New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking a court to order NovaTech founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion to pay approximately $1.37 billion after investigators traced more than $1.16 billion in cryptocurrency deposits into the purported investment operation. The application follows a default judgment against the founders, but the newly requested monetary award is not yet a final court-ordered recovery.
Separately, four senior promoters of NovaTech and the related AWS Mining program have agreed to disgorge nearly $6 million and accept permanent prohibitions on involvement in the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries. That money is intended to benefit victims, according to the attorney general’s October 22 announcement; the public record does not mean the full amount has already been collected and paid to every investor.
The distinction between the two developments matters. The state has secured settlements with four promoters, while pursuing a much larger damages and disgorgement calculation against the founders who, according to state officials, failed to respond to the lawsuit and left the country. Meanwhile, historical cryptocurrency flows reveal the scale of deposits but do not themselves measure the exact unrecovered losses of each customer.
How Did New York Calculate the $1.37 Billion Demand?
The New York Attorney General’s October 22 statement describes a new court filing seeking $1.3 billion-plus from the Petions after the court entered a default judgment in August 2025. According to an accompanying affirmation submitted to the court, as reported by The Block, the requested amount comprises approximately $1.13 billion in disgorgement and $232.5 million in prejudgment interest.
The two rounded components add to $1.3625 billion, reported as nearly $1.37 billion. This is a proposed monetary remedy, not a statement that the attorney general has located $1.37 billion in accessible cash or cryptocurrency. The court must still determine the appropriate sum at the pending inquest.
Disgorgement generally aims to strip gains associated with unlawful conduct, while prejudgment interest compensates for the time between the relevant events and a monetary award under the applicable legal rules. Those objectives differ from criminal fines and from restitution actually distributed through a claims process.
New York alleges NovaTech sold unregistered, misleading crypto investment packages and operated a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. The default judgment resolved the founders’ liability after they did not defend the action, but the size of the requested award and the practical ability to collect it remain separate questions.
The source filing links the proposed recovery to digital-asset payment records. Because the original records represent activity across several years and different assets, an analyst should resist equating total deposit value, alleged ill-gotten gains and recoverable victim losses without the court’s accounting methodology.
What Do the $1.16 Billion in Crypto Deposits Show?
Prosecutors say CoinPayments data traced about $1.16 billion in cryptocurrency flowing into NovaTech’s wallet between August 2019 and May 2023. That figure is an alleged historical gross receipt measure based on transaction records, not a current wallet balance or a verified estimate of assets still held by the founders.
The court filing, according to The Block’s review, says at least $134.5 million was transferred to wallets linked to Cynthia and Eddy Petion, with Cynthia authorizing those transfers. This amount illustrates the alleged diversion of investor-controlled assets, but it should not be added on top of the $1.16 billion deposited as if it were a separate second inflow. It represents a later movement of some funds within the alleged scheme.
One challenge in tracking a cryptocurrency-based investment program is whether a transfer reflects a new customer deposit, a payment between internal wallets, a withdrawal to a participant or a market conversion. Investigators can use address histories and payment-processor records to attribute some flows, but gross transaction values alone cannot establish the number of unique victims or the remaining loss for each person.
The attorney general says more than 11,000 New York residents invested in the related NovaTech and AWS Mining programs, with losses in the tens of millions of dollars statewide. The operation is alleged to have reached hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide. These are different populations and should not be conflated with the CoinPayments total.
The case is one example of how an investment scheme can advertise a blockchain payment rail while relying on traditional deception about its underlying economic activity. A separate federal Fundsz fraud case covered by DaveFinances similarly showed how advertised trading expertise can obscure a lack of genuine investment returns. The two proceedings involve different defendants and should not be treated as connected.
Why Does the $25.99 Million B2Broker Figure Matter?
The most revealing comparison in the New York filing is the amount allegedly directed to actual trading infrastructure. Prosecutors say NovaTech transferred about $25.99 million to the B2Broker trading-platform provider from August 2019 to April 2023, versus approximately $1.16 billion received in crypto deposits.
On those rounded figures, the amount sent to the identified trading platform represented about 2.24% of total receipts. The filing further says traders lost approximately $18.19 million on the activity associated with that platform. That implies the claimed trading result was strongly negative rather than capable of financing the regular investment returns that promoters described.
These figures do not establish that only 2.24% of all money was ever deployed anywhere, because the evidence described concerns a particular identified platform and reporting period. Nor does the mention of B2Broker establish misconduct by the trading-technology provider. The allegation concerns how NovaTech collected, allocated, represented and used customer money.
The accounting difference helps explain prosecutors’ claim that purported investment profits and recruitment bonuses were financed using contributions from subsequent customers. A business promising consistent returns needs a source of distributable earnings; when documented trading produces losses and only a limited share of collections reaches that activity, the payment model becomes difficult to reconcile with the marketing.
For scale, $18.19 million of losses on $25.99 million transferred to the platform is approximately 70% of that transferred amount. That is a ratio of two figures alleged in the filing, not a separately audited return for every NovaTech investor or an account-level measurement across the whole business.
What Did the Four NovaTech Promoters Agree to Pay?
The New York attorney general’s settlement announcement identifies four individuals and the disgorgement sums associated with each:
| Promoter | Agreed disgorgement |
|---|---|
| Martin Zizi | $2,900,000 |
| Frantz Ciceron | $2,050,000 |
| James Corbett | $750,000 |
| Ricardo Roy Sr. | $275,861 |
| Total | $5,975,861 |
All four have also accepted permanent bans from the securities, commodities and crypto industries under the settlements described by the state. The agreements resolve claims concerning misleading promotion, unregistered brokerage activities and participation in a pyramid structure.
These payments should not be automatically added to the requested $1.37 billion as a separate pool of confirmed, already-recovered cash. The case involves several defendants and forms of relief, and the ultimate distribution to victims will depend on collection, applicable terms and procedures. The state has not disclosed a completed global reimbursement schedule for all NovaTech participants.
Nor is a settlement by a promoter proof that every person who shared a referral link had the same knowledge or legal responsibility. Liability and remedies in this case concern named individuals and their documented conduct.
How Did the Scheme Target Haitian and Religious Communities?
According to the attorney general, AWS Mining originally promised investors monthly returns of 15% to 20%, returns of 200% over 15 months and recruitment incentives. It collapsed in 2019, and the Petions then developed NovaTech as a new purported trading opportunity.
The state says the defendants promoted NovaTech through prayer gatherings, WhatsApp chats, social media and Haitian Creole marketing aimed in part at immigrant and religious communities. They described the business as a registered hedge fund broker and portrayed crypto trading profits of 2% to 4% weekly as an attainable ongoing result.
Communities built on personal trust can provide valuable networks for sharing legitimate opportunities, but scammers may misuse those relationships. Referral payments can reinforce the illusion of investment success while concealing where distributions actually come from. The allegations here center on how those trust networks were used, not on the ethnicity or faith of investors as a risk factor.
The case started with New York’s June 2024 lawsuit against NovaTech and AWS Mining. It follows a pattern regulators have challenged elsewhere: unusually stable return promises, unverifiable trading strategies, recruiting-based compensation and payment delays as new deposits slow.
Investors evaluating similar offers can use the warning signs outlined in DaveFinances’ crypto-scam identification guide, particularly independent registration checks and skepticism toward claims of guaranteed investment growth.
Will Victims Recover the $1.37 Billion?
A monetary award and an actual recovery are not the same thing. The requested judgment could formally establish a large liability even if substantial assets have moved through wallets, intermediaries or jurisdictions where collection is difficult.
For example, investigators tracing payments into wallets attributed to the Petions still need legal control over assets held today. Historical transfers do not establish that the addresses retain their original balances, that the same person controls each destination or that all recipients can be compelled to return funds.
International enforcement can also require cooperation among exchanges, payment processors and courts. A separate DaveFinances investigation of traced crypto transfers through multiple chains illustrated how following a wallet path is different from confirming the identity of the ultimate holder or recovering the assets. There is no established connection between that incident and NovaTech.
Anyone claiming to represent a recovery service should be checked against official court or attorney-general channels. Victims of large crypto frauds are often approached by separate scammers who demand an upfront payment in exchange for access to supposedly seized funds. No such payment should be assumed necessary merely because prosecutors have announced a settlement.
The near-term legal milestone is the court’s decision on the state’s inquest request against Cynthia and Eddy Petion. The four promoter settlements are already announced, but further evidence will be needed to establish how much of the nearly $6 million is collected and how claims are processed.
New York’s latest filings therefore expose a claimed $1.16 billion crypto fundraising operation and a demand for an approximately $1.37 billion monetary remedy, supported by evidence of far smaller and loss-making trading activity. The story is not that a billion dollars has been returned. It is that regulators are attempting to turn an alleged long-running pyramid scheme into enforceable judgments and recoveries, with the largest collection questions still unresolved.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
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