Danny Porush

Daniel Mark Porush (born February 1957) is an American entrepreneur and former who is known for his supervision of a "pump and dump" stock fraud scheme in the 1990s. In 1999, as the president of Stratton Oakmont brokerage house, Porush was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering, for which he served 39 months in prison. The character of Donnie Azoff in the popular 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street was loosely based on Porush.

Danny Porush was raised in a Jewish family. He attended Boston University but did not graduate.

In the late 1980s, Porush helped Jordan Belfort found Stratton Oakmont, a Long Island, New York "over-the-counter" (OTC) brokerage house in which Belfort was chairman and Porush was president. Stratton Oakmont specialized in selling "" and underwriting initial public offerings for small companies, including for Steve Madden (a childhood friend of Porush), Master Glazier's Karate International Inc, Dualstar Technologies, Select Media Communications, United Leisure Corporation and Questron Technology.

Beginning in 1989, Stratton Oakmont became the subject of numerous disciplinary actions by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It was determined that Stratton Oakmont was involved in pump and dump that involved artificially inflating the price of through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operators of the scheme "dumped" their overvalued shares, the price fell and investors lost their money. In December 1996, the NASD permanently expelled Stratton Oakmont and barred Porush as well as fined him $250,000. The NASD rejected Porush's claim that he was only "a figurehead," citing him as the salesperson with the largest individual allocation. In their decision to bar Porush and his head trader, Steven P. Sanders, the NASD wrote that "[they] continue to deny responsibility and exhibit no remorse for [their] misconduct, and, but for the bar, would continue to pose an on-going risk to the investing public."

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