The alleged masterminds and founders of the fraudulent enterprises, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, have systematically avoided accountability by failing to appear in court. According to the New York Attorney General’s office, the couple has since fled the country to escape prosecution, leaving a trail of financial devastation in their wake.
"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," Attorney General James said in a sternly worded statement detailing the scope of the operation. "These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings."
The sophisticated fraudulent apparatus relied heavily on a network of trusted promoters who infiltrated community structures. AWS Mining and its successor NovaTech specifically targeted Haitian and other immigrant communities, utilizing prayer groups, WhatsApp chat rooms, and promotional advertisements broadcasted in Haitian Creole to build false trust and secure participants.
The structural evolution of the fraud reveals a calculated playbook of deception. Initially, AWS Mining operated by selling cryptocurrency mining contracts that dangled unrealistic financial incentives in front of prospective investors, promising monthly returns ranging between 15 and 20 percent, alongside an astonishing 200 percent return within a 15-month timeframe. When that iteration of the scheme inevitably collapsed in 2019, the Petions immediately pivoted, launching NovaTech.
The newer entity was marketed aggressively as a legitimate, registered hedge fund broker. NovaTech lured new participants by promising weekly trading returns of two to four percent, which compounded into a staggering annual yield of more than 140 percent.
However, forensic evidence gathered by prosecutors exposed the entire operation as an elaborate illusion. Records obtained from B2Broker, the firm that supplied NovaTech’s white-label trading platform, unveiled a stark reality: out of the more than $1 billion deposited by trusting investors between 2019 and 2023, only about $26 million was ever actually deployed into trading markets. Compounding the deception, NovaTech’s active traders managed to lose $18.2 million of that minimal traded capital.
Rather than generating wealth through legitimate financial markets, the scheme operated on classic Ponzi mechanics. Returns disbursed to earlier investors were funded entirely by capital contributions from newer participants, creating an unsustainable financial house of cards. When NovaTech finally collapsed in mid-2023, tens of thousands of trapped investors discovered they were completely unable to withdraw their funds.
Alongside the primary $1.37 billion judgment demand, the Attorney General’s office is actively seeking the recovery of $134.5 million that the Petions allegedly funneled directly into their personal cryptocurrency wallets from an investor account under the sole control of Cynthia Petion. Furthermore, prosecutors are pursuing an additional $4.7 million directly tied to the preceding AWS Mining operation.
Legal measures against the core operators have already achieved preliminary milestones. 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 fugitives abroad, accountability has begun trickling down to the local network that enabled the fraud. In a separate development, four of the scheme’s most prominent promoters have agreed to pay nearly $6 million in financial disgorgement directly to victims, while simultaneously accepting permanent bans from the financial and cryptocurrency sectors.
