(Recasts first paragraph, adds byline, details from lawsuit, background)

By Anna Driver

HOUSTON, April 15 (Reuters) - The lawyer overseeing the assets and operations of Stanford Financial Group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to recover $40 million in pay the firm's advisers earned selling certificates of deposit regulators say are at the heart of an $8 billion fraud.

Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed receiver, is seeking pay from 66 advisers named in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Dallas.

Allen Stanford, two top aides and three of his companies are accused by U.S. regulators of a massive Ponzi scheme involving high-yield certificates of deposit issued by Stanford's Antigua bank.

The commissions and other compensation paid to the advisers "came not from revenue generated by legitimate business activities, but from monies contributed by defrauded investors," the lawsuit said.

Over the last two years, the Stanford advisers named in the lawsuit received commissions ranging from $2.6 million to $200,000 to promote the sale of the certificates of deposit (CDs), according to Janvey.

Stanford advisers and company literature touted the CDs as a safe, liquid investment when the funds were actually invested in illiquid assets like real estate and private equity, the SEC has charged.

The Stanford firm was able to keep the scheme going for a time by using a portion of funds from current CD sales to make interest and redemption payments on preexisting CDs, the lawsuit said.