Key takeaways:
- The Attorney General of New York has launched a lawsuit, claiming that two crypto companies with founders who overlapped caused over $1B in losses to thousands of investors.
- According to the lawsuit, NovaTech also misrepresented the status of its registration and licensing.
Attorney General of New York Letitia James has launched a lawsuit, claiming that two crypto companies with founders who overlapped caused over $1 billion in losses to hundreds of thousands of investors.
The lawsuit names the defunct crypto mining company AWS Mining, its owners, Cynthia and Eddy Petion, the crypto trading company NovaTech, and other related people and businesses as defendants.ย
The lawsuit claims that over 11,000 people in New York Stateโespecially those from the Haitian communityโlost tens of millions of dollars by investing in NovaTech. According to the lawsuit, NovaTech is a Ponzi scam that has drawn participants by appealing to religious beliefs.
According to the lawsuit, NovaTech also misrepresented the status of its registration and licensing. Prior to its cancellation in January 2023 by the Financial Services Authority of that nation, the firm was registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The business failed in May 2023.
The Petions were among the pioneers of AWS Mining, which shut down in 2019 before starting NovaTech. That business was allegedly a Ponzi scheme as well, but it was unable to make enough money to offer the returns it had promised.
According to the lawsuit, the corporation received over $1 billion in crypto deposits between 2019 and 2023, but only $26 million was traded. James is requesting a prohibition on AWS Mining, NovaTech, and the Petions from conducting business in New York, along with disgorgement and damages. In a statement, James stated:
โWe are seeing the real dangers of unregulated crypto platforms with schemes like these, but New Yorkers can rest assured that we will use the tools at our disposal to crack down on crypto fraudsters.”
As of this writing, the NovaTech website is operational. Cynthia Petion states that a data breach resulted in the loss of company funds, which the company is currently working to retrieve. Based on information found on X, the business started alleging in May 2023 that it had been hacked.
In 2022 and 2023, a business in South Africa called NovaTech was operational. It featured Cynthia Petion’s photo on its Facebook page and shared the Petions logo.
The Petions were not named in the 2018 cease-and-desist order that the Texas State Securities Board issued against AWS Mining, a crypto company suspected of using identical techniques to the one in which the Petions were involved.