NY AG Secures Nearly $6m From NovaTech Scam

New York Attorney General Letitia James has secured nearly $6m from four top promoters of the NovaTech and AWS Mining cryptocurrency schemes, her office said on 22 October. The four — Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr. and James Corbett — will pay disgorgement for the benefit of victims and have been permanently banned from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries.

The settlements stem from a June 2024 lawsuit in which James sued NovaTech (NovaTechFx) and AWS Mining Pty Ltd, accusing them of running illegal pyramid schemes that promised high, steady returns while taking in more than a billion dollars of investor cryptocurrency. More than 11,000 New Yorkers across the state lost tens of millions of dollars, the attorney general’s office said.

In brief

New York’s attorney general has settled with four top promoters of the NovaTech and AWS Mining crypto schemes for nearly $6m and permanent industry bans.
The schemes targeted Haitian and other immigrant communities and cost more than 11,000 New Yorkers tens of millions of dollars.
Separately, the state has asked a court to order NovaTech’s fled founders to pay $1.3bn; the court has not ruled.

How the schemes targeted immigrant communities

AWS Mining promised investors monthly returns of 15 to 20 percent and 200 percent returns within 15 months, plus bonuses for recruiting others, before collapsing in 2019, according to the attorney general. Its founders, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, then started NovaTech, marketing it falsely as a registered hedge-fund broker licensed to trade crypto in the US and advertising weekly profits of roughly two to four percent.

The office said the Petions targeted minority and religious communities — particularly Haitian New Yorkers — in prayer groups and WhatsApp chats, using advertisements in Haitian Creole and religious messaging. From August 2019 through April 2023 investors deposited over a billion dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency with NovaTech, yet less than $26m was ever traded on its platform. When NovaTech collapsed in May 2023, tens of thousands of investors could not withdraw their funds.

The four promoters will pay Ciceron $2.05m, Zizi $2.9m, Corbett $750,000 and Roy Sr. $275,861 — together just under $6m.

The $1.3bn the court has not yet ordered

Alongside the settlements, the attorney general’s office filed an inquest on 22 October asking the court to order the Petions to pay about $1.3bn, following a default judgment issued in August 2025 after the couple fled the country. The filing seeks $1,134,549,691 in disgorgement — the $1,160,544,294 of investor cryptocurrency deposited into NovaTech, less the $25,994,603 the company actually sent to its B2Broker trading account — plus $232,473,894 in pre-judgment interest, for a total of $1,367,023,585.

That headline figure is a request, not an award. A court has entered a default judgment on liability, but it has not ruled on the amount the Petions must pay; the inquest is the stage at which the sum is decided. The Block, which reported the filing, put the request at over $1.3bn on the same calculation. The distinction matters: the nearly $6m from the promoters is money now committed under signed settlements, while the $1.3bn is a sum the state is seeking from two defendants who are outside the country and against whom collection, even if ordered, is far from assured. For victims, the realistic near-term recovery is the promoter disgorgement, not the headline billion-dollar number — a gap common in large fraud cases, where paper judgments dwarf what is ever paid out.

A pattern of New York crypto enforcement

The case fits a run of New York actions against crypto operators. Last month the state secured an industry ban and up to $35m from former Celsius chief Alex Mashinsky, though both sums there were conditional. The office has also pointed to a $5m settlement with Uphold over the Cred scheme and a $200m settlement with Galaxy Digital over Luna.

It also lands amid a wider enforcement push: a US Justice Department unit recently listed $938m in scam-related crypto as restrained, and Italian police arrested 30 people over an alleged mafia “hidden bank” that used crypto. NovaTech stands out for how squarely it was aimed at trust inside immigrant and faith communities.