More than 11,000 New Yorkers put money into NovaTech and AWS Mining, an earlier scheme its founders promoted. The state says the two schemes targeted Haitian and other immigrant and religious communities and drew hundreds of thousands of investors worldwide. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office asked a state court to set the judgment against founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion and their companies at $1.37 billion. The only recovery the state has announced is about $6 million that four promoters agreed to pay, some of it in installments running to 2030.
The request covers roughly $1.13 billion in disgorgement plus $232.5 million in prejudgment interest. The judge has not ruled. Liability was decided in August 2025, when the court entered a default judgment against the couple and ordered them to hand over investor records and a full accounting. The filing says they have produced neither. The attorney general’s office said the default judgment was issued after the couple fled the country.
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How the State Got to $1.37 Billion
The filing states that “NovaTech was a Ponzi scheme,” with weekly returns of 2% to 4% that were invented and paid out of other investors’ deposits. Records from payment processor CoinPayments show about $1.16 billion flowed into NovaTech’s wallet from August 2019 to May 2023. Just $26 million of it went to a trading platform NovaTech licensed from B2Broker, and NovaTech’s traders lost $18.2 million of that. The state backed the trading money out of the deposits to arrive at its disgorgement figure.
Cynthia Petion, the sole authorized user on the account, approved at least $134.5 million in withdrawals to wallets held by her and Eddy Petion, the filing says.
“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 announcing the settlements and the filing.
What Victims Stand to Get
The promoter settlements, reached between June 2024 and Oct. 20, 2026, and announced Thursday, total about $5.98 million: $2.9 million from Martin Zizi, $2.05 million from Frantz Ciceron, $750,000 from James Corbett and $275,861 from Ricardo Roy Sr. All four are permanently barred from the securities, commodities and crypto industries, and the attorney general’s office said the money is for the benefit of victims. That sum is under half a percent of what the state wants from the Petions.
Neither the filing nor the release describes an asset freeze, a receiver or a plan for collecting from the Petions. In a parallel federal case, the SEC obtained a clerk’s default against the couple and NovaTech in March 2026.
Earlier this month, the attorney general’s office permanently barred former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries in New York.
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