Crypto Scammers Who Used Prayer Groups to Lure Victims Must Pay $1.3 Billion, Says New York

In a legal filing submitted to the New York County Supreme Court, the Office of the Attorney General asked a judge to order Cynthia and Eddy Petion, along with NovaTech and related corporate entities, to pay approximately $1.37 billion in combined damages, disgorgement, and interest. The aggressive legal action marks the latest escalation in a multi-year effort by state and federal regulators to hold accountable the architects behind one of the largest cryptocurrency fraud schemes targeting vulnerable immigrant communities.

The massive financial demand follows an August 2025 default judgment issued against the Petions after they fled the United States and failed to respond to the state’s initial lawsuit. Alongside the financial penalties, that default judgment permanently banned the couple from participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries.

In tandem with the filing against the founders, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced settlements totaling nearly $6 million with four of the scheme’s top promoters: Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr., and James Corbett. Under the terms of the agreements, these promoters will pay funds intended to benefit defrauded victims and are likewise permanently barred from the securities and crypto industries.

The legal crusade against NovaTech began in June 2024, when James first filed a lawsuit against the platform and AWS Mining, alleging they had collectively defrauded investors out of more than $1 billion. Just two months after the state’s initial legal challenge, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) followed suit, charging the Petions and other key figures over what federal regulators categorized as a $650 million crypto fraud scheme.

According to investigative findings from the attorney general’s office, the Petions deliberately targeted immigrant communities, most notably Haitian New Yorkers. The founders utilized faith-based messaging, prayer groups, social media networks, and encrypted WhatsApp chats, alongside targeted advertisements in Haitian Creole, to build trust and lure prospective investors. Ultimately, more than 11,000 New Yorkers were swept up in the scheme, alongside hundreds of thousands of other investors across the globe.

"These scammers targeted immigrant and religious communities with the promise of a better life but instead robbed them of their life savings," James said in a statement detailing the enforcement actions.

NovaTech heavily marketed itself as a legitimate, registered hedge fund broker that was fully licensed to trade cryptocurrency within the United States. The platform dangled the promise of astronomical returns, advertising weekly gains ranging from 2% to 4%, which equated to an annual yield of more than 140%.

In reality, the state’s investigation revealed a classic Ponzi scheme structure. Out of the vast sums deposited by trusting participants, NovaTech funneled just under $26 million to its actual trading provider between 2019 and 2023, ultimately losing approximately $18.2 million of that capital. Rather than generating legitimate profits from crypto markets, the platform funded its weekly investor payouts and lucrative recruiter bonuses entirely using deposits collected from newer participants. When the unsustainable structure finally collapsed in 2023, tens of thousands of investors found themselves completely locked out of their accounts, unable to withdraw a single dollar of their remaining funds.

Data recovered from the crypto payment processor CoinPayments painted a stark picture of the scale of the fraud. The records show that investors deposited roughly $1.16 billion in digital assets into NovaTech’s wallets between August 2019 and May 2023. Shockingly, Cynthia Petion was listed as the sole authorized user on the primary account.

Investigators traced at least $134.5 million directly to wallets controlled personally by the Petions. After subtracting the modest fraction of funds that were actually routed to legitimate trading channels, the state calculated that the defendants must disgorge approximately $1.13 billion, supplemented by an additional $232 million in statutory interest to properly account for the immense financial harm inflicted upon victims.

Long before launching NovaTech, the Petions had already established themselves as premier players in the alternative finance and crypto recruitment sphere. They served as top United States promoters for AWS Mining, a notorious venture that promised investors monthly returns of 15% to 20% through cryptocurrency mining before it ultimately imploded in 2019. Court filings highlight that Cynthia Petion openly admitted in a private WhatsApp conversation to pocketing at least $3 million from that earlier fraudulent enterprise, demonstrating a prolonged pattern of exploiting retail investors before setting their sights on the multi-billion-dollar NovaTech operation.