The New York Attorney General’s office has sued Cynthia and Eddy Petion over two allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency pyramid schemes called AWS Mining and NovaTech. They particularly targeted victims of Haitian descent, promoting their schemes in Creole, leveraging their victims’ religion, and promising them “financial freedom” and “freedom from the plantation”.In reality, the schemes were pyramid schemes in which investors earned crypto for recruiting others to buy in. NovaTech also used the funds from newer investors to pay out the supposed “returns” from the investment scheme, in a classic Ponzi fashion. From August 2019 – April 2023, victims deposited more than $1 billion into NovaTech. Though it was described as a trading operation, only about $26 million ever went into crypto trading.In June 2022, the couple secretly sold their Florida house and moved to Panama, while continuing to pretend they were in the state. Speaking to another operator of the scheme, Cynthia Petion advised: “leave the country…they can’t serve you if they can’t find you lol.”

Total loss estimated at $1,000,000,000.