The agency said the fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2025, included 303 standalone actions and 69 follow-on administrative proceedings. Of the $17.9 billion in ordered relief, $10.8 billion was disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $7.2 billion was civil penalties.
The SEC said that after excluding amounts deemed satisfied by parallel criminal restitution or forfeiture orders and judgments in the Robert Allen Stanford Ponzi litigation, monetary relief for the year totaled $1.4 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $1.3 billion in civil penalties. The agency said those exclusions "historically had not been broken out or excluded in annual Commission statistics."
The press release characterized fiscal 2025 as "a unique period of transition for the enforcement division never experienced before in modern SEC history," citing "an unprecedented rush to bring a significant number of cases in advance of the presidential inauguration and the aggressive pursuit of novel legal theories under the prior Commission."
Since fiscal year 2022, the SEC said, the prior Commission brought 95 actions and $2.3 billion in penalties against firms for failing to maintain off-channel communications. The agency said those cases, along with seven crypto firm registration cases and six "definition of a dealer" cases, "identified no direct investor harm," "produced no investor benefit or protection," and reflected "a misinterpretation of the federal securities laws."
"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 S. Atkins said in the release. He said the agency had "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."
Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda said he "fully support[s] the move away from using enforcement as a tool for policymaking, and the return to the Commission's historical norms."
The agency said approximately two-thirds of standalone actions this past fiscal year involved charges against one or more individuals, which it described as a 27 percent year-over-year increase. It said nearly nine out of every 10 standalone actions filed under Acting Chairman Uyeda and Chairman Atkins involved individual charges, and that the Commission obtained orders barring 119 individuals from serving as officers and directors of public companies.
The release highlighted alleged Ponzi scheme actions against Paramount Management Group and founder Daryl F. Heller, which the SEC said involved approximately 2,700 investors and $400 million in losses, and against First Liberty Building & Loan and owner Edwin Brant Frost IV, which the SEC said defrauded approximately 300 investors of more than $140 million. The agency also cited charges against Nightingale Properties and founder Elchonon "Elie" Schwartz over an alleged $60 million raise from about 700 retail investors.
The SEC said it returned approximately $262 million to harmed investors in fiscal 2025 and awarded approximately $60 million to 48 whistleblowers. The agency said it received 53,753 tips, complaints, and referrals, nearly 19 percent more than the prior fiscal year.
The release said that beginning in February 2025, the Commission dismissed seven enforcement actions involving crypto assets brought by the prior Commission: cases against Coinbase, Consensys, Payward, Cumberland DRW, Dragonchain, Balina, and Binance Holdings.
On litigation, the SEC cited a September 2025 jury verdict in SEC v. Gallagher in the Southern District of New York, in which it said the jury found defendant Steven M. Gallagher liable for securities fraud and manipulative trading over a Twitter-based scheme involving more than 30 microcap stocks and "illicit trading profits in excess of $2.6 million." The agency also cited summary judgment victories in SEC v. Brown in the Northern District of Texas, involving an alleged bogus $200 million offer to invest in Virgin Orbit Holdings, and in SEC v. Melton in the Middle District of North Carolina.