Jordan Belfort, the former stock broker whose story inspired the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street, is suing the filmmakers for $300m, the BBC reports.
Belfort was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film, which was nominated for Oscar and was a box office success.
He claims Red Granite Productions lied about being “legitimately funded” when he sold the rights to his story.
The company’s lawyer described Belfort’s lawsuit as “desperate and supremely ironic”.
Red Granite Productions co-founder Riza Aziz was arrested on suspicion of money laundering last year.
Belfort, 57, claims Aziz “concealed these criminal acts and funding sources from him” and that he was “blindsided” over the true source of the company’s funding.
The film, which is Martin Scorsese’s biggest film success to date, was based on Belfort’s book, which described his wild rise as a young New York stockbroker in the late 80s, and his subsequent fall, through a haze of drugs, women, corruption and fraud.
Belfort, who spent 22 months in prison for crimes depicted in the 2013 movie, now wants to make his rights deal void, claiming he never would have made it had he known where the money was coming from.
