New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court on Thursday 22 October 2026 to order Cynthia and Eddy Petion, the founders of the NovaTech crypto trading program, to pay $1.3 billion in damages and disgorgement. The detailed filing, reported by The Block, puts the bill at $1.13 billion of disgorgement plus $232.5 million of prejudgment interest, close to $1.37 billion in all. The same day, the Attorney General’s office announced settlements worth nearly $6 million with four of the scheme’s promoters.
The $1.37 billion is a request, not an award. A judge still has to decide how much, if anything, the couple owes. Liability is already decided, though never tried: a default judgment entered in August 2025, after the Petions did not answer the lawsuit, went against them and barred both from the securities, commodities and crypto industries. No defence was heard.
The harder part is collecting. The Attorney General’s release says the judgment came “after the couple fled the country”; The Block, citing the office, says they have left the United States. The office has not said where they are, and nothing published so far mentions a frozen account or recovered funds.
The NovaTech fraud case: a $1.37 billion request built on wallet records
The release calls the new filing an “inquest”, the step in which a New York court sets the sum owed by a defendant in default. According to Finger Lakes 1, the August 2025 judgment left the money to be settled through written submissions, and the office made its request in an affirmation filed on 22 October.
The press release gives the round figure of $1.3 billion. The breakdown comes from the filing, as reported by The Block: $1.13 billion that the state says should be handed back, plus $232.5 million of prejudgment interest. Added up as printed, the two make about $1.36 billion; The Block puts the total at about $1.37 billion and Finger Lakes 1 at about $1.367 billion, so the published components are probably rounded. Finger Lakes 1 adds that the filing also seeks separate sums tied to AWS blockchain e riceve una ricompensa, rendendo carissimo riscrivere lo storico.">Mining, which it does not quantify.
Neither the Petions nor any lawyer acting for them has commented in the reports published so far. The court has not set a date for its decision in any document we have seen.
How the money moved: $1.16 billion in, $25.99 million traded, $134.5 million to the Petions
The deposit figure rests on records from CoinPayments, a crypto payment processor. They show investors sending $1.16 billion in crypto to NovaTech’s wallet between August 2019 and May 2023, according to the state’s filing as described by The Block. The release itself uses a rounder number: over $1 billion deposited from August 2019 through April 2023.
Very little of it reached a market. The release says less than $26 million was ever traded on NovaTech’s platform, and the filing is more precise: NovaTech placed $25.99 million with B2Broker, a provider of trading platforms, between August 2019 and April 2023, and traders lost $18.19 million of that amount. The state says at least $134.5 million was withdrawn to wallets belonging to the Petions, in transfers Cynthia Petion authorised.
Prosecutors argue that the rest of the system ran on new money: the “profits” credited to accounts and the bonuses paid for recruiting were, in their account, paid out of later investors’ deposits. That is the classic shape of a pyramid scheme. It is also the core of the claim the court accepted by default in 2025, with no evidence offered in reply.
| Item (NovaTech, per the NY filing) | Amount | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto deposited by investors (CoinPayments records) | $1.16 billion | Aug 2019 to May 2023 |
| Placed with B2Broker for trading | $25.99 million | Aug 2019 to Apr 2023 |
| Lost by traders on that money | $18.19 million | Aug 2019 to Apr 2023 |
| Withdrawn to wallets of the Petions (at least) | $134.5 million | Not stated |
| Disgorgement requested | $1.13 billion | Filed 22 Oct 2026 |
| Prejudgment interest requested | $232.5 million | Filed 22 Oct 2026 |
| Total requested (as reported) | about $1.37 billion | Filed 22 Oct 2026 |
The disgorgement figure is close to everything investors put in, not to what the founders are shown to have taken. The $134.5 million traced to the couple’s wallets is about a tenth of the request. Beyond payouts to earlier investors and promoters, the published reports do not say where the rest of the money went.
Four promoters pay nearly $6 million and leave the industry
The settlements announced on 22 October cover four men the release calls the scheme’s top promoters, people who sold AWS Mining contracts and NovaTech trading packages. Each will pay disgorgement for the benefit of victims, and all four are permanently banned from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries, the release says.
| Promoter | Disgorgement |
|---|---|
| Martin Zizi | $2.9 million |
| Frantz Ciceron | $2.05 million |
| James Corbett | $750,000 |
| Ricardo Roy Sr. | $275,861 |
| Total | about $5.98 million |
The state’s claims against them were making false or misleading statements while selling securities, acting as unregistered brokers and taking part in an illegal pyramid scheme. The release does not say whether any of the four admitted those claims, and it gives no date or method for paying the money out to investors. For now, these settlements are the only money the New York case has secured.
“NovaTech and AWS Mining scammed thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers by telling them they were making a safe investment,” James said in the release. She added that her office “remains committed to cracking down on unregistered cryptocurrency dealers”.
From AWS Mining to NovaTech: what the state says happened
The case began on 6 June 2024, when the office sued NovaTechFx, AWS Mining Pty Ltd and the Petions. What follows is the state’s account. The court accepted it against the Petions by default, without a trial; the promoters settled, and the release does not say they admitted it.
AWS Mining came first. Its promoters, the Petions among them, promised returns of 15 to 20 percent a month, 200 percent within 15 months and bonuses for bringing in new investors. The company did not generate enough returns, if any, to pay those promises and collapsed in 2019, the state says.
The couple then launched NovaTech. It was presented as a registered hedge fund broker licensed to trade crypto in the United States, which the state says was false. It advertised trading profits of about 2 to 4 percent a week and withdrawals at any time.
Recruitment went through prayer groups, social media and WhatsApp group chats, with adverts in Haitian Creole and religious messages. More than 11,000 New Yorkers invested, from New York City, Westchester, Long Island and Rockland and Orange counties, and lost tens of millions of dollars, according to the office. Worldwide, it counts hundreds of thousands of investors. When NovaTech collapsed in May 2023, tens of thousands of them could not withdraw.
“These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings,” James said on 22 October.
The SEC case in Florida is a separate track
The Petions also face the Securities and Exchange Commission. On 12 August 2024 the agency sued NovaTech Ltd., the couple and six promoters in federal court in the Southern District of Florida (case 1:24-cv-23058). The SEC alleges the program raised more than $650 million in crypto assets from more than 200,000 investors worldwide, many of them in the Haitian-American community, and that most of the money went to earlier investors and promoter commissions rather than trading.
According to the SEC, its complaint quotes Cynthia Petion promising investors that “in this program, you are in profit from day one”. The agency also alleges that the couple siphoned off millions of dollars for themselves. These are allegations: no federal court has ruled on them.
The SEC’s case page, last updated on 13 March 2026, lists a court order allowing the agency to serve the defendants by alternative means and a clerk’s entry of default. It lists no default judgment and no amount. Martin Zizi, one of the promoters who settled in New York, agreed in 2024 to a $100,000 civil penalty in the SEC case without admitting or denying the allegations, with other sums left for later and the deal subject to court approval.
The two cases do not use the same yardstick. The SEC’s $650 million is money raised from investors as described in 2024. The New York figure of $1.16 billion is crypto deposited into NovaTech’s wallet over almost four years, per the processor’s records, and it comes from the state’s filing.
What happens next: collecting from a couple who left
The court must now rule on the inquest. No hearing date or deadline appears in the release or in the press reports. Because the Petions defaulted, the judge can fix the amount on the written submissions. Nothing has been awarded yet, and the final figure can be lower than the request.
Even a large judgment would only be a claim on paper unless assets are found. The state has traced $134.5 million to wallets of the Petions; it has not said whether any of that crypto is still there, frozen or within reach of a US court. Enforcing a New York judgment abroad depends on the country involved, and the office has not named one.
For victims, the near-term money is the $5.98 million from the promoters. The office has not published how it will be shared or when. In the SEC case, the next step would be a motion for a default judgment against NovaTech and the Petions; none has been reported.
The case adds to a pattern we described this week: US authorities are announcing large figures in crypto fraud cases, but little of the money restrained has been shown going back to victims.
Pyramid scheme red flags NovaTech investors were shown
A pyramid scheme pays early members with money from later ones, and usually rewards recruiting as much as investing. It needs a constant flow of newcomers and fails when that flow slows. NovaTech, as the state describes it, combined most of the warning signs regulators list.
- A fixed, high return promised every week or month, here 2 to 4 percent a week, which no real trading desk can guarantee.
- Bonuses for bringing in friends, family or members of the same congregation.
- A claim of registration as a hedge fund broker and of a US licence to trade crypto, both false according to the state.
- Withdrawals promised “at any time” that stopped once deposits dried up.
A licence claim can be checked against the regulator’s own public register before any money is sent. Our guide to avoiding crypto scams lists the common schemes and where to report them, and our explainer on how centralized platforms hold customer funds shows why handing crypto to an unregulated operator is the riskiest step.
The New York court’s decision on the $1.37 billion request is the next date to watch.