New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, is seeking nearly $1.37 billion from Cynthia and Eddy Petion, the founders of NovaTech, a cryptocurrency scheme that prosecutors say collected more than a billion dollars from investors while returning only a fraction of it through genuine trading activity.
According to the claim, investors deposited $1.16 billion in cryptocurrencies with NovaTech between August 2019 and May 2023. The company promised weekly returns of between 2% and 4%. Of the total collected, only $25.99 million, roughly 2.2%, was ever transferred to the B2Broker trading platform. Traders using those funds lost $18.19 million, about 70% of the sum transferred, meaning the vast majority of investor money was never put to productive use at all.
At least $134.5 million was withdrawn to wallets belonging to the Petion couple, the Attorney General's office says. The $1.37 billion claim is split between approximately $1.13 billion in restitution of illicit gains and $232.5 million in pre-judgment interest.
The civil proceeding against NovaTech, the related AWS Mining operation, which collapsed in 2019, and several promoters began in June 2024. A default judgment was issued against the Petions in August 2025 after, according to the Attorney General's office, the couple left the United States.
Victims recruited through prayer groups
The New York Attorney General's office has recorded more than 11,000 victims in the state alone. Promoters are alleged to have targeted Haitian, immigrant and religious communities specifically, recruiting through social media, WhatsApp and prayer groups.
Separately from the pursuit of the Petions, four individuals identified as NovaTech promoters, Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr and James Corbett, have agreed to repay nearly $6 million to victims. As part of the settlement, all four have been permanently banned from working in the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency sectors.
The case illustrates a pattern familiar to European regulators tracking cross-border crypto fraud: schemes that promise fixed, high weekly returns while routing only a small share of deposits into any real trading activity, and that rely on trusted community networks rather than conventional marketing to find new investors. With the Petions reportedly having left the United States, enforcement now depends on international cooperation to recover assets and enforce the judgment, a challenge that has repeatedly complicated restitution efforts in similar crypto fraud cases pursued by authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
