Cryptocurrency Companies Have Been Sued Over Alleged Pyramid Scheme; more than 3,500 Long Islanders affected

New York State Attorney General Letitia James is suing two cryptocurrency trading companies, accusing them of running illegal pyramid schemes that defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors, including more than 3,500 from Long Island, for over a billion dollars in cryptocurrency.

According to the lawsuit filed Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, James wants to bar AWS Mining Pty Ltd. and NovaTechFx, as well as its founders, to operate in the state. The attorney general is also asking them to pay damages and return all assets obtained through the alleged scheme.

“These cryptocurrency companies targeted immigrant and religious communities with promises of financial freedom, but instead stole their money and drained their savings,” James said in a statement.

Neither company responded to requests for comment submitted through message portals on their websites.

According to the Attorney General's complaint, AWS Mining was based in Australia and NovoTech was registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines before closing their doors. Both were created by Cynthia and Eddy Petion, a married couple who entered the crypto space with an eclectic background.

Cynthia Petion described herself in an April interview with Enterpreneur as a professional mentor and evangelist pastor who holds weekly services in Florida. And according to a 2021 interview with wellness website Thrive Global, Eddy Petion is a military veteran and former mortgage loan officer.

James' lawsuit alleges that Petions' companies defrauded approximately 11,000 people from Long Island, New York and Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties, promising investors generous returns and recruiting bonuses that never materialized. . They allegedly targeted minority communities, particularly Haitian immigrants, seeking them out in prayer groups and WhatsApp group chats, luring them with religious messages and advertisements written in Creole.

According to the lawsuit, AWS Mining collapsed in 2019 after failing to deliver on its promises to investors. The Petions then launched NovoTech, again promising weekly investment returns actually coming from deposits from new investors. NovoTech collapsed last May, freezing the cryptocurrency accounts of tens of thousands of its customers.

In total, according to the lawsuit, people who invested in the petition trading services lost tens of millions of dollars.

No court date has yet been set in this case.

The lawsuit is the latest in high-profile enforcement actions taken by James' office against cryptocurrency companies. Last month, the attorney general won $2 billion for investors defrauded by Genesis Global Capital, and last year, James obtained more than $50 million in settlements, judgments and other enforcement actions against fraudulent companies from cryptocurrency.