The legal action marks a major escalation in the ongoing crackdown on fraudulent digital asset operations that target vulnerable populations. According to the New York Attorney General’s office, the alleged founders of the schemes, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, failed to appear in court to face the charges and have reportedly 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 public statement regarding the massive legal filing. "These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings."
The fraudulent enterprises utilized a calculated approach to build trust and recruit participants. AWS Mining and its successor NovaTech relied heavily on a network of dedicated promoters who embedded themselves within Haitian and other immigrant communities. These promoters leveraged trusted spaces, organizing recruitment efforts through prayer groups, community WhatsApp chats, and targeted advertisements published in Haitian Creole.
The operational lifecycle of the twin scams reveals a classic playbook of digital asset fraud, where one failing scheme is quickly replaced by another to sustain cash flow. AWS Mining initially operated by selling cryptocurrency mining contracts, dangling the enticing prospect of monthly returns ranging from 15 to 20 percent, alongside an accumulated yield of 200 percent within a 15-month timeframe. When that model inevitably collapsed under its own weight in 2019, the Petions wasted little time pivoting to a new vehicle.
Following the collapse of AWS Mining, the founders launched NovaTech. This new iteration was aggressively marketed as a fully registered hedge fund broker. To lure in unsuspecting investors, NovaTech promised weekly trading returns of two to four percent, which compounded to an astronomical annual yield of more than 140 percent.
However, investigators and prosecutors allege that these promised returns were entirely fabricated. Financial records obtained from B2Broker, the firm that supplied NovaTech’s white-label trading platform, paint a grim picture of the operation’s backend reality. Out of the more than $1 billion in deposits pooled from investors between 2019 and 2023, only about $26 million was ever actually deployed into actual trades. Even worse, NovaTech’s internal traders lost $18.2 million of that meager allocated sum.
Rather than generating profits through legitimate market strategies, the enterprise operated on classic Ponzi mechanics. Returns distributed to earlier investors were funded entirely by capital injected from newer deposits. By the time NovaTech ultimately collapsed in mid-2023, tens of thousands of participants found themselves locked out of the platform, completely unable to withdraw their remaining funds.
Beyond the overarching demand for a $1.37 billion judgment, the New York Attorney General’s office is pursuing specific asset recoveries. This includes $134.5 million that the Petions allegedly siphoned directly from investor accounts into their own personal digital wallets, managed through an account under the sole control of Cynthia Petion. Furthermore, prosecutors are targeting an additional $4.7 million directly tied to the earlier AWS Mining operation.
The legal tightening around the masterminds has been progressing through the courts. A default judgment entered in August 2025 formally barred the couple and their corporate entities from ever participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries again.
While the primary architects remain at large outside the country, enforcement actions are also catching up to the secondary tiers of the operation. Separately from the core judgment against the founders, four of the scheme’s top promoters have reached agreements to pay nearly $6 million in disgorgement to reimburse victims. Alongside these financial penalties, these promoters have accepted permanent bans from participating in the securities and cryptocurrency industries.
