The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its report on enforcement results for fiscal year 2025.
During fiscal year 2025, the SEC filed 456 enforcement actions, including 303 standalone actions and 69 “follow-on” administrative proceedings seeking to bar or suspend individuals from certain functions in the securities markets based on criminal convictions, civil injunctions, or other orders. In addition, it obtained orders for monetary relief totaling $17.9 billion.
These enforcement actions addressed a broad range of misconduct including frauds, market manipulation, insider trading, issuer disclosure violations, and breaches of fiduciary duty by investment advisers.
The 2025 results do not include the 1,095 matters in which potentially violative conduct was investigated and which were closed and omits several matters where market participants remediated their practices, or cases that were otherwise not pursued.
FY 2025 was a period of transition for the enforcement division. It brought about the current commission’s resolution of prior cases that were not sufficiently grounded in the federal securities laws. The current commission deliberately refocused the enforcement program on matters of fraud—cases that inherently require more time and resources to develop and bring, often requiring up to two or more years to manifest results.
“Over the past year, the Commission has put a stop to regulation by enforcement and recentered its enforcement program on the Commission’s core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection and strengthen market integrity,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said. “We have redirected resources toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm—particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust—and away from approaches that prioritized volume and record-setting penalties over true investor protection. A key part of this course correction is a renewed emphasis on holding individual wrongdoers accountable, which promotes stronger deterrence and better safeguards investors. I am proud of the staff’s work in advancing an enforcement program grounded in sound judgment, clear legal authority, and the real-world needs of the investing public.”
Going forward, enforcement priorities and results will be linked to the SEC’s core mandate and will thus focus on the following elements: Standing up to fraud in its many forms and those market participants engaged in such misconduct; addressing the fraudulent and manipulative conduct of the parties in question through appropriate remediation; and repaying investors’ losses when harmed.
“I fully support the move away from using enforcement as a tool for policymaking, and the return to the Commission’s historical norms,” SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said. “We will remain focused on coherent and transparent policymaking, as well as meaningful engagement with market participants to promote compliance, and wield the authority of enforcement in a more appropriate manner, guided by investor protection above all.”
In 2025, the SEC obtained orders for monetary relief totaling $17.9 billion, of which was $10.8 billion in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and $7.2 billion in civil penalties. During fiscal year 2025, the Commission returned approximately $262 million to harmed investors and awarded approximately $60 million to 48 individual whistleblowers. In addition, the SEC received a record 53,753 tips, complaints, and referrals in fiscal year 2025, nearly 19 percent more than in the prior fiscal year.
The SEC filed several noteworthy actions, including:
- Paramount Management Group, LLC, Prestige Investment Group, LLC, and their founder, Daryl F. Heller, in connection with a Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded approximately 2,700 investors, many of whom were retail investors, and resulted in $400 million in investor losses;
- First Liberty Building & Loan, LLC and its owner, Edwin Brant Frost IV, in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme that defrauded approximately 300 investors of more than $140 million;
- Nightingale Properties, LLC and its founder Elchonon “Elie” Schwartz in connection with allegedly raising $60 million from approximately 700 retail investors through false representations and misappropriating more than $52 million in investor funds;
- Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company Allarity Therapeutics, Inc. for disclosure failures that concealed from the investing public a harsh critique levied by the FDA regarding the company’s flagship cancer drug candidate; and
- Vanguard Advisers, Inc., a registered investment adviser, for failing to adequately disclose conflicts of interest when recommending to prospective and existing clients that they enroll in a fee-based advisory service that provided ongoing portfolio management of their accounts.
The SEC also obtained orders barring 119 individuals from serving as officers and directors of public companies. It also filed insider trading charges against, among others: a former vice president of drug safety and pharmacovigilance at a biopharmaceutical company; a former investor relations executive and two others; and a former head of equity trading at an investment firm.