Civil cases with a criminal parallel
811 of 3,273 records (25%) carry the corrected criminal-parallel flag, and half of those (397) record a sentence stage. SEBI orders almost never do (1 of 656): SEBI penalises, it does not prosecute. No civil-to-DOJ gap can be timed. Eleven matters span two regulators; eight were released the same day.
A flag called “criminal parallel” sits on 811 of the library’s 3,273 records, 25%. It is the only link the library keeps between a civil or regulatory case and a criminal one. This post reports the flag as corrected on 4 October 2026, asks how often it appears by regulator, technique and outcome, how far the criminal cases went, what sentences sit beside it, what the flag still cannot show, and how many matters show up under more than one regulator. The last of those cannot be answered the way it was posed, and the reason is itself a finding.
The finding first
After correction, the flag marks 811 of 3,273 records (25%): 32% of SEC records, 32% of CFTC records, 81% of ASIC records, 3% of AMF France records and 0.2% (one of 656) of SEBI records. It stood at 836 (34%) before the corrections. A reading of the SEC and CFTC release texts found 113 flags that rested only on a prosecutor’s name or on criminal vocabulary with no case behind it, and 15 records that described a criminal case but were unflagged; all 128 were corrected. Eleven records that carry a recorded sentence but no flag were then flagged, which made 805. Later resolution rounds of the “filed” records took it to 816, and a final pass cleared about 11 flags and added a few (such as Mohan 2018 and Stanford 2025), back to 805. On 5 October 2026 the library added 209 records from France’s financial regulator, the AMF, six of them flagged, which made 811 of 2,637. On 7 October 21 records that were not individual enforcement matters were removed and 489 records from India’s SEBI were added, one of them flagged, and the count is again 811, now of 3,106. On 9 October 167 more SEBI records were added, none flagged, which makes 811 of 3,273. AMF sanctions and SEBI orders are administrative decisions, not court cases, and any criminal parallel is a separate prosecution; neither is comparable with the court-action regulators.
Six other results follow.
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Half of the flagged records report a sentence stage. 810 of the 811 flagged records carry a
criminalOutcomefield: 397 sentenced, 210 charged, 124 pleaded, 26 convicted, 48 not stated, 3 dismissed and 2 acquitted. The section “How far the criminal cases went” gives the mix by regulator and technique. -
The rate varies much more by route than by technique. SEC litigation releases carry the flag 44% of the time and SEC administrative orders 6%. ASIC’s 81% is a different thing, because many ASIC records announce the criminal case itself.
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In 87% of flagged SEC and CFTC records the release itself states a criminal case. Of 689 flagged records whose cached release was read, 596 do. The other 93 rest on later documents the record cites, such as a judgment offset by criminal restitution; the flag cannot show that without those documents.
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Sentences are recorded on 286 records, over a third of those flagged, and every one is flagged. The median is 36 months. Ponzi-scheme records have a median of 84 months and insider-trading records 18.
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A false flag on a SEBI record means little. SEBI penalises and restrains; it does not prosecute. One of its 656 records is flagged, and 245 narratives say that the order describes no criminal case. The section on regulators below says what that does and does not show.
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The library holds no DOJ records. There is nothing to time a civil-to-DOJ gap against. What it does hold is 11 matters, each read by hand, with records from two regulators. The library’s own grouping rules find seven of them. Eight were released the same day.
What the flag means in this library
The field is criminalParallel, a boolean that defaults to false (src/content.config.ts). Nothing in the
schema or in DECISIONS.md defines it beyond its name. The case-page template writes “The release references a
parallel criminal proceeding” when it is true, so the working definition is that a record refers to a criminal
proceeding connected to the matter.
It was first set by keyword rules at ingest. For SEC and CFTC records the rule fired when the release text contained any of eight phrases. Five are statements about a case: indictment, pleaded guilty, criminal charges, criminal complaint, parallel criminal. Three are only the names of a prosecuting body: “Department of Justice”, “U.S. Attorney” and “United States Attorney”. ASIC and FCA records use different, shorter rules (convicted, sentenced, pleaded guilty, criminal charges and similar); OSC records use the same rule as the SEC’s. The DOJ ingest script would set it true on every record it wrote, but it has written none.
The 2 to 4 October 2026 audits then read the records against their documents. The results are in the corrected
flag: the three prosecutor names no longer count by themselves, and a later judgment or release that reports a
criminal case now counts even where the first release did not. The flag alone does not say how the criminal case ended; the criminalOutcome field, described below, records the stage. Neither says whether it came before or after the civil one.
How it was measured
A script, scripts/analysis/civil-and-criminal-links.mjs, reads the case files and prints every number below.
It loads the library’s grouping code (src/lib/matters.ts) for the matter counts. A second section reads the
cached copy of each SEC and CFTC release, so it runs only where that cache exists; 26 of the 2,178 SEC and CFTC
records have no readable cached copy and are left out of the release-text checks. Rates are shares of records, a
record counts once under each technique tag it carries, and counts are given beside every percentage.
Figures are as of 7 October 2026, after the status and flag corrections, the addition of the AMF France and SEBI records (656 SEBI in all) and the removal of 21 non-matter records. Since the first version of this post, 543 of the 733 records that had status “filed” were researched and updated; 180 are still “filed”. With all seven regulators the library holds 1,284 settled, 1,615 judgment, 163 dismissed, 24 unknown and 7 appealed records. The flag corrections are the ones described above, and the sentence count rose from 168 to 286 because the researched records add sentences stated in later documents. Cross-regulator matters were recomputed: the library’s grouping links the Agridime matter. The AMF France and SEBI records add no cross-regulator matter and nothing to the hand-read matters below. The stage counts were re-derived on 7 October from the current files, after 19 “convicted” records were moved to “not stated” and Stanford was restored to “sentenced”.
The hand reading was done by a Claude AI agent, not by a lawyer, on the library as it stood on 4 October; the AMF France and SEBI records were not hand-read for the flag (for SEBI, the flag was set by the AI agent that wrote each record from the order). It covered the flagged records whose release held criminal wording but no explicit phrase, every flagged record that named only a prosecutor, a seeded random sample of 30 from the flagged records with an explicit phrase, every unflagged release whose text held conviction or charge wording, the ten longest sentences and a random 16 more, and every record of each cross-regulator matter together with the releases behind them. The other records were classified by the script’s word search and not read one by one. Headline counts were recomputed a second way, by counting flagged and sentenced files directly, and agreed.
What it shows
By regulator and route
The overall rate is 25% (811 of 3,273). By regulator it is 32% for the SEC (583 of 1,844), 32% for the CFTC (108 of 334), 17% for the FCA (8 of 48), 19% for the OSC (13 of 69), 81% for ASIC (92 of 113), 3% for AMF France (6 of 209) and 0.2% for SEBI (1 of 656). AMF France decisions are administrative sanctions, and a criminal case that runs beside one is a separate prosecution, which explains little about the low rate. The library has no DOJ, FINRA or CIRO records. Because the three SEC routes behave so differently, the SEC figure hides most of the story: litigation releases 525 of 1,198 (44%), administrative law judge decisions 20 of 58 (34%), administrative orders 35 of 558 (6%). A litigation release reports a court action, and an administrative order is typically a settled order issued by the Commission itself. The data show the difference in rate; they do not show why it arises.
ASIC is not comparable. In an evenly spaced read of 12 flagged ASIC titles, nine announce a charge, a guilty plea, a conviction or a sentence, and the other three are a ban and two records titled “ASIC v.” Where ASIC brings a prosecution the record is the criminal matter, not a civil record with a criminal shadow. That read was made before the corrections and ASIC records changed little since. The FCA and OSC counts are small (8 and 13 flagged), and the five FCA final notices in the matters below contain no criminal wording at all.
SEBI: what a false flag means
SEBI is the plainest case of a flag that says little. SEBI is India’s securities regulator. It restrains people from the market and orders penalties and disgorgement under securities law, and it does not prosecute or convict; any criminal case is a separate proceeding that its orders mention only if the facts in front of the officer include one. Of the 656 SEBI records, one carries the flag, the 2022 order on the Religare group, which notes that civil and criminal recovery steps had already been started. In 245 more, the record, written by an AI agent from the order, says that the order describes no criminal case; many of the others say the order does not mention one, or that the record does not show one. I did not tally those.
So “false” on a SEBI record means “the order we read does not report a criminal case”, which is a statement about the order and not about the matter. It is not evidence that nobody was prosecuted. One unflagged record shows the gap: a 2022 order on a company’s dealings records that the company later filed criminal complaints with the police, and the record notes that the order does not say how far any criminal matter went. The flag was not set. SEBI’s 0.2% therefore cannot be set beside the SEC’s 32% as a measure of how often Indian conduct is also prosecuted. The 656 records are also AI-agent readings, not lawyers’ reviews: the first 489 had a sampled second read of 60 (56 agreed on every field, 93%), and for the 167 added on 9 October a sampled second read of 50 of them on 9 October agreed on every field for 46 (92%, interval 81% to 97%; the misses were two dissolved-company dismissals counted as out of scope and two technique tags, since corrected). SEBI’s scope here is wider than manipulation: it includes issuer and broker fraud with fraud-regulation findings and some orders that dismiss the allegation, so a criminal parallel is less likely to be mentioned in many of them. That is a reason to treat any SEBI-specific rate here as provisional.
By technique
The chart uses SEC litigation releases only, because mixing in administrative orders and other regulators makes a technique’s rate depend on its route. Ponzi schemes (142 of 289), insider trading (181 of 390), pump and dump (48 of 103) and boiler rooms (22 of 52) sit between 42% and 49%; undisclosed control blocks (19 of 50) at 38% and unregistered distributions (23 of 66) at 35%; paid stock promotion (10 of 35) lowest. The gaps between the top four are a few records and are not a ranking. Among smaller groups, price manipulation is 10 of 21 and matched orders 14 of 25 (both under 30, so read cautiously); spoofing is 1 of 8 and Rule 105 offering shorts 0 of 3, both below 10 and too small to compare.
Across all routes, Rule 105 offering shorts (0 of 85) and naked short selling (0 of 35) never carry the flag. Seventy-seven of the 85 Rule 105 records and 29 of the 35 naked-short records are SEC administrative orders, which in general rarely carry the flag (6%), so the zero here is as much about route as about conduct. Neither the library nor this analysis can say whether a criminal case could have been brought for such conduct.
By outcome
By status the flag appears on 433 of 1,615 judgment records (27%), 71 of 180 “filed” records (39%), 12 of 24 “unknown” (50%) and 285 of 1,284 settled records (22%). It appears on 10 of 163 dismissed records (6%), and 122 of those 163 are SEBI orders, none flagged; appealed (0 of 7) is too small to compare. The judgment share fell from 38% to 27% when SEBI’s 466 judgment records, almost all unflagged, were added. The settled figure is mostly route. Of the 1,284 settled records, 522 are SEC administrative orders, and those carry the flag 5% of the time (26 of 522). Among SEC litigation releases alone the gap disappears: judgment 239 of 546 (44%), settled 215 of 486 (44%) and “filed” 60 of 147 (41%). Status “filed” means the outcome was not found or the case is still running, so “filed” is not a stage.
The flag is also unstable within one matter. Of the 315 matters the library groups into more than one record, in 138 every record is flagged, in 138 none is, and in 39 the records disagree. Records in multi-record matters carry the flag more often (369 of 716, 52%) than single-record matters (442 of 2,557, 17%). Longer matters give a release more chances to mention a criminal case; that is a reading, and the data cannot test it.
What the corrected flag rests on
Of the 689 flagged SEC and CFTC records whose release text was read:
| What the cached release says | Records |
|---|---|
| An explicit criminal phrase (indictment, plea, criminal charges, criminal complaint, parallel criminal) | 528 |
| Conviction, sentence or criminal-case wording, but not those phrases | 68 |
| No such wording; the record’s own text, written from later documents, reports a criminal step | 93 |
The 93 in the third row are mostly later judgments that treat civil money as satisfied by criminal restitution or forfeiture, or later releases that report a plea or sentence. For example the SEC’s case against Manuel Romero was flagged on a prosecutor’s thanks in the first release and is no longer. We did not re-read those later documents here; the row shows only that the record’s own text refers to a criminal step.
Across all 811 flagged records, 777 have a criminal word in the record’s own summary or narrative. Of the other 34, 33 are SEC or CFTC records whose release states a case. One has neither, and we could not check it: an SEC order whose release is not cached (Hannelius). The Stanford 2025 record, which had been the second, now cites the Fifth Circuit’s opinion on his conviction and sentence in its own text.
What the flag still cannot show
Missed cases. Of 1,463 unflagged SEC and CFTC records whose release was read, 55 hold conviction or charge wording. Reading them: eight are follow-on orders that rest on the respondent’s own earlier conviction or plea; three name a criminal case about the same scheme or issuer (Kaplan, Voutsas, Bandimere) and are arguably flaggable; the other 44 mention a conviction as background, a founder’s past record, or case law. Another 197 unflagged records (including AMF France decisions, and leaving out SEBI’s routine “no criminal case” sentence) have a criminal word somewhere in their summary or narrative; 41 of them still carry the case-page template sentence about a parallel criminal proceeding, which no longer matches the flag. We did not read those one by one. The earlier hand reading found the real misses, such as Dawn Bennett and Rudy Avila, and they are now flagged.
Same conduct or another person’s. The flag says a criminal case is connected to the matter. It does not say the criminal case is against the civil respondent: a co-defendant’s or an earlier scheme’s case counts the same.
Silent releases. The flag comes from what a release or a later document said. A civil release that is silent about a criminal case is not evidence there was none.
On this measure the SEC and CFTC rate is 32.0% (689 of 2,152 records whose release text was read), and 27.7% (596 of 2,152) where the first release itself states the case.
How far the criminal cases went
Every flagged record except one now carries a criminalOutcome field: the furthest stage of the criminal case that the record’s
document states, who it covers, and where known the court and date. The exception is the flagged SEBI record, whose order says only that criminal recovery steps had begun. Across the 811 flagged records the stage is
sentenced on 397 (49%), charged on 210 (26%), pleaded guilty on 124 (15%), convicted on 26 (3%), not stated on 48 (6%),
dismissed on 3 and acquitted on 2, with none recorded on the SEBI record. These counts were re-derived from the case files on 7 October 2026; an earlier table here still showed 45 “convicted”, from before 19 of them were moved to “not stated”.
| Group | Records | Sentenced | Pleaded | Convicted | Charged | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All flagged | 811 | 397 (49%) | 124 (15%) | 26 (3%) | 210 (26%) | 54 |
| SEC | 583 | 253 (43%) | 89 (15%) | 20 (3%) | 180 (31%) | 41 |
| CFTC | 108 | 57 (53%) | 14 (13%) | 3 | 30 (28%) | 4 |
| ASIC | 92 | 68 (74%) | 19 (21%) | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| OSC (under 30) | 13 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| AMF France (under 10, administrative sanctions) | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| FCA (under 10, too small to compare) | 8 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| SEBI (under 10, administrative orders) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Insider trading | 250 | 119 (48%) | 41 (16%) | 11 | 64 (26%) | 15 |
| Ponzi schemes | 231 | 133 (58%) | 28 (12%) | 4 | 51 (22%) | 15 |
| Pump and dump | 59 | 25 (42%) | 9 | 3 | 18 (31%) | 4 |
| Price manipulation | 58 | 28 (48%) | 15 (26%) | 1 | 10 (17%) | 4 |
| Boiler rooms | 31 | 16 (52%) | 6 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| Unregistered distributions (under 30) | 28 | 7 | 6 | 0 | 9 | 6 |
Technique rows count a record once under each tag it carries. “Other” is not stated, dismissed and acquitted, plus the SEBI record with no stage. Within the SEC, litigation releases are 220 sentenced of 525 (42%) and ALJ decisions 17 of 20, though the ALJ group is small. Insider trading and Ponzi schemes reach the sentence stage more often than the rest; the data show the difference and not why. ASIC is mostly the criminal case itself, so its high sentenced share is the record’s subject, not a civil case that went on to sentence.
A sentence length in months is recorded on 286 of the 811 flagged records (35%), so 111 records at the sentenced stage carry no figure in months, usually because the document gives no number or the sentences are for several people. No record has a figure in months without the sentenced stage. A stage date is recorded on 402 records.
What the stage field cannot show. It covers only the people named in its covers text, which can be one defendant of
several: Simmons’s 480 months, for example, sits beside a co-defendant’s 4.5 years that is not in the sentence field. It is the
furthest stage the document states, so later stages (an appeal, a plea after a charge) are unknown, and “charged” may be
long out of date. Some deferred prosecution agreements are recorded as “charged”, and for ASIC the stage describes the record’s own prosecution. These are reading
calls by AI agents, not lawyers, and we did not re-verify each against its source.
How reliable is the stage field. An independent check by a second AI agent re-read 80 sampled records against their sources. It agreed with the recorded stage on 68 of 80 (85%; 95% interval 76% to 91%). Of the 12 disagreements, 7 were over-statements, mostly “convicted” resting only on a restitution or forfeiture order, and 5 were under-statements. The sentence length in months was correct in all 20 records that carried one, and two “covers” texts were wrong. Seven records were corrected as a result. A later re-read of 34 of the 45 “convicted” records, those whose text did not itself state a plea, verdict or sentence, found 19 resting on a restitution or forfeiture order alone; those were moved to “not stated”, and 15 were kept because their source states a conviction or plea, which left 26 convicted. On 7 October the Stanford 2025 record was restored from “not stated” to “sentenced” (1,320 months) from the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in the criminal case, and another record (Bretas) was confirmed from CFTC releases. Neither change was part of the 80-record check. Deferred prosecution agreements are handled inconsistently: ten are recorded as “charged” and four as “not stated”. The sample bounds the error and does not remove it, and the counts above should be read as roughly 85% reliable, not exact.
Sentences
A custodial sentence in months is recorded on 286 records, all flagged (a record with a sentence was treated as having a criminal case), over a third of the 811. A sentence is recorded where a release or a later document states one, so it covers only what a document says. By agency the share of flagged records with a sentence is 65% for ASIC (60 of 92), 38% for the CFTC (41 of 108) and 31% for the SEC (180 of 583). The 286 skew toward cases at the end of the process, because a document usually mentions a sentence only after one is imposed.
The median is 36 months (middle half 18 to 84; mean 67.5). Forty-nine records are 12 months or less, 48 over 120 months. The three longest are Robert Allen Stanford at 1,320 months (110 years), Keith Simmons at 480 months (40 years) and Gary McDuff at 300; without the top two, the median is still 36 and the mean falls to 61.6. By tag with at least 10 records, Ponzi schemes have 105 (median 84; also 84 without Stanford), insider trading 86 (median 18), price manipulation 21 (median 21) and pump and dump 18 (median 45). Within insider trading the SEC’s 49 records have a median of 14 months and ASIC’s 36 have 18. Records of one matter often repeat the same sentence: the three Merrill records each carry 264 months and two Adams records 234. Counted by matter there are 205 sentences, median 37 months (middle half 18 to 84), and 67 of those matters have more than one sentenced record. We checked the ten longest values and 16 random ones against the cached releases when 168 records carried a sentence. All matched a stated sentence for a person named in the record, except that multi-defendant records carry one defendant’s figure, and the Merrill record carries the longest of three (22 years) while its release headline concerns a different defendant’s two-year sentence. The records added since were not re-checked here, and the Stanford figure, which came from the Fifth Circuit’s opinion cited in the record, was not re-read for this post. A total of 112 of the 286 records have more than one defendant, so a reader comparing sentences by case should not read a sentence as the case’s.
Matters that span regulators
What the library can and cannot count
The library’s grouping code links records of one scheme when they share a lead defendant name of at least two words, overlapping technique tags and a date window, share a court docket, or cite each other’s release number or address. On 7 October 2026 it puts the 3,273 records into 2,872 matters. Of these, 315 hold two or more records (716 records altogether), and seven span more than one regulator: five CFTC and FCA pairs and two CFTC and SEC matters. No SEBI or AMF France record is in a cross-regulator matter.
No matter has a DOJ record, because the library has none. The DOJ ingest reads only a rolling feed of recent press releases, and the sources page says historical DOJ items are reached only through the civil action’s page. No record names a justice.gov address in its release link, document list or timeline. So the measure asked for, the days between a civil record and a DOJ record for the same matter, has zero pairs. The nearest substitute is what each civil release says about the criminal case, below.
Eleven matters, read by hand
The grouping rules prefer a missed link to a false one, so we looked for misses. We searched for any defendant name shared across regulators within three years, then for CFTC releases that say a related SEC or FCA action exists, and read both records and both releases for every candidate. Eleven are the same matter: in ten, a CFTC release itself names the other regulator’s action, and for the eleventh (Barclays, FX) the two releases cover the same bank, the same conduct and the same day. The 2013 Royal Bank of Scotland notice was issued by the FSA, the FCA’s predecessor, and the library files it under FCA.
| Matter | Records | First release by each regulator | Gap | Linked by the rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rabobank, LIBOR and Euribor | CFTC, FCA | both 29 Oct 2013 | 0 days | yes |
| ICAP Europe, yen LIBOR | CFTC, FCA | both 25 Sep 2013 | 0 | yes |
| Royal Bank of Scotland, LIBOR | CFTC, FCA | both 6 Feb 2013 | 0 | yes |
| Deutsche Bank, LIBOR and Euribor | CFTC, FCA | both 23 Apr 2015 | 0 | yes |
| Barclays, FX benchmarks | CFTC, FCA | both 20 May 2015 | 0 | yes |
| Goliath Ventures | CFTC, SEC | both 11 Aug 2026 | 0 | yes |
| Agridime, cattle scheme | two SEC, two CFTC | SEC 18 Dec 2023, CFTC 14 May 2024 | 148 | yes |
| Martin Brokers, yen LIBOR | FCA, CFTC | both 15 May 2014 | 0 | no |
| JPMorgan, metals and Treasuries spoofing | SEC, CFTC | both 29 Sep 2020 | 0 | no |
| Five banks, FX benchmarks | five FCA notices, one CFTC order | FCA 11 Nov 2014, CFTC 12 Nov | 1 | no |
| Michael Coscia, spoofing | FCA, CFTC | FCA 3 Jul 2013, CFTC 22 Jul | 19 | no |
The four unlinked matters have one of two causes: a lead name of one word, which the rule ignores (Citibank in the FX order), or a different lead defendant in each regulator’s record (Coscia against his firm, JPMorgan’s holding company against its securities arm, RP Martin against Martin Brokers). The Goliath, Rabobank and JPMorgan matters are the ones we would point a reader to first, because the later release names the parallel action. Eleven is a floor, not a count: our search was by name and by CFTC cross-reference, and an SEC release that names a CFTC action in a way the search missed would not appear.
Two cautions on the table. The gap is between the library’s dateFiled values, which are mostly release dates but
not consistently: the SEC’s Agridime release is dated 18 December 2023 though the complaint was filed on 11 December, so
the true gap is 155 days there, and the four Agridime records run over 652 days. And eight of the eleven were released the same day because they were coordinated
settlements; the dates show announcement timing, not which regulator moved first.
The corrected flag disagrees across the records of five of the eleven matters: Rabobank, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Goliath and JPMorgan. In each the CFTC record is flagged and the other regulator’s is not; in the other six no record is flagged. The five FCA notices we searched contain no criminal wording. The corrections matter here: the Rabobank, Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland orders describe Justice Department deferred prosecution or plea arrangements and stay flagged, while the ICAP and Barclays FX orders only thank the Department and are now unflagged.
What the records say about order
The library cannot time civil against DOJ records, but a civil release can state when the criminal step happened. Where it does, the order is whatever the dates show:
- Goliath Ventures. The CFTC release says that in June 2026 Christopher Delgado pleaded guilty in a case brought by the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, and that the CFTC and the SEC each filed civil actions on 11 August 2026. The plea comes some six to ten weeks before both. The SEC release does not mention the criminal case, so the SEC record is not flagged.
- Ward Onsa. The SEC administrative law judge’s decision of 17 June 2013 and the CFTC’s judgment release of 31 March 2014 (287 days later) both refer to the same criminal case in the Eastern District of New York, and both records are flagged. The CFTC’s order directs that payments first satisfy Onsa’s criminal restitution. The two civil records concern different proceedings against one person, so we count them as linked through a criminal case, not as one civil matter. Both records now carry a 78-month sentence; we have not re-checked that figure against the decision here.
- JPMorgan, 29 September 2020. The CFTC release reports that the same day the Justice Department announced a deferred prosecution agreement with the holding company and the SEC announced its own order. No date separates them.
- A sample of 30. From the flagged SEC and CFTC records whose text held an explicit criminal phrase (528 do now; the sample was drawn earlier), we drew a seeded random sample of 30 and read each. All 30 are still flagged and still hold the phrase. In 17 the release reports the criminal step as already done, such as a plea, a sentence, a forfeiture or an indictment with an earlier date. In 6 it was announced the same day. In 6 a parallel case is mentioned with no date or is still under way, and in 1 a criminal step is still to come. In this sample, then, the criminal step is more often earlier than later. Part of that is built in: judgment and settlement releases, which are later stages, naturally report earlier criminal steps, and a release reports only what is known when it is written.
None of this shows that a criminal case caused a civil one or the reverse. The releases show the order of stated events and nothing about why.
What this does not show
Selection. These are cases regulators chose to bring and publish. A matter that was never brought, or that a regulator did not announce, is not here. The rates describe the library’s records, not enforcement at large or the share of offenders who face criminal charges.
A missing flag may be an unreported parallel. A civil release that is silent about a criminal case is not evidence there was none; of 12 CFTC releases that name a parallel SEC action, 9 have no SEC record in the library, so the cross-regulator coverage is thin in the other direction too.
What the flag still cannot show. Of the 689 flagged SEC and CFTC records read, 93 rest on later documents we did not re-read, and one flagged record (not cached) has no criminal wording in the record. Three unflagged records name a criminal case about the same scheme, 55 unflagged releases hold conviction wording that was read, and 197 unflagged records have criminal words in their own text that were not read one by one. The 26 uncached releases and every ASIC, FCA, OSC, AMF France and SEBI record were not release-checked, and ASIC’s rule measures something else. The stage field has its own limits, set out in the section on how far the criminal cases went.
Sentences are partial. They exist only where a document states one, cover over a third of flagged records, repeat across records of one matter, and give one defendant’s figure on 112 multi-defendant records. Records added since our spot check were not re-verified. The set is small by technique, so the medians for groups under 30 are indicative.
The grouping and the dates. The grouping is the library’s and misses single-word and mismatched lead names; our
eleven is a floor. dateFiled is not defined consistently between release date and filing date. No DOJ record exists, so no
civil-to-criminal gap in days was measured, and the order in the matters above comes from the text of civil releases.
Checked by AI agents, not lawyers. The readings behind the classifications and the flag corrections were made by Claude AI agents with the lead session re-reading disputed cases. No lawyer reviewed them. The case pages say, in the library’s own words, that the grouping and the flag are the library’s, not the regulators’. If you find one that is wrong, use the error link on that record’s page or write to [email protected] with the slug and a link to the document; it will be logged on the corrections page.