Businessman Andre Curtis has been fined $335,000 and ordered to pay back huge sums of cash for his role in a worldwide Ponzi scheme.

A Montana Commissioner has ruled Curtis profited after running the scheme — in which 22 investors were conned out of a total of $4 million — alongside convicted money launderer Daniel Two Feathers in 2008.

He has received three fines of $110,000 and one of $5,000, and is forced to repay victims he duped by falsely promising massive returns.

One of them, American businessman John Sheaffer, invested nearly $2 million which ended up with Curtis' company Harvest Investment Holdings.

Mr Sheaffer grew suspicious, called the authorities and eventually got much of his money back; he later committed suicide.

Curtis, the political campaign manager for former Premier Ewart Brown, had protested his innocence at a hearing in July, but the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance in Montana has now ruled he:

• knowingly helped Two Feathers run a securities fraud and operate and promote a Ponzi scheme;

• told investors they would receive monthly rates so large "there was no set of circumstances" they could be achieved;

• neglected to tell investors cash would be put in accounts owned or controlled by himself or Two Feathers;

• neglected to tell investors cash would be used for Curtis' own benefit;

• neglected to tell investors he wasn't registered to sell securities in Montana.

The Montana State Auditor's Office has previously stated how Curtis company received nearly $2 million from Mr Sheaffer's Illinois-based Sysix Technology, after that firm was promised a return of 66 percent within 25 days.

Following Mr Sheaffer's complaints, cash was taken out of Curtis' account in February 2009 and Sysix was paid back more than $1 million. In July 2009, Mr Sheaffer was found dead in his office and a coroner delivered a verdict of suicide.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania-based non-profit group Dream Foundation invested $100,000 after Two Feathers showed him a trading platform offering profitable returns.

July's hearing was told the cash ended up being held by Curtis, and Dream Foundation still hadn't got it back.

And Texan-based businesswoman Ida Brown said her company was left in tatters after she handed over $130,000, having been told her investment would reap $5 million, only for the money to disappear.

The Montana investigation had initially focused mainly on Two Feathers and American businessman Shawn Swor.

But investigators say they grew suspicious of Curtis due to his strange behaviour after he rang them to complain they'd frozen his account.

• Curtis is awaiting trial in April after pleading not guilty to stealing an unspecified sum of cash from Government and falsifying the accounts of the faith-based tourism budget and Harvest Investment Holdings; and stealing cash from a man named Andrew Smith.