NEW YORK — The legal dragnet surrounding one of the most devastating cryptocurrency frauds in recent memory tightened significantly this week, as New York Attorney General Letitia James moved to extract a staggering financial penalty from the masterminds behind the collapsed crypto trading platform NovaTech.
In a formal legal filing submitted to the New York County Supreme Court, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) asked a judge to order NovaTech founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion, alongside their corporate entities, to pay approximately $1.37 billion in damages, disgorgement, and interest. The aggressive legal maneuver is the latest chapter in a multi-agency crackdown on a scheme that prosecutors say systematically preyed upon vulnerable immigrant communities, weaponizing faith and cultural ties to siphon away life savings under the guise of high-yield cryptocurrency and forex investments.
However, collecting the billion-dollar judgment remains a formidable hurdle. According to Attorney General James, the Petions have fled the United States and remain overseas, dodging the immediate grasp of American law enforcement.
Main Facts of the Case
The monumental filing targets the wreckage left behind by NovaTech Ltd. and its associated platforms, which operated as a textbook multi-level marketing (MLM) Ponzi scheme. Promising astronomical, guaranteed weekly returns of 2% to 4%—equating to an annualized yield exceeding 140%—the platform lured hundreds of thousands of victims globally before its inevitable collapse in 2023.
Within the state of New York alone, more than 11,000 investors fell victim to the operation. Globally, the platform hauled in more than $1 billion in digital assets.
The core elements of the state’s action include:
- The Financial Demand: The OAG is seeking roughly $1.13 billion in disgorgement, representing the net funds extracted from investors, paired with $232 million in accumulated interest, bringing the total sum to approximately $1.37 billion.
- The Defendants: The primary targets are Cynthia and Eddy Petion, the husband-and-wife duo who founded and operated NovaTech, alongside related corporate shells.
- The Legal Status: In August 2025, a New York court issued a default judgment against the Petions after they fled the country and refused to respond to the state’s civil enforcement action. That ruling permanently barred them from participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries.
- Promoter Settlements: Concurrently, Attorney General James announced finalized settlements totaling nearly $6 million with four of NovaTech’s most aggressive top-tier promoters: Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr., and James Corbett. These individuals will surrender funds to be redistributed to victims and are permanently banned from the financial and crypto sectors.
Chronology of a Fraud: From AWS Mining to NovaTech’s Collapse
The trajectory of the NovaTech fraud did not occur in a vacuum; rather, it was built upon the infrastructure and playbook of earlier illicit schemes orchestrated by the same central actors.
2018–2019: The AWS Mining Precursor
Before launching NovaTech, Cynthia and Eddy Petion served as the top United States-based promoters for AWS Mining. This fraudulent enterprise marketed itself as a cryptocurrency cloud-mining operation, promising investors monthly returns ranging from 15% to 20%. Like NovaTech, AWS Mining relied on heavy recruitment and multi-level marketing tactics. When the platform inevitably collapsed in 2019, investors lost millions. Judicial filings later revealed that Cynthia Petion privately boasted in a WhatsApp chat message about pocketing at least $3 million personally from the AWS Mining wreckage before pivoting to her next venture.
June 2019 – May 2023: The Rise of NovaTech
Capitalizing on the lessons learned from AWS Mining, the Petions launched NovaTech Ltd. in the summer of 2019. Marketed aggressively as a legitimate, registered hedge fund broker allegedly licensed to conduct cryptocurrency and foreign exchange trading in the United States, NovaTech pitched itself as a safe, highly lucrative alternative to traditional banking.
In reality, the platform functioned as a classic Ponzi scheme. Rather than deploying capital into sophisticated trading strategies, the operators used incoming deposits from fresh recruits to fund weekly payouts and lavish recruiting bonuses for top-tier promoters. On-chain data captured by payment processors like CoinPayments revealed that investors poured approximately $1.16 billion in crypto assets into NovaTech’s central wallets during this four-year window.
2023: The Collapse and Frozen Withdrawals
The house of cards collapsed in 2023 as regulatory scrutiny intensified and liquidity dried up. Tens of thousands of global investors attempting to log into their accounts discovered they could no longer access or withdraw their funds. The platform abruptly shuttered operations, leaving investors stranded.
June 2024: New York Strikes First
Attorney General Letitia James formally filed a sweeping lawsuit against NovaTech, AWS Mining, and the Petions in June 2024, accusing them of defrauding investors of more than $1 billion and violating the state’s Martin Act—one of the nation’s most powerful anti-fraud statutes.
August 2024: Federal Regulators Step In
The federal government mirrored the state’s aggressive posture two months later. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought formal civil charges against the Petions and several top promoters, outlining what federal regulators categorized as a massive $650 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme.
August 2025: Default Judgment and Flight
As the civil litigation progressed, the Petions chose evasion over accountability. Having already fled the United States to avoid criminal and civil prosecution, they failed to answer the state’s lawsuit. This defiance prompted the New York court to issue a default judgment against them in August 2025, imposing sweeping industry-wide bans alongside the groundwork for the massive financial penalties finalized this week.
Supporting Data and Forensic Revelations
The sheer scale of the NovaTech fraud is mapped out in forensic detail within the OAG’s recent filings. Investigators utilized blockchain analytics and financial records to trace how billions of dollars moved through the ecosystem.
- The Trading Myth vs. Reality: NovaTech repeatedly assured investors that their capital was actively generating revenue through high-frequency forex and crypto trading. However, state audits revealed that out of the $1.16 billion deposited between August 2019 and May 2023, the platform routed less than $26 million to its actual trading provider. Of that modest sum, roughly $18.2 million was outright lost in trading.
- The Inner Circle’s Vault: Financial tracing demonstrated that Cynthia Petion maintained absolute control over the platform’s capital flows. Data from CoinPayments indicated she was the sole authorized user on the primary cryptocurrency wallet used to collect investor deposits.
- Personal Enrichment: Out of the billions handled by the platform, at least $134.5 million was funneled directly into private wallets and accounts controlled exclusively by Cynthia and Eddy Petion.
- The Math Behind the Penalty: To arrive at the $1.37 billion figure, the Attorney General’s office calculated the net loss by taking the total deposits handled by Cynthia Petion’s exclusive wallet, subtracting the fractional amounts genuinely sent to third-party trading providers, and factoring in statutory prejudgment interest.
Targeting Vulnerable Populations: Official Responses and Community Impact
What elevated NovaTech from a standard financial crime to a humanitarian tragedy was its deliberate targeting of close-knit, marginalized populations.
According to investigators, the Petions focused heavily on immigrant communities—specifically Haitian Americans living in New York and across the diaspora. The fraudsters infiltrated community spaces, leveraging prayer groups, social media channels, and encrypted messaging applications like WhatsApp. Promotional materials and video advertisements were purposefully produced in Haitian Creole and heavily laced with religious messaging, framing the platform not only as a financial investment but as a blessing and a pathway to generational wealth.
"These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life, but instead robbed them of their life savings."
— New York Attorney General Letitia JamesIn her public statements accompanying the latest filings, Attorney General James excoriated the defendants for their predatory tactics. "These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life, but instead robbed them of their life savings," James said. "While the masterminds have fled the country to escape justice, we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to hold them accountable, reclaim stolen funds, and deliver whatever relief is possible to victims."
The settlements secured with promoters Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr., and James Corbett—totaling nearly $6 million—represent a tangible, albeit partial, recovery. These funds will be funneled into restitution funds designed to aid the victims who lost their homes, retirement funds, and emergency savings to the scheme.
Implications for the Crypto Industry and Cross-Border Enforcement
The NovaTech saga carries broad implications for the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem and the future of regulatory enforcement:
- The Limitations of Civil Disgorgement: While securing a $1.37 billion default judgment is a monumental symbolic and legal victory for the New York OAG, it highlights a persistent challenge in modern financial crime: asset recovery when defendants become international fugitives. Because the Petions have successfully escaped U.S. jurisdiction, enforcing the judgment and repatriating assets hidden in foreign bank accounts or privacy-focused crypto wallets will require extensive international cooperation and extradition efforts.
- Crackdown on MLM Crypto Schemes: The coordinated actions by both the New York Attorney General and the SEC signal that multi-level marketing structures masquerading as decentralized finance (DeFi) or crypto trading platforms are facing existential threats. Regulators are increasingly holding top-tier promoters personally liable—evidenced by the multi-million-dollar settlements extracted from Zizi, Ciceron, Roy, and Corbett—sending a chilling message to anyone tempted to shill high-yield, unsustainable crypto programs.
- Protection of Marginalized Demographics: Regulatory bodies are putting increased emphasis on affinity fraud—crimes where perpetrators exploit cultural, ethnic, or religious affiliations to build trust. The heavy focus on how NovaTech targeted the Haitian-American community underscores a growing awareness among law enforcement agencies that vulnerable populations require specialized outreach, consumer education, and aggressive legal protection against predatory digital asset schemes.
As the legal proceedings in the New York County Supreme Court move toward final implementation of the judgment, victims across the globe are left waiting to see how much of the vanished $1.4 billion can realistically be recovered from overseas hideaways.
