Former Courtenay House director pleads guilty to conducting $180 million Ponzi scheme (ASIC, 2022)

Judgment entered

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In November 2022 ASIC announced that Tony Iervasi, former sole director of Courtenay House, pleaded guilty to five criminal charges, four of them dishonest conduct over about $180 million raised from some 585 investors in a scheme in which later investors' money paid the monthly returns he admitted was a Ponzi scheme.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

A$810k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in AUD. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

Courtenay House told investors their money would be traded in forex and futures markets when only about three percent was. Iervasi, who ran the business from 2010 to 2017, also pleaded guilty to carrying on a financial services business without a licence. The release describes a December 2016 "US Election Special Trade" promising a 15 percent return, for which the claimed profits were funded from other investors' money.

The record showed the outcome as unknown; a guilty plea is a conviction awaiting sentence, which was later imposed (see the 2024 record).

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because ASIC or the sentencing court describes new investors' money being used to pay earlier investors. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Ponzi schemes — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-11-08 ASIC media release

Primary documents

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• ASIC media release

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 5 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.