SEC brings fewest enforcement cases since 1991, crypto suits fall

The US Securities and Exchange Commission brought 348 enforcement actions in the year that ended September 30, 2026, it said on November 10. That is the fewest since 1991, by one count, and a sharp pullback from the prior administration.

That tally comes from the SEC's annual enforcement results. Reuters, reviewing agency records, put it as the lowest yearly total since 1991. Standalone cases, the ones the SEC files first rather than following up on, fell to 235 from 303 the year before. That is a drop of about 22 percent.

What the numbers show

The SEC split its 348 actions into 235 standalone cases and 113 follow-on proceedings, the kind that bar or suspend people already found to have broken the rules. Follow-on actions rose, from 69 to 113. The real decline sits in the fresh cases. Thirteen of the total were trading suspensions, tied to suspected manipulation involving Asia-based issuers.

Money ordered came to $1.095 billion. That breaks into $752 million in disgorgement and interest and $343 million in civil penalties. A court treated $235 million of the disgorgement as already satisfied in a separate case, so the cash figure is smaller than it looks. Penalties fell too.

Year-on-year, the comparison is messy, because fiscal 2025 carried large one-off Ponzi judgments. Strip those out and the SEC ordered about $860 million this year against roughly $2.7 billion last year, by Troutman Pepper Locke's reckoning.

Here is the part that cuts against the easy read. The SEC returned about $731 million to more than 250,000 harmed investors, up from around $262 million a year earlier. Whistleblower awards more than doubled, to over $158 million. Fewer cases, and more money back in people's hands.

Where crypto fits in

Officials did not break out how many of the 348 actions involved digital assets, so there is no clean crypto number for the year. The agency named several. Three purported crypto trading platforms and four investment clubs were charged over what it called an investment confidence scam that took at least $14 million from retail investors. The founder and chief executive of a bitcoin mining business was charged over a scheme the SEC said raised more than $95.6 million from about 6,400 people. Cointelegraph reported that the agency accused him of misappropriating $48.5 million of that. An audit partner was sanctioned over work on FTX, the exchange that collapsed in 2022.

Older crypto matters kept moving through the courts. A jury found a promoter liable in February over the $300 million CryptoFX Ponzi scheme, and in July a court ordered another man to pay $1.07 million for promoting the BitConnect lending program. Retail buyers remain the softest target, which is why spotting a dubious token early still matters.

Set against recent history, crypto enforcement has thinned. Cornerstone Research counted 13 SEC crypto-related actions in 2025, down from 33 in 2024. Five of the 13 were filed before Gary Gensler left as chairman in January 2025. His successor, Paul Atkins, has steered the agency toward writing crypto rules rather than policing the market mainly through lawsuits. Other regulators have moved the same way, as when Coinbase won a national trust charter.

A lighter touch under Atkins

Atkins framed the year as a change in method, not a retreat. Enforcement actions and financial penalties are "not the only or most telling measures" of the agency's work, he said, pointing instead to applying the law fairly and consistently. David Woodcock, director of the Division of Enforcement, said the focus was on "rigorous investigations" and "pursuing consequential misconduct."

Its structure changed too. The division set up a Retail Fraud Working Group and a Financial Reporting and Accounting Unit, and built blockchain and financial-flow analysis into a new analytics office that uses anomaly detection. It also scrapped a decades-old rule that had barred people who settle from publicly denying the charges, which the SEC said gives it more room to settle. Lawyers at Troutman Pepper Locke, reviewing the results, called it a return to basics on market integrity, with priorities running from cross-border fraud to insider trading and investor-protection rules.

Two-thirds of the standalone cases still named at least one person, among them founders, chief executives and gatekeepers such as accountants and auditors. By that measure the shift is narrower than the headline number suggests. The SEC is filing fewer cases. It is not, on its own account, walking away from individuals.

What to watch

Whether lighter enforcement comes paired with clearer crypto rules, or just less of both, is the open question. Atkins has promised rulemaking that spells out when a token is a security and how platforms should register. None of that is final yet.

Watch the next crypto cases the SEC does bring. If they cluster around outright fraud against retail buyers, rather than fights over whether a token is a security, that will confirm the change in aim. Watch the money too. The agency returned more to investors this year while filing fewer cases, and it will want to show that was not a fluke.