Key facts
- The SEC filed 348 enforcement actions in fiscal 2026, down 23.7% from 456 a year earlier.
- Standalone actions fell to 235 from 303 a year earlier, the SEC said.
- The SEC said it charged three purported crypto trading platforms and four investment clubs in an alleged $14 million scheme.
- The SEC accused a Bitcoin mining business founder of misappropriating $48.5 million after raising more than $95.6 million.
- The SEC settled charges in April against Francis Decker, the Prager Metis partner who led FTX's audits.
- Fiscal 2026 was SEC Chair Paul Atkins' first full fiscal year in office.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed 348 enforcement actions in fiscal 2026, down 23.7% from 456 a year earlier, the agency said in a Tuesday release. Standalone actions fell to 235 from 303. The 348 total was the agency's fewest since 1991, according to a Reuters review of SEC records.
The results included cases involving alleged crypto fraud and failures in FTX's audits. The SEC said it charged three purported crypto trading platforms and four investment clubs in an alleged scheme that defrauded investors of at least $14 million. In a separate case, the agency accused the founder of a Bitcoin mining business of misappropriating $48.5 million after raising more than $95.6 million from about 6,400 investors.
In April, the SEC settled charges against Francis Decker, the Prager Metis partner who led FTX's audits, over failures to meet professional auditing standards. In February, a jury found Ismael Zarco Sanchez liable for securities fraud and registration violations over his role in the $300 million CryptoFX Ponzi scheme. In July, a court ordered Michael Noble to pay $1.07 million in a case over his role promoting BitConnect's crypto lending program.
Fiscal 2026 was SEC Chair Paul Atkins' first full fiscal year in office. The decline in crypto enforcement was already visible in 2025, when the SEC filed 13 crypto-related actions, down from 33 in 2024, according to Cornerstone Research. Five of the 13 were filed before former Chair Gary Gensler left office in January 2025.
The SEC said its new enforcement analytics office was using "blockchain and financial-flow analysis" to detect potential misconduct earlier.