The fight would take him to the state's highest court and continue throughout the trial in the absence of the jury. Oliver Curtis leaves the Supreme Court after being found guilty of insider trading. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer The clock started ticking in March 2009 when Curtis, then in his early 20s, was hauled before the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, to answer questions about a series of suspicious trades. Two months earlier, his best friend John Hartman had come clean to ASIC about an illegal deal the duo had struck to use inside information to bet with great success on movements in share prices, including those of Woolworths, JB Hi-Fi, Caltex, Lion Nathan and Harvey Norman. Mr Hartman was "caught red-handed" engaging in insider trading by his broker in 2009, the court heard. He confessed and later cut a deal to reduce his jail time by giving evidence against his former friend.

In January 2013, almost a year after Mr Hartman was released from prison after serving 15 months behind bars, Curtis was served with a court attendance notice to face his own charge of insider trading, and committed to stand trial in November that year. Roxy Jacenko leaves the Supreme Court after the guilty verdict was handed down. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer In March 2014, he was formally charged with conspiracy to commit insider trading. But legal challenges would take up the better part of a year. In October 2014, Curtis' legal team successfully applied for an order temporarily halting the case. Oliver Curtis and partner Roxy Jacenko during the trial. Credit:Ben Rushton

They argued a transcript of evidence Curtis had given to ASIC should not have been handed over to prosecutors in the case. The Crown appealed against that decision to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and the case was heard in March last year. In August, it ruled prosecutors could use the transcripts. Roxy Jacenko insists she's "still married" to her incarcerated husband, Oliver Curtis. Credit:Daniel Munoz/Fairfax Media Earlier that year, the Australian Federal Police had successfully obtained a Supreme Court order preventing Curtis from spending his share of the multimillion-dollar proceeds from the sale of his Woollahra home. This was not the end of the legal dramas. On the sixth day of the trial, Curtis' barrister Murugan Thangaraj, SC, foreshadowed an application to have the evidence of Mr Hartman, the prosecution's star witness, withdrawn. This would have caused the Crown case to collapse.

Mr Thangaraj said Mr Hartman might have been labouring under a misapprehension that he could be sent back to jail if he did not fulfil his promise to give evidence against his former friend. The implication was this might have affected the truthfulness of the evidence he gave. The application to strike out his evidence fell by the wayside. But, a day later, Mr Thangaraj foreshadowed a submission to Justice Lucy McCallum that his client had no case to answer. He formally submitted the Crown could not prove Curtis "ever possessed inside information when making the trades" at the heart of the case, "let alone that he knew he possessed inside information". On the ninth day of the trial, Justice McCallum threw out the application and the trial ran for another three days.

The jury started its deliberations at 2.45pm on Tuesday and returned a guilty verdict two days later - more than seven years after Curtis first appeared before ASIC.