New York Lawyer Common Letitia James is attempting to safe a $1.37 billion judgment towards the operators of NovaTech and its predecessor AWS Mining, two successive cryptocurrency funding schemes that allegedly defrauded a whole bunch of hundreds of traders worldwide out of greater than $1 billion.
Alleged founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion by no means appeared in courtroom and, in keeping with the AG’s workplace, fled the nation.
“NovaTech and AWS Mining scammed hundreds of susceptible New Yorkers by telling them they had been making a protected funding when in actuality, they had been victims of a pyramid scheme,” James mentioned in a press release. “These scammers focused immigrant and spiritual communities with the promise of a greater life however as a substitute robbed them of their life financial savings.”
The schemes, AWS Mining and later NovaTech, relied on promoters who recruited closely in Haitian and different immigrant communities — by way of prayer teams, WhatsApp chats, and adverts in Haitian Creole.
AWS Mining bought crypto mining contracts promising 15 to twenty p.c month-to-month returns and 200 p.c inside 15 months. It collapsed in 2019. The Petions then launched NovaTech, marketed as a registered hedge fund dealer, promising weekly buying and selling returns of two to 4 p.c — greater than 140 p.c a yr.
These returns had been fabricated, in keeping with prosecutors. Information from B2Broker, which equipped NovaTech’s white-label buying and selling platform, present that of the greater than $1 billion traders deposited between 2019 and 2023, solely about $26 million was ever truly traded — and NovaTech’s merchants misplaced $18.2 million of that. Returns to earlier traders got here from newer deposits, not buying and selling. When NovaTech collapsed in mid-2023, tens of hundreds of traders couldn’t withdraw their funds.
The AG can also be looking for $134.5 million the Petions allegedly withdrew to their very own wallets from the investor account Cynthia Petion solely managed, plus $4.7 million tied to the sooner AWS Mining scheme. A default judgment entered in August 2025 already bars the couple and their firms from the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries.
Individually, 4 of the scheme’s prime promoters have agreed to pay almost $6 million in disgorgement to victims and accepted the identical trade bans.
