SEC Enforcement Actions Fall 24% in FY2026 as Money Returned to Investors Nearly Triples

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed 348 enforcement actions in fiscal year 2026, a 24% decline from the prior year, while the money it returned to harmed investors nearly tripled to $731 million.

“Enforcement actions and financial remedies are important measures of activity, but they are not the only or most telling measures,” said SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins.

During the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2026, the SEC filed 235 standalone actions, 47 follow-on administrative proceedings, and 66 actions against delinquent filers, according to an addendum to the agency’s release. In fiscal 2025, those totals were 303, 69, and 84, respectively.

The commission obtained orders for $1.095 billion in monetary relief: $752 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest and $343 million in civil penalties, down from $1.3 billion in fiscal 2025. Courts deemed $235 million of the disgorgement satisfied through separate non-SEC actions, such as parallel criminal cases. Excluding those amounts, the total was $860 million, compared with $2.7 billion in fiscal 2025, after the agency excluded similar amounts and judgments in the long-running Robert Allen Stanford litigation.

The SEC returned $731 million to more than 250,000 harmed investors, up from $262 million in fiscal 2025. It awarded more than $158 million to 65 whistleblowers, the most individual recipients since fiscal 2023, compared with $60 million to 48 whistleblowers a year earlier. The agency received about 26,000 whistleblower tips during the year.

Investment adviser and investment company cases made up the largest category, with 97 actions, or 28% of the total, compared with 99 in fiscal 2025. That count includes 42 entities charged in the District of Colorado for allegedly filing false adviser registrations to pose as U.S. advisers and lure retail investors. Securities offering cases fell to 64 from 90, and broker-dealer cases fell to 35 from 65.

Two-thirds of standalone actions included charges against at least one individual, the same share the SEC reported a year earlier. Among the retail fraud cases the release highlighted were charges against Goliath Ventures Inc. and its founder and chief executive officer over an alleged Ponzi scheme that raised at least $425 million from more than 1,300 investors.

The results arrived on the SEC’s traditional November schedule. The agency released its fiscal 2025 results in April 2026, about six months later than usual.

A Reorganized Enforcement Division

The Division of Enforcement, led by Director David Woodcock since May, formed three new groups during the year.

The Retail Fraud Working Group, announced in July, targets offering frauds, Ponzi schemes, impersonation scams, broker-dealer misconduct, and market manipulation that affect individual investors. The SEC said more than a dozen new investigations have resulted from its work so far.

A new Financial Reporting and Accounting Unit pairs attorneys and accountants to pursue accounting fraud and misconduct by auditors. The division also launched an Office of Super Intelligence and Analytics, which uses data analysis and tools the agency calls super intelligence to flag anomalies, speed document review, and trace blockchain and financial flows. The division separately reorganized its Trial Unit under newly created deputy chief litigation counsels.

In February, the division revised its Enforcement Manual for the first time since 2017. The update standardizes the Wells process, through which potential defendants can respond before the commission authorizes charges, lets the commission consider settlement offers and related waiver requests together, and explains how cooperation can reduce civil penalties. The division said it will review the manual annually.

In May, the commission rescinded Rule 202.5(e), ending a policy in place since 1972 that barred settling defendants from publicly denying the SEC’s allegations.

Cases Involving Alts

The fiscal year’s case list includes several actions involving alternative investment products and the advisers who recommend them. Some do not appear in the SEC’s press release and are listed only in its addendum.

On July 29, the SEC sued RAD Diversified REIT Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based nontraded residential real estate investment trust, and founders Brandon “Dutch” Mendenhall and Amy Vaughn. The complaint alleges they raised at least $152 million from more than 5,500 retail investors through fraudulent and unregistered offerings, telling investors the REIT was profitable and that none had lost money while it lost millions of dollars a year. The allegations have not been adjudicated.

In a settled order in July, the SEC found that Derek L. Copeland, a former investment adviser representative in Charlotte, N.C., recommended that clients invest more than $50 million in 25 private real estate offerings from three development sponsors between August 2020 and January 2023. He received nearly $1.5 million in compensation from the sponsors, which the SEC found he did not adequately disclose. The SEC also found that he recommended at least 34 clients open securities-based lines of credit and invest more than $15.5 million of the proceeds in 12 of the offerings. Copeland was censured and agreed to pay a $125,000 civil penalty.

In September, the SEC censured Hatteras Investment Partners LP, a Raleigh, N.C.-based manager of registered closed-end funds that offered liquidity through quarterly tender offers, and its chief executive officer, David B. Perkins. The SEC found they breached their fiduciary duty by exchanging the funds’ portfolios of illiquid alternative assets for preferred shares of Dallas-based Beneficient in a planned liquidation, after ignoring red flags and the advice of the firm’s part-time chief financial officer. The registered funds lost about $300 million, according to the SEC. Perkins agreed to pay a $250,000 civil penalty, and both settled without admitting the findings.

In January, a federal jury in Colorado found R. Brian Watson and his Denver-based Northstar Commercial Partners liable for intentional securities fraud. The SEC, which charged Watson and Northstar in August 2022, said evidence at trial showed that across 11 real estate offerings, the defendants told investors that Watson co-invested his personal funds alongside them when he did not.

The division said it intensified its focus on the secondary market for pre-initial public offering shares as investors gain access to private markets. It charged private fund adviser Adit Ventures Management, its chief executive officer, and affiliated general partners with allegedly misappropriating client assets and charging undisclosed fees on pre-IPO investments. It also charged Meyer Global Management and its chief executive officer over alleged fraud tied to SpaceX and other pre-IPO shares, and Andrew Spaventa and three entities he controlled. The SEC alleges Spaventa’s funds raised more than $74 million from more than 800 mostly retail investors and charged undisclosed markups averaging 46%. Spaventa has denied the allegations.

In other settled orders, the SEC found that Madison Capital Funding LLC, a former adviser to private funds, sold loans to private fund clients without reasonably determining whether the trades were at fair market value. It also found that broker-dealer David Lerner Associates Inc. violated Regulation Best Interest in at least 253 recommendations that retail customers switch Class A mutual fund shares held less than a year into another fund family, incurring new upfront sales charges.

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