Here's What Happened To Syed Arbab From Generation Hustle

Episode 7 of "Generation Hustle" on HBO Max follows the story of Syed Arbab, the University of Georgia's very own "Wolf of Wall Street" (down to the lavish cars and cocaine use). Arbab's life of crime began when he started his own hedge fund out of his fraternity house, quickly raising over $1 million in investments from fellow students, family, and alumni. But Arbab's high life soon went way, way downhill.

When the stock market crashed and Arbab's hedge fund suddenly lost all of his loved ones' money, he turned to desperate measures, including drug trafficking, gambling investors' money in Las Vegas, and lots and lots of lying. Arbab eventually found himself running a Ponzi scheme, which is when you use money from one investor to pay a second investor, and so on.

So what happened next? Well, if "The Wolf of Wall Street" is to be believed, it's not entirely unreasonable to wonder if Arbab wound up getting away with the whole thing. But here's what did happen.

This frat boy lost thousands

Many of Syed Arbab's investors (and eventual victims) were family and friends, including the one who finally turned him into the FCC, which Arbab saw as a betrayal.

Even after the FCC filed a complaint against Arbab for losing eight investors $269,000, Arbab seemed to believe that he could get away with the whole thing, even joking about it on his social media pages. Alas for Arbab, this was not the case.

He was eventually indicted for securities fraud and sentenced to five years in federal prison on September 25, 2020. He was also ordered to pay $509,032 to his victims in restitution. At the end of the episode, Arbab says that he's learned his lesson, and hopes whoever is viewing the episode focuses on the mistakes he made — not the lavish lifestyle.

"Hopefully I can still go along that path and try to make my father proud," he said in the episode. In any case, that path has definitely been interrupted as Arbab serves the remainder of his sentence.