who used a Ponzi scheme called "faith promises", and using unwitting believers to give a certain amount to be repaid, plus profit. Greater Ministries collected as much as $500 million before Borg busted them under armed federal escort. Church leaders were sentenced to jail terms of up to 27 years.