Oliver Curtis - the convicted fraudster and husband of socialite publicist Roxy Jacenko - could become a billionaire if global securities exchange ASX lets ex-jailbird insider traders into its exclusive club.
Just under eight years after his maximum prison sentence expired, Curtis is riding the wave of success of his artificial intelligence infrastructure business, Firmus Technologies.
In the process of building the company, the 40-year-old is turning northern Tasmania into a kind of AI version of Silicon Valley, California's global technology hub.
He co-founded the business after walking out of Cooma Correctional Centre on parole and is building Australia's first green AI factory on 5ha in outer Launceston, with the development dubbed Project Southgate.
Project Southgate is earmarked for use by global AI giants Meta, Amazon and Microsoft to train and run their large AI language models, and has attracted significant equity funding to Firmus which over just two months late last year tripled its valuation to $6billion.
Now Curtis is reportedly preparing to float Firmus on the ASX, meaning it will become a publicly listed company on the stock exchange.
However, before any company can issue an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and go live issuing shares and beginning to trade, its CEOs or directors must be found to be of 'good fame and character'.
This is determined by the ASX board and listings and compliance teams via verified criminal records and bankruptcy or insolvency checks.
Just under eight years after his maximum prison sentence expired, Oliver Curtis is riding the wave of success of his artificial intelligence infrastructure business
Will Oliver Curtis (pictured with wife Roxy Jacenko) be Australia's newest billionaire? The company he co-founded after leaving jail has trebled in value to $6bn and will apply to be floated on the ASX in mid-2026
Curtis, centre, is now head of a company exciting big investors and one that could make him a billionaire
The germination of Curtis' new $6bn AI company began when he left jail (above, exiting Cooma prison in June 2017) and may now see the convicted insider trader riding the crest of the AI revolution
The Daily Mail understands there is no 'ten year rule' which means a person can pass the 'good fame and character requirement' if their criminal activity happened more than a decade ago.
The ASX listings rules specifically say that criminal records of any crime incurring a five-year maximum prison sentence, or 'any criminal offence involving fraud, dishonesty, misrepresentation, concealment of material facts or breach of their duties as a director or officer of the company' must be disclosed by applicants.
Curtis will mark nine years in June since he was paroled on his conviction of conspiracy to insider trade, and if he is one of the listing applicants to the ASX for the float of Firmus, several factors will be taken into consideration.
These include the time that has elapsed since his offence, his age at the time, his conduct since, and any contrition or awareness expressed about the offending.
Curtis was convicted in June 2016 of insider trading using confidential information, and served 12 months in jail of a two-year prison sentence.
Curtis was found guilty of using confidential tips provided by his old school chum John Joseph Hartman on 45 occasions via encrypted messages on a Blackberry phone between May 2007 and June 2008 to illegally trade on shifts in share prices.
He was aged 30 when he was convicted, but was about 22 when he committed the offences.
Curtis and Hartman had been best mates at Saint Ignatius' College Riverview, the elite private Jesuit boarding school on Sydney's lower north shore.
Oliver Curtis on the way to court with wife Roxy Jacenko who wore $1,100 YSL suede lace-up heels and dressed in thousands of dollars' worth of designer clothes during the tense, three-week insider trading trial which ended in his conviction and imprisonment
The rules to apply for a listing on the ASX include declarations of past criminal offences or bankruptcy so the Exchange can determine if CEOs or directors are of 'good fame and character'
Curtis and Jacenko's walk to and from court turned into a fashion parade of her wardrobe, with the PR supremo sporting thousands of dollars of designer gear
Hartman, son of the obstetrician to the Packer and Murdoch families, and Curtis, the son of the executive chairman of rare earth miner Lynas, were living together in a $3,000-a-week Bondi apartment at the time.
They drank in city bars and made $100,000 a day on trading, raking in a total of $1.4million from the trades and splashing the money on trips and luxury items.
Hartman bought a $60,000 Mini Cooper and a $20,000 Ducati motorcycle. They took their friends on holidays to gamble in Las Vegas casinos, and paid for strippers at Cirque de Soleil.
They took a helijet from Vancouver to ski in Whistler, Canada because they would be 'too hungover to drive'.
Even before things came to a head, the old school mates had begun to fall out with one another over money to support their lifestyle and Curtis' gambling habit.
In August 2008, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission began scrutinising Hartman's stockbroking account after it detected illegal trading.
On January 13, 2009, Hartman's broker froze the $2.6m account, making Hartman believe he had been caught red-handed.
Five days later, he rang his father, moved out of the Bondi flat, quit his job and a day after was confessing everything inside a room to ASIC investigators.
Roxy wore a $3,000 Celine leather skirt and $2,675 knit top, $1,100 YSL suede lace-up heels, and $280 Ray-Ban aviators for her husband's day in court back in 2016
After her husband was taken away in handcuffs, Jacenko marched from the court to her waiting car, as security guards pushed media out of the way
Curtis was taken away in handcuffs by prison officers after his conviction for insider trading for which he was sentenced to a maximum of two years
Hartman was jailed aged 25 in 2010 and served 15 months in prison.
Curtis and Jacenko married in a lavish ceremony at Quay restaurant on Sydney harbour in March 2012.
She wore a $250,000 Vera Wang dress that was flown in from Los Angeles on a first-class seat.
Curtis' wedding gift to his betrothed was a white Ferrari convertible.
Hartman had his initial three-year maximum sentence discounted by his ASIC confession and for turning star witness against his former best mate Curtis, who finally went to trial in 2016.
By then, Curtis was a father of two young children, and he pleaded not guilty and his defence lawyers accused Hartman of being a liar.
Curtis' silk, Murugan Thangaraj SC, told the court it was a matter of whether Hartman could be trusted.
Hartman testified that the pair had once discussed the fact they should be 'in a lot of trouble if this ever came out ... we would both be in a lot of s***'.
Oliver Curtis pictured at Cooma prison where during his year behind bars, he worked in the jail's textile room, making prison uniforms, and in ground maintenance, tending Cooma prison's garden
During an often tense three-week trial, Jacenko wore a series of designer outfits worth thousands including, on one day, a $3,000 Celine leather skirt and $2,675 knit top, $1,100 YSL suede lace up heels, and $280 Ray Ban aviators.
She wore Gucci and Dior and carried a black crocodile skin Hermes Birkin bag, reportedly worth $162,000.
Jacenko submitted a letter to the court after her husband was found guilty, pleading to Justice Lucy McCallum that Curtis was the primary carer of her children as she had a '24 hour, 7 days a week' job.
After Justice McCallum handed down her verdict, Jacenko kissed and hugged Curtis before he removed a ring, his watch, belt and tie and was handcuffed and led away.
A glassy-eyed Jacenko marched from the court to her waiting car, as security guards pushed media out of the way.
During his time behind bars, Curtis reportedly kept busy. He completed courses in bobcat operation, mentoring, agriculture and rural skills, safe tractor operation, small motors, and weed-spraying.
He worked in the jail's textile room, making prison uniforms, and in ground maintenance, tending Cooma prison's garden.
Photographs of him from the outside showed a tanned and fit-looking Curtis conversing with fellow inmates.
Roxy Jacenko leaves home with children Pixie and Hunter en route to Cooma where husband Oliver Curtis is being released in June 2017. Right, the kids see their father for the first time in a year
Now a teenager, Pixie Curtis carries her own designer tote as she heads for an aircraft in Switzerland, where she is attending a finishing school
When the day came for his release, Jacenko arrived to collect him via private jet.
Wearing $1,500 black leather trousers, $872 Gianvito Rossi stiletto heels, and carrying a $14,000 Hermes Kelly clutch, she dressed her children Pixie and Hunter in matching Burberry coats.
Jacenko revealed she had told the kids their father was on business in China during his jail term.
Just weeks after his release, Curtis asked Jacenko to 'marry me again' and gave the Sweaty Betty PR founder a $450,000 six-carat diamond ring.
In 2019, Curtis and Tim Rosenfield started up Firmus Technologies, headquartered in Singapore where he lives for part of the year with Jacenko and their children, now aged 14 and 11.
Oliver Curtis (above) with his wife Roxy Jacenko and their children Pixie and Hunter, has achieved multibillion-dollar status with his company Firmus Technologies which is creating AI Infrastructure for global giants Meta, Amazon and Microsoft
The Firmus Technologies site at Saint Leonards in outer Launceston on 5ha which is a future green AI park for tech giants to train and run their large AI language models
Almost a decade after he was convicted and jailed for insider trading, Oliver Curtis (above with his wife Roxy Jacenko) is a successful businessman working in the booming AI industry
It started with a $250,000 investment from Curtis' father as a bitcoin-mining venture before pivoting into management systems for AI data centres.
Reports claim the idea for the company originated from the moment Curtis left prison, and perhaps even while he was behind bars.
Two months ago, it was revealed that US technology giant Nvidia - the world's most valuable publicly listed company - and local investment house Ellerston Capital had backed a $330million funding round for Firmus, ahead of a planned public listing.
That valued the business at $1.9billion, a figure which has since risen to $6billion after raising $500million more from investors.
The ASX told the Daily Mail that while it does not comment on individual entities, 'a core part of our role is to assess all admission criteria thoroughly'.
'When we consider good fame and character we primarily have regard to the criminal record and bankruptcy checks and statutory declarations submitted as part of the listing application, but we may also have regard to other relevant information,' it said.
ASX says in its public company float rules that 'it should be noted that ASX will not waive its 'good fame and character' requirements'.
But the Mail understands that there is room for redemption of a person's character or reputation from past mistakes.
In 2019, Curtis and Tim Rosenfield started up Firmus Technologies, headquartered in Singapore where he lives for part of the year with Jacenko and their children, now aged 14 and 11
PR maven Roxy Jacenko, above outside her Ministry of Talent HQ, spends time in Singapore where her husband Oliver Curtis is running AI Infrastructure company Firmus Technologies
Meanwhile, Curtis' onetime co-offender, Hartman, was given his own second chance.
Today, Hartman is CEO of multibillionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest's private investment group Tattarang, responsible for managing assets worth more than $25billion.
There is much investor excitement around Curtis' Firmus and its proposed Green AI Factory Zone in the in Launceston suburb of Saint Leonards - which would house data centres to run and train AI systems which help power chatbots and other applications.
The Daily Mail has asked Firmus to confirm if and when it plans to float, but reports say it might do so around June, when its valuation would be up to $7bn.
This is also the tenth anniversary of Curtis' criminal conviction, which would be irrelevant if he is not among the listing applicants when Firmus goes to the ASX.
The AI revolution and Firmus' backing by Nvidia should see it become an ASX 20 company, The Australian reported, which would mean a market capitalisation of more than $30bn.
The ASX's top 20 companies by market cap currently include the big banks, BHP, Fortescue, CSL, Rio and Woolworths.
The Commonwealth Bank is number one, with a valuation of $298bn, and Woolworths is 19th at $39bn.
If the ASX deems Curtis is reformed and of 'good fame and character' that's not a bad achievement for an idea possibly hatched in a prison yard.
