Sweden’s Young Men Have Found Their Wolf of Wall Street

Originally published in Bloomberg Weekend Edition on October 2, 2026 as “Sweden’s Young Men Have Found Their Wolf of Wall Street”

Convicted fraudster Alexander Ernstberger, Sweden’s answer to Jordan Belfort, appeals to a generation increasingly fixated on wealth and financial freedom.

In his sharp button-up shirt and tight blue jeans, with slicked-back saltand-pepper hair, Alexander Ernstberger looks every bit the quintessential modern-day banker. But he’s no longer a man in finance, as the famous TikTok earworm might have it. He’s effectively been banned.

Last year, the entrepreneur and former fund manager became a free man after serving two-thirds of a six-year sentence in connection to one of the biggest financial scandals in Sweden’s recent history.

Since then, he’s embarked on a new career: hustle-bro influencer. On a Thursday evening in late August, hundreds of neatly dressed young men, some carrying briefcases or leather document holders, many still in high school, file into a room in downtown Stockholm to watch Ernstberger — their financial idol — launch his latest endeavor. The air is thick with cologne and filled with loud EDM music.

Ernstberger is pitching Gritch — Grit + Rich — a gig-worker-type app where aspiring young salespeople can sign up to sell electricity contracts or phone plans on commission while receiving training from him and his colleagues. Earnings will be paid out on Fridays in time for weekend partying, a colleague says — a pledge met with huge applause. Some halfbroken voices crack as the crowd cheers.

In a country where job security and cradle-to-grave healthcare have long been guaranteed, Ernstberger’s emergence as a social media star speaks to how the financial landscape is shifting for young Swedes.

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Illustration by Matthew Kam.