SEC enforcements and remedies reached $6.4 billion last year

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that penalties, as well as remedies to investors affected by criminal or civil wrongdoing, reached a total of $6.4 billion during the last federal fiscal year. 

The agency filed 760 enforcement actions in FY 2022, which it says represents a 9% increase from the prior year, with 462 of those being entirely new cases — a 6.5% increase year-over-year.

Today’s annual wrap-up of enforcement statistics from the last federal fiscal year does not include a breakdown of how many were crypto-related, but the agency does tout several enforcement actions or settlements from the period running between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sept. 30, 2022.

• A $100 million fine for BlockFi.
• Insider trading charges against a Coinbase product manager.
• A $5.5 million settlement with NVIDIA over what the SEC says was a lack of adequate disclosure over how crypto mining affected the company’s business, though NVIDIA did not admit to or deny the commission’s findings.
• Charges against 11 individuals in an alleged $300 million crypto Ponzi scheme.

The SEC also touted the fact that it is doubling the size of its crypto unit, adding 20 new positions to a team focused on the digital asset industry.

Crypto industry executives and advocates have been highly critical of the SEC’s approach. That includes recent skepticism over the agency’s handling of FTX and meetings between FTX executives and the SEC earlier this year.

Last week when SEC Chair Gary Gensler was pressed over why the agency had yet to take action against FTX, which primarily operated outside the U.S. despite having an American subsidiary, he responded: “Building the evidence, building the facts, often takes time.”