New York AG Seeks $1.37 Billion Judgment Over NovaTech Crypto Fraud

New York Attorney General Letitia James is pursuing a $1.37 billion judgment against the operators of NovaTech and its predecessor AWS Mining, two successive crypto investment schemes that prosecutors say took more than $1 billion from hundreds of thousands of investors worldwide.

Alleged founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion never appeared in court and, according to the AG's office, have fled the country. The filing targets the couple behind a fraud that ran from AWS Mining's collapse in 2019 through NovaTech's failure in mid-2023.

"NovaTech and AWS Mining scammed thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers by telling them they were making a safe investment when in reality, they were victims of a pyramid scheme," James said in a statement. "These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings."

How the scheme worked

Recruitment leaned heavily on promoters inside Haitian and other immigrant communities, operating through prayer groups, WhatsApp chats and advertisements in Haitian Creole. That channel structure let the scheme scale through trusted community figures rather than public marketing.

AWS Mining sold crypto mining contracts promising 15 to 20 percent monthly returns and 200 percent within 15 months. It collapsed in 2019. The Petions then launched NovaTech, marketed as a registered hedge fund broker, promising weekly trading returns of two to four percent — more than 140 percent a year.

Those returns were fabricated, according to prosecutors.

What the trading records show

Records from B2Broker, the firm that supplied NovaTech's white-label trading platform, quantify how little actual trading occurred:

• Investors deposited more than $1 billion between 2019 and 2023
• Only about $26 million was ever actually traded
• NovaTech's traders lost $18.2 million of that amount
• Returns paid to earlier investors came from newer deposits, not trading gains

When NovaTech collapsed in mid-2023, tens of thousands of investors could not withdraw their funds. The AG is also seeking $134.5 million the Petions allegedly withdrew to their own wallets from the investor account Cynthia Petion solely controlled, plus $4.7 million tied to the earlier AWS Mining scheme.

What enforcement has already secured

A default judgment entered in August 2025 already bars the Petions and their companies from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries. The $1.37 billion demand now before the court would convert that liability into a monetary award.

Separately, four of the scheme's top promoters have agreed to pay nearly $6 million in disgorgement to victims and accepted the same industry bans. That removes the main recruitment layer from any future reopening of the operation.

The outstanding questions are recovery and location. The Petions' whereabouts remain unknown, so collecting a $1.37 billion judgment depends on tracing wallet funds and any assets reachable in U.S. jurisdictions. The restitution process for the promoters' $6 million gives tens of thousands of frozen-out investors a first, if partial, path to recovery.