The feds want to take a bite out of the real-life “Wolf of Wall Street.”
Jordan Belfort — who inspired Leo DiCaprio’s character in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster 2013 flick — faces a grilling by prosecutors after a federal judge said Wednesday that he needs to make good on $97 million in unpaid restitution for his infamous stock scam.
“I do want to figure out a way to make a bigger dent in what he owes,” Brooklyn federal Judge Ann Donnelly said.
“It’s not a particularly attractive picture, him taking all this money and claiming he needs it to support his family.”
Belfort’s defense lawyer agreed to schedule a deposition at which he’ll have to testify about his income since getting sprung from the slammer in 2006.
Belfort, who’s remade himself as a motivational speaker, didn’t attend the hearing, opting instead for a speaking engagement in Vilnius, Lithuania, according to his website.
Belfort, 55, served a four-year prison term for stealing more than $200 million from investors while running his Stratton Oakmont brokerage as a penny-stock “boiler room.”
Before he was busted, the dental school dropout lived a life of Wall Street excess that included fancy homes and luxury sports cars — along with hookers, cocaine and gambling.
Belfort was ordered to pay back $110 million of his ill-gotten gains, in part by coughing up half of his annual gross income.
But in recent court papers, prosecutors alleged that he kept every nickel of at least $9 million he made for speeches from 2013-’15.
The feds suspect he’s also earning money from sales of his books — memoirs “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street” and last year’s advice book, “Way of the Wolf” — and from a building-design business.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Donnelly said, “It seems like he has some spare change lying around.”
“He’s going to have to come here so we can get a grip on what’s going on,” the judge added.
Defense lawyer Sharon Cohen Levin challenged the feds’ assertions and said that Belfort — who has two kids with his second ex-wife — “actually is quite cash-strapped, right now.”
Last year, Belfort told The Post he was living with girlfriend Anne Koppe in a swank home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., driving a Mercedes and taking tennis lessons from Jeff Tarango, a former Top 10 doubles player.
But he said he’d been having difficulty paying back his victims.
“For the last two years I have been writing and doing less speaking, so [earnings] have been lousy,” Belfort claimed.