New York Attorney General Letitia James has requested that a court order the founders of the NovaTech crypto platform, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, to pay $1.37 billion. This amount includes $1.13 billion in investor deposits and $232.5 million in interest. The request follows a default judgment issued in August 2025, which banned the couple from operating in the securities and crypto sectors.
According to the filing, NovaTech collected over $1.16 billion in crypto between August 2019 and May 2023. Only $26 million was used for trading, resulting in losses of $18.2 million. The platform operated as a pyramid scheme, using new deposits to pay existing investors and promoters. Cynthia Petion reportedly transferred at least $134.5 million to personal wallets.
The scheme primarily targeted immigrant and religious communities, promising weekly returns of 2-4 percent. Following the platform's collapse in May 2023, hundreds of thousands of investors lost access to their assets, including over 11,000 individuals in New York. The legal proceedings also cover the earlier AWS Mining project, with the state seeking an additional $6.2 million in connection to it.
The New York Attorney General has also reached settlements with four promoters of the scheme. Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, James Corbett, and Ricardo Roy Sr. have agreed to pay a combined total of approximately $6 million and are permanently barred from the securities and crypto industries. These funds are intended to compensate the victims of the fraudulent platform.
