Oliver Curtis: guilty verdict ends ‘Greek tragedy’ as jail awaits

PR queen Roxy Jacenko’s facade finally cracked as her husband Oliver Curtis learned he may be jailed for insider trading.

Oliver Curtis and wife Roxy Jacenko arrive at the NSW Supreme Court yesterday. Picture: John Grainger

Upon hearing the word “guilty”, Roxy Jacenko finally cracked.

Sydney’s glamorous “PR queen”, who drives a white Ferrari that husband Oliver Curtis gave her on their wedding day, was stoic as she turned up every day at his side for his insider trading trial.

The facade collapsed yesterday. As a jury found a stony-faced Curtis guilty on one charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading, Jacenko burst into tears. Curtis’s father, Nick, had his eyes shut tightly as the jury read its verdict, flinching when he heard the word.

The Sydney banker, 30, now faces a maximum five years in jail for entering into an agreement with John Hartman, also 30, to make about $1.5 million in insider trades in 2007 and 2008. He ­remains free on bail pending sentencing on June 17.

It’s the end of a story that Curtis’s barrister described as a “Greek tragedy”.

Hartman, the key witness for the prosecution, was Curtis’s best friend. They met at the prestigious Jesuit-run St Ignatius College on Sydney’s north shore. The two came from privileged families. Nick Curtis was founder of mining company Lynas; Keith Hartman was “obstetrician to the stars”. By 2007, the mining boom catapulted the Curtis family from the demure north shore into the elite eastern suburbs address of Woollahra, buying the mansion of ­Sydney radio royal John Laws for $7.7m.

According to those who knew the family then, accompanying this new-found mega-wealth was a generosity to family and friends that bordered on the showy.

The Curtises at one point rent­ed out the Hamilton Island six-star luxury hotel resort Qualia for a no-­expenses-spared wedding for one of their daughters.

The family’s behaviour was born of a genuine desire to share their wealth. According to those who know them, it was a case of: “We’ve finally earned it, let’s enjoy it and share it.”.

This generosity filtered down to Oliver Curtis, who loved shouting nights at the casino and even trips overseas. Or, as Hartman put it at the trial: “He liked to show off”.

The pair’s 2002 school yearbook observed that Curtis “left boarding in Year 12 when he ­realised he had the best car in year to drive to school”.

In those years, Hartman and Curtis were rarely seen apart. Hartman organised talks from prominent public figures at the school’s “hot potato shop” — a forum for public policy debate. Guests included Howard government ministers Philip Ruddock and former student Tony Abbott.

Some say Hartman was smart but shy; others, perhaps with a rear-view logic, described this as “manipulative”.

The yearbook observed: “John has an unusual relationship with his teachers, as he often assumes total power and at times the teachers ended up in more trouble than John did.”

When the pair left Riverview in 2003, they followed a dual interest in finance. Curtis dropped out of university for a job as an analyst at Ocean Securities advising on merger and acquisitions activity. Hartman graduated and landed a role at fund manager Orion Assets Management as equities trader.

It was Hartman’s job at Orion that would change everything in their lives. Hartman came to a conclusion early on that he was going to take advantage of his role at Orion to make money for himself. As an equities dealer, his role was pretty basic.

He would buy and sell stocks on instruction from the morning meeting, with leeway for price and volume depending on what the best deal was. It didn’t take Hartman long to realise that such were the size of the Orion trades that they affect­ed the prices of the stocks he was buying or selling.

In mid-2006, he set up a priv­ate IG Markets trading account, placing personal trades that profited from the Orion positions, without his firm knowing and in blatant breach of policy. This ­account turned over about $5m during the 2½-year period.

In this time, Hartman regularly discussed his role at Orion with Curtis. Hartman said the pair came up with a scheme to replicate what Hartman was doing. Curtis opened a separate CMC Markets account and placed trades based on his friend’s tips. Instead of actual shares, the pair would trade contracts for difference (CFDs), a financial product requiring less outlay but greater rewards if you get it right.

In May 2007, on a trip to an Optus shop, Curtis bought a BlackBerry for Hartman. This ­decision was critical in the crown case against Curtis, which spawned the deal to trade in the CMC account and split the profits 50-50. “By the time we bought the BlackBerry, we had egged each other on enough that we were going to do this,” Hartman said at the trial.

He testified it was Curtis who told him “there was no easier money in the world being made than this”.

They weren’t wrong about the money. In the one year they traded in the CMC account, the pair netted $1.5m profit. The profits coming in would have been considered extraordinary by most standards, but for a pair of 21-year-olds they were otherworldly. As Hartman said at the trial: “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.’’

Large cash transfers between the pair could attract attention, so Hartman’s share was distributed through “gifts”, including a $20,000 Ducati and a $60,000 Mini Coupe, along with rent-free accommodation in a luxury $3000-a-week apartment the pair shared on Bondi Beach in Sydney’s east.

Hartman regularly threw parties at the flat. Former schoolmates, finance buddies and good-looking girls flocked to the flat.

Cocaine was a regular visitor.

At this time, Curtis was dating Hermione Underwood, a north shore girl who found reality TV “fame” as model Lara Bingle’s manager. Bingle and ­Underwood are thought to have met on a first-class flight ­accompanied by Curtis and Bingle’s then fiance, Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke.

The friends loved a gamble. Hartman described Curtis as ­having a “gambling problem”, ­although in his testimony said he thought “we both did”. During a trip to Las Vegas, Curtis transferred $100,000 to Wynn’s casino to fin­ance a betting account for the pair.

The decadence of the young men was eye-watering. At one point, Curtis regretfully told his friends they would not be taking the private jet from Whistler to Las Vegas but he’d have more cash to shout the boys in Vegas at the casino and on strippers.

The two were well aware of the dangers of their behaviour. Hartman testified that, over a drink at a popular bankers’ bar, the pair came to the conclusion they “would be in a lot of shit” if they were ever caught.

They were right.

By the end of 2008, Hartman was given a $200,000 bonus from Orion and, combined with his salary, earned more than $300,000. These trappings of wealth for a man barely out of his teens may seem ridiculous, but this was a pre-GFC world and the sharemarket and those who profited from it were doing extraordin­arily well. However, it was the ­appearance of Hartman’s new Rolex at work that raised the suspicions of one of his managers.

The pair had stopped trading in the CMC Markets account in June. The final trade on June 11 was the selling of two million CFDs in Boart Longyear. It delivered a $200,000 windfall.

Perhaps they thought the massive profits were starting to set off alarm bells, but if Hartman had stopped trading in his IG ­Markets account at that point, the pair may never have been caught.

When things went wrong, they went wrong very quickly. On January 13, 2009, Hartman, by now 23, received a “please ­explain” letter from his IG Markets broker asking why he was personally trading and hadn’t ­declared his role at Orion.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission would have to be informed.

Hartman surmised that the game was up and rang his father, Keith, informing him he needed help: “I’ve done something dreadful.” On the advice of his father, as well as of his sister and brother-in-law, both corporate lawyers, he hired promin­ent Sydney lawyer Mark O’Brien. The next week, the Hartman team paid a visit to ASIC and laid it all on the table.

ASIC was understood already to be investigating, but Hartman offered the full details of how he had been frontrunning in the IG markets account. He also offered up insider trading of which ASIC until this point was ignorant: the deals involving his long-time schoolfriend, Curtis.

Hartman immediately moved out of their Bondi apartment, turning his phone off and leaving Curtis wondering where his best friend was. ­Confused, Curtis left a message on Hartman’s phone asking if he was OK, concerned that “all of your clothes have been robbed”.

When it became apparent Hartman was facing charges and talking to ASIC, their friends are believed to have sided with Curtis.

Hartman negotiated with ASIC to plead guilty to 19 charges of insider trading his IG Markets account and pleaded guilty to 18 charges of tipping in relation to the CMC trading he did with ­Curtis, in return for a 10 per cent reduction in his sentence.

Despite his admissions, Hartman was sentenced to almost three years prison and was jailed in the minimum security Dawn De Loas wing at Silverwater. To limit his exposure to other prisoners and to use his brain, he took a job as prison librarian. He was closely observed during his time, reportedly deeply depressed and sometimes suicidal.

Meanwhile, Curtis was living a bizarrely parallel life on the outside, dating the glamorous Jacenko, who ran Sweaty Betty PR, “Australia’s pre-eminent fashion, beauty and lifestyle PR agency”.

“Roxy and Oli’’ were a celebrity couple of Jacenko’s creation. By October 2011, they had their first child, Pixie-Rose, and in March 2012 were married in what The Daily Telegraph described as “contender for wedding of the year”, hosted at Sydney restaurant Quay. Jacenko wore a Vera Wang dress flown over on a first-class seat from Los Angeles. The whole affair cost $250,000.

In a strange twist of fate, 10 days before Curtis’s wedding Hartman was released from ­Silverwater prison, 15 months into his sentence, after an appeal against its severity. Things were set to change again. Four years later, on May 18, when Hartman entered the St James Road in Sydney to give evidence against Curtis, he avoided eye contact with the man in the dock. Curtis looked up at Hartman, straight-faced but with curious eyes. The barrister acting for the crown, David Staehli SC, asked Hartman whether he knew Curtis. “Yes,” he replied. “We were best friends.”