The figure that matters: 456. That is how many enforcement actions the Securities and Exchange Commission filed in fiscal 2025, which ran from October 2024 to September 2025. The agency announced the results on April 7, 2026.
The bottom line is a smaller docket. Standalone actions came to 303. Total filings fell 22% from fiscal 2024, and standalone cases dropped 30%. The SEC returned $262 million to investors, down 24%. For the first time, it also reported how many matters it closed without taking action: 1,095.
A record total with an asterisk
Orders for monetary relief reached $17.9 billion, a new high. One case accounts for $14.9 billion of it: the judgment in the Robert Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme, which the SEC opened in 2009.
Strip out Stanford and the disgorgement amounts that courts deemed satisfied in non-SEC actions, and the total is $2.7 billion. Penalties made up $1.3 billion and disgorgement $1.4 billion. The prior year brought in $8.2 billion in financial remedies.
The SEC called fiscal 2025 a “unique period of transition.” About 58% of the actions were filed before the January 20, 2025, inauguration. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said the current leadership is prioritizing cases involving “fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust” and “holding individual wrongdoers accountable.”
Individuals in the crosshairs
Nearly 90% of the standalone actions filed since the inauguration named individuals. The agency barred 119 people from serving as officers and directors of public companies, against 124 the year before.
Cases the SEC pointed to included three people accused of creating false documents in municipal bond offerings that raised $284 million, and a beverage company founder accused of misrepresenting how the business ran and how investor money was used. A publicly traded biopharmaceutical company agreed to pay $2.5 million in civil penalties. The SEC alleged it hid a harsh FDA critique of its drug candidate’s approval prospects.
In the crypto and tech space, the SEC charged the founder of an AI startup who allegedly told investors the company used AI to process transactions. In fact, the SEC said, contract employees mostly typed in the orders by hand.
Advisers, trading cases and cooperation
Actions against investment advisers and investment companies numbered 72, a 26% decline. The SEC still calls breaches of fiduciary duty by advisers a top priority.
Insider trading cases totaled 31 and market manipulation cases 15. Those were close to the prior year’s 34 and 17. The agency has formed a Cross-Border Task Force aimed at transnational fraud, including pump-and-dump schemes involving foreign-based companies.
Companies that reported their own violations, cooperated and fixed the problem got lighter treatment in some cases. The SEC cut civil penalties or declined to recommend action against several of them. One investment adviser that allegedly violated Rule 105 of Regulation M earned credit for gathering documents voluntarily, reviewing its past conduct and updating its compliance policies.
