New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked a court to order NovaTech founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion to pay $1.3 billion in damages and disgorgement, The Haitian Times reported. The request, announced on Thursday, October 22, follows a default judgment against the couple in August 2025. They have fled the country.

NovaTech collected more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency from investors between August 2019 and April 2023, but state investigators say less than $26 million was actually traded. The company promised weekly profits of about 2% to 4% and collapsed in May 2023, leaving tens of thousands of investors unable to withdraw their money. A filing by the attorney general calls NovaTech a Ponzi scheme.

Recruiters targeted immigrant and religious communities, especially Haitians, with Haitian Creole ads, religious appeals and WhatsApp groups. More than 11,000 New Yorkers lost tens of millions of dollars. The Petions launched NovaTech after the 2019 collapse of AWS Mining, another crypto operation they had promoted.

Separately, four promoters, Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr. and James Corbett, agreed to pay victims $5.98 million and are permanently banned from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries.