New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking a $1.37 billion judgment against the operators of NovaTech and its predecessor, AWS Mining — two successive cryptocurrency investment schemes that allegedly defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors worldwide out of more than $1 billion.

According to the Attorney General's office, alleged founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion never appeared in court and fled the country.

"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."

The two schemes relied on networks of promoters who recruited heavily in Haitian and other immigrant communities, using prayer groups, WhatsApp chats, and advertisements published in Haitian Creole.

AWS Mining sold crypto mining contracts that promised monthly returns of 15 to 20 percent, and 200 percent within 15 months. That venture collapsed in 2019, after which the Petions launched NovaTech. The successor platform was marketed as a registered hedge fund broker and promised weekly trading returns of two to four percent — equivalent to more than 140 percent a year.

Prosecutors say those returns were fabricated. Records from B2Broker, the firm that supplied NovaTech's white-label trading platform — brokerage technology built by a third-party provider and rebranded by the operator — show that of the more than $1 billion deposited by investors between 2019 and 2023, only about $26 million was ever actually traded — and NovaTech's traders lost $18.2 million of that amount. Payouts to earlier investors were funded by newer deposits rather than trading profits. It was third-party records like these that gave prosecutors the basis to call the promised returns fabricated.

When NovaTech collapsed in mid-2023, tens of thousands of investors were left unable to withdraw their funds. Payout structures of this kind remain operational only for as long as new deposits keep arriving — a dynamic characteristic of the Ponzi-style schemes regulators have repeatedly flagged in the crypto sector.

Beyond the headline judgment, the Attorney General is seeking $134.5 million that the Petions allegedly withdrew to their own wallets from an investor account solely controlled by Cynthia Petion, plus $4.7 million tied to the earlier AWS Mining scheme. A default judgment entered in August 2025 already bars the couple and their companies from participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries — a step courts take when defendants never respond to a case, as the Petions did not.

In a related action, four of the scheme's top promoters have agreed to pay nearly $6 million in disgorgement — the surrender of gains obtained through wrongdoing — to victims and have accepted the same industry bans, according to the Attorney General's office. The $1.37 billion request against the Petions themselves has yet to be decided by a court, and how much of any eventual award is ultimately recovered for victims remains to be seen.