Oliver Curtis and Roxy Jacenko: How the fairytale fell apart
EVEN as PR darling Roxy Jacenko, dressed in a Vera Wang gown flown first class from LA, married investment banker Oliver Curtis, a dark spectre was looming over their happy union.
NSW
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IT WAS the $250,000 fairytale wedding for a fabulously wealthy, beautiful, young power couple snug in their status among Sydney’s social elite.
But even as public relations darling Roxy Jacenko, dressed in a Vera Wang gown flown first class from Los Angeles, married investment banker Oliver Curtis a dark spectre was looming over their happy union.
Ten days earlier, on March 1 2012, Curtis’ childhood friend John Hartman had been released early from 15 months jail for insider trading after cutting a deal with the authorities.
Hartman, the son of “obstetrician to the stars” Keith Hartman, told the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) everything about his illegal trading scam with Curtis, the son of mining magnate Nick Curtis.
ASIC learned how the pair made $1.4 million in profits when they were both aged 21, spending it on expensive vehicles, eye-watering gambling expeditions at casinos, overseas holidays with friends and a $3000-a-week apartment on Bondi Beach’s most prestigious street, Notts. Avenue.
It took three-and-a-half years to get the case against Curtis to trial thanks to his legal team who fought tooth and nail to thwart the proceedings.
But when Hartman gave evidence as the Crown’s star witness on May 18, he painted a picture of two young men “swept up in a fake world”.
“I look back at it now, young 21-year-olds not believing it’s possible to make that sort of money so quickly, so easily, it was almost like it was some sort of game, it’s not real,” he said.
The courtroom showdown between two former best friends from wealthy, prominent families had all the ingredients to make it a hot topic for gossip among the eastern suburbs social set.
Then enter Roxy Jacenko in her high-end designer outfits each costing thousands of dollars which she posted each morning on social media to her 90,000 followers.
The founder and director of PR firm Sweaty Betty brought the “it” factor to the trial, attracting a posse of photographers who faithfully snapped her Louis Vuitton dresses, Balmain jackets and Saint Laurent shoes each day.
But inside the courtroom the focus was not on Ms Jacenko but Hartman, now 30, who did not look at Curtis once during his two-and-a-half days of evidence and cross-examination.
Meanwhile, Curtis, also 30, watched his former best friend continuously with a somewhat perplexed expression only looking away to write notes to his formidable legal team of two silks.
Crown Prosecutor David Staehli SC told a jury pool the pair had both grown up in Mosman and attended the prestigious St Ignatius College, Riverview on the lower north shore.
Mr Staehli said they were best friends, “although they are not so friendly now probably”.
After graduating high school both got jobs in the finance sector, with Curtis working for investment banking firm Transocean Group while Hartman gained a job as an equities trader at investment management fund Orion Asset Management.
It did not take long for Hartman to realise the possible power he had in his role, buying and selling shares for his employer’s massive superannuation fund clients.
Orion Asset Management managed and invested $7 billion worth of funds which meant their activity had the power to shift the market.
“If you knew that information and you could buy up all those shares, then you could take advantage of that movement and make a profit,” Mr Staehli told the jury.
That is what Hartman began doing by himself in 2006 when he started “front running” his employers through a personal trading account with IG Markets.
Hartman told the jury that at the time he and Curtis were extremely close. Rarely a day went by without them talking and since they were both in finance they talked about their work.
Hartman said “over a period of time” a plan began to develop.
He would tip Curtis on what Orion’s market intentions were and then his friend would use that information to bet on the market using Contracts for Difference as the mechanism to trade shares.
The plan turned into action when Curtis bought Hartman a BlackBerry in May 2007 so he could send him encrypted messages using the device’s ‘PIN-to-PIN’ message system.
“By the time we bought the BlackBerry we had been egging each other on enough that if we were going to do this, we needed the BlackBerry to communicate with each other,” Hartman said.
“We knew what we were doing was front running or insider trading. We knew we needed to be careful about communicating with each other.”
Curtis stumped up the large deposit needed for them to start trading in CFDs on a big enough scale to make the exercise profitable and opened an account with CMC Markets.
“I would send a PIN to him telling him what the trade should be ... what quantity and what price,” Hartman told the court.
It did not take long for the cash to start rolling in.
A month into the scam Curtis transferred Hartman $60,000 to buy a Mini Cooper.
Then in October 2007 Curtis bought Hartman a Ducati Sport 1000 motorbike for $19,380 writing in an email, “nice mate ... birthday present??”
Hartman replied: “I worked for it but birthday present is a good excuse.”
The following year Curtis and Hartman took their friends on a holiday to Canada and Las Vegas, paying for a helicopter charter flight to and from Vancouver to the nearby Whistler ski resort area.
The pair also shouted their friends to two-bedroom salon suites at the Wynn in Las Vegas, tickets to Cirque de Soleil and a “healthy entertainment budget,” to spend at the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club.
Hartman told the court that before the trip Curtis transferred $100,000 into a betting account at Wynn’s casino admitting that at the time they both had a “gambling problem”.
After the holiday, the pair moved into the apartment at Bondi Beach with Curtis paying $156,420 for 12 month’s rent in advance.
Hartman said they both knew they would be “in a lot of shit” if anyone ever found out what they were doing.
“I remember one time we were at a bar in the city and there was a conversation where we discussed we would be in a lot of trouble ... if we were ever caught or found out,” he said.
“We both agreed we would be in a lot of shit if this comes out. It would not be just one of us that gets in trouble.”
The scam ended abruptly in June 2008 when Hartman stopped sending Curtis tips. That could have been the end of it. The pair may never have been discovered if Hartman had not continued to trade illegally by himself.
It was in January 2009 when Hartman’s world came crashing down.
IG Markets told him they were investigating his trading account, asking him why he had never told them that he worked for Orion Asset Management.
Hartman had illegally traded $5.8 million in under three years and now the game was up.
He called his dad saying: “I have done something dreadful.”
Following a family conference he went with his lawyers to ASIC and confessed everything — including the scam with Curtis.
In December 2010 Hartman was jailed for at least three years for insider trading but that was reduced on appeal to 15 months.
He received a 25 per cent discount for pleading guilty and a further 10 per cent for giving evidence against Curtis in what defence barrister Murugan Thangaraj SC described as a “extraordinary deal”.
Meanwhile, on the outside, Curtis had met Roxy Jacenko, the public relations extraordinaire who had built up a $13 million PR firm called “Sweaty Betty” since founding it aged 24.
Jacenko first came to public attention when she starred in the third season of Celebrity Apprentice Australia but it was her prolific sharing of a private life on social media that turned her into a headline-grabbing personality.
Ms Jacenko was conspicuously absent when Curtis was committed to stand trial way back in 2013. Instead she was at the launch of her second novel The Rumour Mill at Otto Ristorante at Woolloomooloo.
She has, however, attended every day of her husband’s three-week trial and was in tears when the jury delivered its guilty verdict for conspiracy to commit insider trading.
Curtis had a mild look of disappointment when he heard the verdict following the jury’s two days of deliberation. That look of disappointment turned into shock as the enormity of what happened sunk in.
The father of two is facing a maximum of five years jail for the offence.
Each day of the trial, Curtis and Roxy arrived together holding hands in a show of solidarity.
But after the verdict they left the court in opposite directions, Jacenko concealing her tears behind dark sunglasses while Curtis stalked away stony-faced, ignoring questions from reporters.
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