New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James is trying to safe a $1.37 billion judgment in opposition to the operators of NovaTech and its predecessor AWS Mining, two successive cryptocurrency funding schemes that allegedly defrauded tons of 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 line with the AG’s workplace, fled the nation.
“NovaTech and AWS Mining scammed hundreds of weak New Yorkers by telling them they had been making a protected funding when in actuality, they had been victims of a pyramid scheme,” James stated in a press release. “These scammers focused immigrant and non secular communities with the promise of a greater life however as an alternative 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 advertisements in Haitian Creole.
AWS Mining offered 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 line with prosecutors. Data 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 really 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 be searching 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 corporations from the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries.
Individually, 4 of the scheme’s high promoters have agreed to pay almost $6 million in disgorgement to victims and accepted the identical trade bans.
