New York State Attorney General Letitia James has received nearly $6 million in settlements from four promoters involved in the NovaTech and AWS Mining crypto fraud cases, and has requested the court to order the founders of these two companies to pay an additional $1.3 billion.

According to a statement released by the Office of the Attorney General on October 22, these settlements involve Martin Zizi, Frantz Ciceron, Ricardo Roy Sr, and James Corbett. The prosecution alleges that these individuals helped promote an investment scam that affected hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including more than 11,000 residents of New York State.

All four individuals have been permanently banned from participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries. A total of approximately $5.98 million in compensation will be used to indemnify the victims.

James indicates that these companies utilize immigrant and religious communities to package investments as safe opportunities that can yield substantial returns.

"These scammers targeted immigrants and religious communities with promises of a better life, only to steal their life savings in the end," said James.

NovaTech Promoters Permanently Banned from Entering the Crypto Industry

These settlements were reached after James filed a lawsuit in June 2024. The lawsuit targeted NovaTechFx, AWS Mining, their founders, and several promoters, accusing them of operating an illegal pyramid scheme.

According to previous reports by crypto.news, the lawsuit alleges that these companies targeted Haitian communities through religious gatherings, social media, and WhatsApp groups, promising abnormally high returns on investment.

The latest agreement requires Zizi to pay $2.9 million, Ciceron to pay $2.05 million, Corbett to pay $750,000, and Roy to pay $275,861.

The prosecution accuses these promoters of misleading investors regarding investment products, acting as unregistered brokers, and encouraging people to recruit others to join the scam in exchange for commissions.

The state filed a lawsuit based on New York's securities laws, which include the Martin Act provisions that regulate fraudulent investment offerings and unregistered securities activities.

New York requires the founder of NovaTech to pay $1.3 billion

In addition to reaching a settlement, James also filed claims for monetary compensation against NovaTech, its founder Cynthia, and Eddy Petion. Both individuals have left the United States and have not responded to the state's lawsuit.

On August 4, 2025, a New York court issued a default judgment against this couple and their related companies, finding sufficient evidence of their involvement in illegal activities, and permanently restricted their participation in cryptocurrency and securities business.

The court has reserved the specific amount of compensation to be determined in another proceeding.

In court documents dated October 22, the prosecution calculated that the amount of illegal profits related to NovaTech to be returned amounted to 1.134 billion US dollars, plus approximately 232.5 million US dollars in pre-sentence interest, bringing the total amount requested for this portion to 1.367 billion US dollars.

This document also separately requests approximately $6.15 million for AWS Mining, including interest.

Investigators calculated that from August 2019 to May 2023, NovaTech received approximately $1.16 billion in cryptocurrency from investors through their CoinPayments account.

However, records obtained from the trading platform provider B2Broker show that only $25.99 million entered the trading platform of NovaTech, and traders subsequently lost approximately $18.19 million.

The prosecution deducted the amount transferred in the transaction when calculating the refund amount.

Court records also state that Cynthia Petion authorized the transfer of at least $134.5 million in cryptocurrency from the CoinPayments wallet of NovaTech to her own wallet and the wallet held by Eddy Petion.

The state authorities stated that the defendant failed to provide investor records and financial accounts as required by the court, which prevented investigators from identifying all victims and from fully verifying the transactions.

How These Crypto Investment Scams Target Investors

AWS Mining started operations earlier than NovaTech. It promised investors a return of 15% to 20% per month, along with referral commissions, and claimed that the investment could double in about 15 months.

The company went bankrupt in 2019 due to its inability to generate sufficient revenue to fulfill its commitments.

After its collapse, the Petion couple established NovaTech and promoted cryptocurrency and foreign exchange trading packages, claiming to generate profits of 2% to 4% per week.

The recruitment campaign is mainly targeted at the immigrant community, especially Haitian descendants living in New York, and uses advertising in Haitian Creole, religious information, prayer groups, and private messaging channels for promotion.

NovaTech claims to be a registered hedge fund broker and tells investors that they can withdraw their principal and profits at any time.

Investigators found that the promised transaction returns in the promotional materials were fabricated, and the money paid to older investors came from funds deposited by later participants.

When NovaTech collapsed in 2023, tens of thousands of investors were unable to retrieve their cryptocurrencies.

Subsequently, in August 2024, federal regulatory authorities filed charges against NovaTech and its promoters, alleging that the company had defrauded over 200,000 investors through a multi-level marketing scheme.

New York continues to advance law enforcement against crypto fraud

These settlements are among other cryptocurrency enforcement actions taken by James against companies and executives accused of misleading investors.

On October 9th, the former CEO of Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, agreed to a lifetime ban from the industry as part of a settlement in New York, which involved conditional payments of up to $35 million.

In another case, New York received over 5 million dollars in compensation for the promotion of CredEarn by Uphold. CredEarn is an encrypted investment product related to the failed lending institution Cred LLC.

The protocol of Uphold requires payments to be made to affected customers who invested through this platform.

In addition, court documents from NovaTech confirm, based on records provided by Ciceron, that at least 204 victims of AWS Mining have invested a total of 930,195 US dollars.

The prosecution stated that this figure represents only a small portion of the investors in this scam, and since the defendant did not provide a complete set of accounts, investigators were unable to calculate the total losses of AWS Mining.