Mastermind behind $180m Ponzi scheme Tony Iervasi jailed for seven years

The mastermind behind a $180m Ponzi scheme has been jailed for at least seven years – after surviving a kidnapping attempt, breaking up families and delaying victims’ retirements.

Tony Iervasi has been jailed for at least seven years. Picture: Jeremy Piper

The man at the helm of one of Australia’s largest Ponzi schemes has been jailed for at least seven years, as the NSW Supreme Court heard he confessed to NSW Police about the plot after he had been kidnapped and bashed over it.

Tony Iervasi, 58, was sentenced on Monday by Supreme Court judge Deborah Sweeney to 11 years prison, with a period of seven years non-parole, for the $180m Ponzi scheme he operated out of two now defunct companies Courtenay House and Courtenay House Capital Trading Group in Sydney’s Bondi Junction.

He ran a purported foreign exchange trading scheme from the Westfield Tower, offering products such as the “Brexit Special” and a “US Election Special Trade”.

Justice Sweeney discounted Iervasi’s total sentence by 40 per cent for cooperating with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission by agreeing to an interview, which the corporate cop dubbed as “rare”, and for pleading guilty to five criminal charges that related to dishonest conduct and running a financial services business without a licence.

The court heard Iervasi relied on a kidnapping incident in 2019 as an example of extra-curial punishment, after he was bundled into the back of a van in Sydney’s Centennial park in 2019.

“(He was) thrown into a van where he was punched in the face and kicked in his ribs and his hands bound together with tape,” Justice Sweeney said during her sentencing remarks.

“He was then driven to a location where he was placed on a concrete floor, further kicked to his ribs and punched to his face. It was cut to the back of his left calf muscle with a knife,” she said.

The assailants, who Iervasi refused to identify, demanded between $50,000 and $100,000. Justice Sweeney said she was satisfied the attack was linked to the Ponzi scheme.

Iervasi reported the incident to NSW police in 2019, when he confessed to the illegal rort.

Between 2010 and 2017, Iervasi encouraged investors to invest about $180m, of which about three per cent was actually traded as promised.

Instead, monthly amounts paid to investors were derived from capital deposited from new investors.

Justice Sweeney said he funnelled $9m worth of investor money from the company’s accounts into his own, and spent some of it on gambling, leasing properties, paying for holidays and borrowing luxury cars.

As well, Iervasi offered investment specials to encourage trading. For example, in 2016 his clients were invited to put their money into a US election special trade to coincide with the inauguration of then US president Donald Trump.

Justice Sweeney said she took into account the “sustained deceit” Iervasi engaged in over the six-and-a-half year period, and that the total net loss suffered by about 585 investors was ultimately $54m after two companies linked with Iervasi were liquidated.

Justice Sweeney acknowledged Iervasi’s actions lead to the breakdown of marriages, emotional, physical and mental health issues and the “need to delay retirement or resume working in the face of a loss of financial security in their mature years”.