New York AG seeks $1.37B from NovaTech founders over Ponzi scheme

New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked a court to order defunct crypto and forex trading platform NovaTech’s founders, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, and related companies to pay $1.37 billion over its Ponzi scheme.

The AG is seeking the return of about $1.13 billion in investor funds, plus $232.5 million in interest, according to a Thursday court filing.

The court found the Petions and the companies liable by default in August 2025 after they failed to respond to the lawsuit.

Four people who recruited investors into NovaTech have separately agreed to pay nearly $6 million in settlements intended to benefit victims, according to the AG’s office.

More than 11,000 New Yorkers lost tens of millions of dollars through NovaTech and an earlier crypto mining scheme, AWS Mining, the AG’s office said. The complaint alleged that promoters targeted Haitian and other immigrant communities through prayer groups, social media and WhatsApp, promising high returns and recruitment bonuses.

The filing says that investors deposited about $1.16 billion into NovaTech’s crypto wallets between August 2019 and May 2023. Of that, only about $26 million was deposited with the platform’s trading provider, B2Broker, for trading, according to the attorney general.