[4] Wilpon attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, where he was responsible for getting his friend, Sandy Koufax, to join the baseball team.

[3][6] After college, he sold calculators for a time while his wife worked as a secretary for Branch Rickey, the former president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, whom he knew from the neighborhood.

In 1980, Wilpon bought a one-percent stake in the Mets when Charles Shipman Payson sold the team, with publishing company Doubleday & Co. holding the remaining interest.

In September 2020, a deal was reached for billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen to purchase 95% of the Mets from Wilpon, his son C.O.O.

Wilpon was one of the investors who invested a significant amount of money with Bernard Madoff which was lost when the Ponzi scheme collapsed in December 2008.

[16] The lawsuit also contends that Madoff funds were used to cover team expenses such as payroll and its minor league club in Brooklyn,[17] as well as financing the creation of the cable network SportsNet New York and Citi Field.

[21] On May 26, 2011, it was reported that Wilpon has agreed to sell a minority share of the Mets to David Einhorn, president of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital,[22] but ended negotiations on September 1.

[25] The Judy and Fred Wilpon Family Foundation donated $5 million to the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts to establish the Irene and Morris B. Kessler Presidential Scholarship Fund named in honor of his wife's parents, Romanian immigrant and dentist, Morris Kessler, and Irene Nass.

[29] His son Bruce Wilpon is also a partner at Sterling Equities[30] and was married to Yuki Oshima-Wilpon, daughter of Japanese billionaire Kenshin Ōshima.