Former Courtenay House contractor pleads guilty (ASIC, 2022)

Judgment entered

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In December 2022 ASIC announced that Athan Papoulias, a former Courtenay House contractor, pleaded guilty to carrying on an unlicensed financial services business and dealing in proceeds of crime worth over $100,000, having earned about $670,860 in commissions for attracting investors. ASIC says it is not alleged he knew of the 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

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

A$36k

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

The release explains that Courtenay House told investors their money would be traded when only a small part was, paying monthly amounts as if they were trading returns, which ASIC calls a Ponzi scheme operated by its director Tony Iervasi. The charges Papoulias faced concern the unlicensed business between late 2016 and April 2017 and the commissions; he was committed to the District Court for sentence.

The record showed the outcome as unknown.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because it concerns the Courtenay House Ponzi scheme, although ASIC says the person charged here was not aware of it and the charges are for unlicensed financial services and dealing with proceeds of crime. 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. 2022-12-14 ASIC media release

Primary documents

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• ASIC media release

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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.