The legal action marks a major escalation in the ongoing crackdown against fraudulent digital asset operations that exploit vulnerable populations. According to the Attorney General’s office, the alleged founders of the sprawling schemes, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, failed to appear in court to face the mounting allegations and have reportedly fled the country to avoid prosecution and civil liabilities.
"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 Letitia James said in a public statement detailing the crackdown. "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 operation relied heavily on a network of promoters who infiltrated specific demographic groups. AWS Mining and its successor, NovaTech, were heavily marketed within Haitian and other immigrant communities. Promoters used deeply personal and trusted avenues to recruit victims, leveraging prayer groups, local WhatsApp chat rooms, and advertisements produced specifically in Haitian Creole to build trust and lower the guard of prospective investors.
The trajectory of the fraud began with AWS Mining, which operated by selling cryptocurrency mining contracts that promised implausible financial returns. The scheme enticed participants with guarantees of 15 to 20 percent monthly returns and an astonishing 200 percent return within a 15-month timeframe. After operating for a period, AWS Mining collapsed in 2019. Rather than facing legal scrutiny or halting their illicit activities, the Petions immediately pivoted and launched NovaTech.
NovaTech was rebranded and marketed to the public as a registered hedge fund broker. This iteration of the scheme took an even more aggressive approach to extracting capital, promising weekly trading returns ranging from two to four percent. Compounded over a year, these promises translated to more than 140 percent in annual returns, figures that financial experts and prosecutors immediately recognized as red flags indicative of a Ponzi scheme.
Investigators and prosecutors revealed that these promised returns were entirely fabricated. Records obtained from B2Broker, the firm that supplied NovaTech’s white-label trading platform, exposed the stark reality behind the glossy marketing materials. Out of the more than $1 billion deposited by eager investors between 2019 and 2023, only about $26 million was ever actually deployed into actual trading activities. Furthermore, NovaTech’s designated traders managed to lose $18.2 million of that limited amount.
The mechanics of the operation followed a classic Ponzi model. Rather than generating profits from legitimate market strategies or crypto mining, the funds used to pay earlier investors were derived directly from the deposits of newer victims. When the unsustainable structure finally buckled under its own weight in mid-2023, NovaTech collapsed, leaving tens of thousands of stranded investors completely unable to withdraw their funds or access their accounts.
In addition to the overarching $1.37 billion judgment, the New York Attorney General’s office is aggressively pursuing an additional $134.5 million. Prosecutors allege that the Petions withdrew this substantial sum directly from investor accounts into their own personal digital wallets—accounts that were under the sole control of Cynthia Petion. Furthermore, the state is seeking an additional $4.7 million that was directly tied to the earlier AWS Mining scheme.
The legal walls have been closing in on the operators for months. A default judgment entered by the courts in August 2025 formally barred the couple and their associated corporate entities from participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries moving forward.
While the primary masterminds remain overseas and absent from judicial proceedings, accountability measures have begun to catch up with other key participants in the enterprise. Separately from the action against the Petions, four of NovaTech and AWS Mining’s top promoters have reached agreements with authorities. These individuals have agreed to pay nearly $6 million in disgorgement to directly compensate victims, while also accepting permanent bans from the financial and cryptocurrency industries.
