The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday released its enforcement results for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, disclosing 456 total actions, including 303 standalone cases, and $17.9 billion in monetary relief ordered against defendants.
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But the headline number comes with a large asterisk. Once the SEC strips out so-called "deemed satisfied" amounts, where courts in parallel criminal proceedings had already ordered restitution or forfeiture, and a single $8 billion judgment tied to the long-running Robert Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme litigation, the adjusted total falls to approximately $2.7 billion, split between $1.4 billion in disgorgement and $1.3 billion in civil penalties.
The disclosure of that adjusted figure is itself unusual. The SEC noted that "deemed satisfied" amounts "historically had not been broken out or excluded in annual Commission statistics," suggesting the current leadership is deliberately drawing a contrast with the prior regime's reporting practices.
Atkins Calls Prior Enforcement a "Misallocation of Resources"
The fiscal year 2025 results arrived with language rarely seen in an SEC annual enforcement summary. Chairman Paul Atkins, who took the helm after being confirmed by the Senate in April 2025, used the release to publicly disown much of his predecessor's enforcement record.
"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," Atkins said in the agency's statement.
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The sharpest criticism targeted two categories of enforcement actions brought under former Chair Gary Gensler. First, the SEC pointed to 95 actions and $2.3 billion in penalties levied against financial firms since fiscal year 2022 for failing to preserve off-channel communications, primarily employee messages on platforms like WhatsApp and personal text messages.
Second, the agency flagged seven crypto firm registration cases and six "definition of a dealer" enforcement actions. In both categories, the current Commission said the cases "identified no direct investor harm," "produced no investor benefit or protection," and amounted to a "bias for volume of cases brought versus matters of investor protection."
Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda, who served as acting chairman before Atkins was confirmed, echoed the sentiment. "I fully support the move away from using enforcement as a tool for policymaking, and the return to the Commission's historical norms," Uyeda said.
The WhatsApp Crackdown Era Winds Down
The off-channel communications enforcement campaign was one of the most visible and expensive compliance events for Wall Street firms in recent years. Starting with JPMorgan's $200 million fine in December 2021 for failing to monitor employee use of WhatsApp and iMessage, the SEC and CFTC together levied over $2 billion in combined penalties against dozens of broker-dealers and investment advisers through multiple rounds of enforcement.
The penalties hit firms of all sizes. In 2022 alone, 16 Wall Street firms paid a collective $1.1 billion for recordkeeping failures, with banks including Barclays, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and UBS each paying $125 million. Subsequent rounds brought additional fines against 26 firms totaling $393 million in August 2024 and $79 million against 10 firms in November 2023, including a $35 million penalty against Interactive Brokers.
With the current Commission now characterizing these actions as a "misinterpretation of the federal securities laws," the enforcement pipeline for similar cases appears to have closed. Atkins had already signaled this shift in a Financial Times interview last year, criticizing the formulaic nature of penalties under his predecessor and saying the prior SEC "would shoot first and then ask questions later."
Seven Crypto Cases Dismissed, Enforcement Approach Reversed
The SEC's crypto enforcement reversal was equally blunt. The agency confirmed it dismissed seven enforcement actions brought under the prior Commission between February and May 2025, including cases against Coinbase, Binance, Cumberland DRW, Consensys, Payward (Kraken's parent company), Dragonchain and Balina.
The Coinbase dismissal in February 2025 and the Binance case pause that preceded it had already signaled the direction of travel. Both cases had been filed in 2023 under Gensler's leadership, and both were dropped after the formation of the SEC's Crypto Task Force under Commissioner Hester Peirce.
The fiscal year 2025 report now frames these dismissals as a deliberate "course correction" rather than case-specific decisions. The agency said it launched the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit in February 2025 to "protect investors by combatting misconduct as it relates to securities transactions involving blockchain technology, AI, account takeovers, cybersecurity, and other areas," replacing the prior enforcement-led approach with what it described as a focus on actual fraud.
Still, the SEC did bring several crypto-related fraud cases during the fiscal year, including charges against Unicoin and four of its executives for alleged false statements, a $198 million crypto and forex scheme allegedly run by PGI Global founder Ramil Palafox, and charges against the founder of AI company Nate, Inc. for allegedly raising more than $42 million through fraudulent solicitation.
What It Means Going Forward
The fiscal year 2025 report reads less like a standard annual enforcement summary and more like a policy manifesto. By publicly labeling large portions of the prior Commission's enforcement record as misguided, the Atkins SEC has effectively redrawn the boundaries of what the agency considers appropriate use of its enforcement authority.
The CFTC has moved in a parallel direction under its own new leadership, dropping proposals and aligning with the SEC on crypto oversight. Both agencies are now emphasizing fraud-focused enforcement over what the prior administrations treated as registration and compliance violations.
The 1,095 investigations that were opened and closed without action during the fiscal year, a figure the SEC disclosed but did not elaborate on, hint at the volume of activity happening below the surface. Whether the current Commission's more selective approach produces better outcomes for investors remains to be seen in future enforcement cycles.
