New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking roughly $1.37 billion from the founders of collapsed crypto trading platform NovaTech, following a scheme that authorities say targeted immigrant and religious communities and drew more than 11,000 investors in New York alone.

Collecting the money may prove difficult. According to James, founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion have fled the United States.

In a filing in New York County Supreme Court on Thursday, James' office asked a judge to order the Petions, NovaTech, and related companies to pay about $1.37 billion in damages, disgorgement, and interest. The request follows an August 2025 default judgment, issued after the couple left the country and failed to respond to the state's lawsuit. That judgment also barred them from the securities, commodities, and crypto industries.

James also announced settlements totaling nearly $6 million with four of the scheme's top promoters: Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr., and James Corbett. The four will pay the funds to benefit victims and are permanently banned from the securities, commodities, and crypto industries.

“These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings,” James said in a statement.

James first sued NovaTech and AWS Mining in June 2024, alleging the companies defrauded investors of more than $1 billion. Two months later, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged the Petions and others over what it described as a $650 million fraud.

According to the attorney general's office, the Petions focused their recruiting on immigrant communities, particularly Haitian New Yorkers, working through prayer groups, social media, and WhatsApp chats. Advertisements ran in Haitian Creole and leaned on religious messaging. More than 11,000 New Yorkers invested in the platform, out of hundreds of thousands of investors worldwide. That approach — building trust within close-knit congregations and community networks before pitching returns — fits the pattern regulators describe as affinity fraud, in which promoters leverage existing relationships to recruit investors.

NovaTech marketed itself as a registered hedge fund broker licensed to trade crypto in the United States and advertised weekly returns of 2% to 4% — more than 140% a year, according to the state. In practice, the platform sent just under $26 million to its trading provider between 2019 and 2023 and lost about $18.2 million of that amount, per the filing. Weekly payouts and recruiting bonuses were funded by deposits from new investors, the state said. When NovaTech collapsed in 2023, tens of thousands of investors were left unable to withdraw their funds.

Data from payment processor CoinPayments shows investors deposited roughly $1.16 billion in crypto into NovaTech's wallet between August 2019 and May 2023, with Cynthia Petion as the only authorized user on the account, according to the state. At least $134.5 million went to wallets belonging to the Petions. After subtracting the funds sent for trading, the attorney general is seeking about $1.13 billion in disgorgement plus $232 million in interest.

Before launching NovaTech, the Petions served as top U.S. promoters of AWS Mining, a venture that promised monthly returns of 15% to 20% from crypto mining before collapsing in 2019. According to Thursday's filing, Cynthia Petion admitted in a WhatsApp chat to making at least $3 million from that earlier scheme.

The request now rests with a New York judge, and any money that actually reaches victims will depend on enforcing the award and the promoter settlements — a process complicated, in the founders' case, by their departure from the United States.