Enforcement by year and agency

The jump from 111 records in 2013 to 223 in 2015 is the SEC litigation source starting in 2015, and the 2022 peak of 492 is SEBI (India), whose 312 records start in January 2022. Across 3,166 records, crypto grew from 2.2% to 8.5% of the six older regulators' records, spoofing clustered in 2017 to 2020, Rule 105 fell after two same-day batches, and 2025 cannot be read.

Published 2026-10-04 · 9 min read

Enforcement counts by year invite a story: a rise, a peak, a decline. Before telling one, this post measures where each of the library’s sources starts and stops, because in this library the sources, not the regulators, decide most of what a year-by-year chart looks like. The newest source, SEBI (India), makes the point again: it starts in 2022 and turns 2022 into the library’s biggest year. What survives that test is shorter than the raw chart.

The finding

The library holds 3,273 records. Ten SEC records and 97 AMF France decisions are dated 2004 to 2012 and are left out of the year series; 3,166 records filed from 2013 to 2026 are used, 656 of them from SEBI (India), which is the seventh regulator and whose records are all dated 2022 or later. Three things hold up, and one new thing does not.

1. The rise from 2013 to 2015 is a coverage artefact. The count goes from 111 in 2013 and 145 in 2014 to 223 in 2015. The SEC litigation-release source begins in 2015, and it supplied 108 of those 223. Without it the counts are 111, 145 and 115. From 2015 to 2021 the totals stay between 161 and 246 with no sustained trend.
2. The 2022 peak is SEBI, and it is a coverage artefact too. The total jumps from 161 in 2021 to 492 in 2022, then 363, 266, 199 and 137. SEBI supplies 312, 153, 68, 75 and 48 of those; without it the years are 180, 210, 198, 124 and 89, in line with the earlier ones. The library has no SEBI record before January 2022, so the jump is the start of a source. Why SEBI’s 2022 holds twice as many records as 2023 I have not checked: the regulator may have issued more, or the library’s selection may differ by year.
3. Three technique shifts are visible in more than one way of counting: crypto assets rising from 2.2% to 8.5% of the six older regulators’ records between the two five-year windows, spoofing and layering concentrated in 2017 to 2020, and Rule 105 offering shorts falling sharply after 2014. Each rests on batches of same-day filings, shown below with and without them.
4. Insider trading and Ponzi schemes show no wave among the older regulators. Their shares of the library are about the same in both windows. Their yearly counts move around but do not trend.

What cannot be read from the data: the apparent collapse in 2025 and 2026, any difference between agencies in how many cases they bring, and any reason behind any shift.

How it was measured

A script, scripts/analysis/enforcement-waves.mjs, reads the 3,273 case files and prints every number below. The year is the year of the filing date (dateFiled), which is the date of the order, release or notice, not the year of the conduct; for the AMF France it is the date of the sanctions committee’s decision, and for SEBI the date of its order, different kinds of date from a release date. For SEC settled administrative orders it is also usually the resolution date. A record counts once under each tag it carries, so technique groups overlap, and 429 of the 3,166 records carry no technique tag at all (434 untagged across the whole library, 85 of them SEBI’s; see What reading every record found). Shares in the year table and the window comparison use as denominator all records filed that year by the six older regulators, tagged or not, and leave SEBI out: its source starts in 2022, so including it would put 533 records wholly into the later window and lower every later share, which is a statement about SEBI’s start date and not about any technique. Counts in the technique grid include SEBI. Asset class is a separate field: “crypto” is any record whose assetClass contains crypto, whatever technique it carries. “Spoofing or layering” is the union of those two tags, which is the pairing the earlier spoofing post used.

As of 2026-10-07. The figures were recomputed after four changes to the inputs. The corrections of 2026-10-04 to statuses, money and the criminal-parallel flag do not touch anything this post uses. That day the record of the CFTC’s 29 January 2018 announcement of spoofing actions lost its technique tags, and one SEC record (Mmobuosi) lost its insider-trading tag. On 2026-10-05 the AMF France (French market regulator) was added as a sixth regulator with 209 decisions, 112 of them dated 2013 or later, adding mainly insider-dealing and spoofing or layering records. On 2026-10-07 twenty-one records that were not enforcement matters were deleted (16 SEC subpoena-enforcement applications, 3 CFTC umbrella announcements, a CFTC notice and an Ontario motion); that lowered the SEC litigation-release source from 1,209 to 1,193 records and the CFTC from 338 to 334, removed one spoofing record from 2019, and moved every share slightly. Also in 2026-10 SEBI was added as a seventh regulator, with 489 records on 7 October and 167 more on 9 October (656 in all), the later ones read under a wider scope that includes issuer fraud and broker fraud with fraud-regulation findings, many without a technique tag. It added no records to the SEC, CFTC, ASIC, OSC, FCA or AMF counts, and did not change the Ponzi, crypto, paid-promotion or Rule 105 counts, but it raised every year’s total from 2022, added 101 insider-trading and 7 spoofing or layering records, and added three groups (matched orders or wash trading, front running, and misleading issuer disclosure) that are almost all SEBI.

The ingest source of an SEC record is read from the address of its primary document: a litigation-release page, an administrative-proceedings order or an administrative law judge decision. The ingest scripts and DECISIONS.md say where each source starts. The rest of this section is the result of reading them.

Where each source begins and ends

• SEC litigation releases start in 2015. The ingest script and the sources page both say so. This is the library’s largest source, 1,193 records. Before 2015 there are none; 2013 and 2014 SEC records come from administrative orders (130 of 149) and administrative law judge decisions (19).
• SEC administrative proceedings run from 2013 but are a smaller share of SEC records once litigation releases arrive: 91% of SEC records in 2013 and 85% in 2014, then between 12% and 36% in each later year. The source covers orders that find misconduct, and only those whose text scored a technique are kept, so it is a slice of the SEC docket, not all of it.
• SEC administrative law judge decisions are 56 records from 2013 on, 47 of them filed from 2013 to 2018 and 9 since. Only decisions with a finality order are recorded, so the source is thin after 2019. This source cannot show a trend.
• The CFTC runs from 2013 and gives 334 records.
• ASIC gives 113 records. The ingest is set to start in 2013, but the earliest ASIC record is dated 8 October 2014, so there are none for 2013 and the first nine months of 2014. We did not find out why.
• The FCA (48 records) and the OSC (69) never exceed 10 in a year, and the OSC has none in 2024 and none in 2026; its latest record is dated 22 October 2025. Together ASIC, FCA and OSC produce between 10 and 23 records in each full year, 2013 to 2025. They are too small to compare year by year.
• The AMF France gives 209 records, 112 of them filed from 2013 on, at 1 to 13 a year (the last is dated 20 May 2026, so 2026 has one). Its source is the sanctions committee’s decision pages, found through the regulator’s sitemap from 2004, and the decisions are in French. Its dates are decision dates, not release dates, so its year counts are not strictly like-for-like with the others. It is too small to read year by year, but 120 of its 209 records (65 of the 112 from 2013 on) are insider dealing, so it adds mainly to the insider-trading group.
• SEBI (India) gives 656 records, all dated 3 January 2022 to 29 September 2026, at 312 in 2022, 153 in 2023, 68 in 2024, 75 in 2025 and 48 in 2026 (to September). Its source is SEBI’s published orders, in English; the library keeps the orders its classifier tied to manipulation-type conduct under the anti-fraud (PFUTP) and insider-trading regulations and, since 9 October, related fraud on investors or the market, including issuer fraud, fund diversion and broker fraud on clients where the order makes PFUTP findings or imposes PFUTP penalties, and fraud matters that were alleged and dismissed. Compliance-only orders, interim and procedural orders and orders where the fraud charge was held not made out and only compliance penalties remain are left out. Each order is dated by its order date. Five of the 656 are batch records that each stand for a year of near-identical adjudication orders on reversal trades in illiquid BSE stock options (368, 860, 61, 136 and 152 orders), so SEBI’s record counts understate its order counts by about 1,570. Its mix is unlike the others: 466 records are judgments (adjudication and final orders), 122 are dismissals (68 of them in 2022) and 68 are settlements. Its records are each from one reading of the order; the first 489 had a sampled second read, 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). The step up to 2022 is the start of the source, not a change in SEBI’s activity; the series 2022 to 2026 cannot be set beside the others because of SEBI’s different dismissal rate, its batches and its selection of orders.
• Not in the library at all: DOJ (the ingest reads only a rolling feed, and there are no DOJ records), FINRA (its robots file asks crawlers not to read the disciplinary pages, so they are not collected), CIRO and the other Canadian regulators, and any regulator in Asia outside India. The agencies of the 3,166 records are SEC (1,844 in all), SEBI, CFTC, ASIC, OSC, FCA and AMF France. Any statement about “enforcement” here means those seven.

Latest dates. Every record was ingested in September or early October 2026. The latest filing date is 4 September 2026 for the SEC litigation releases, 28 August 2026 for the CFTC, 29 September 2026 for SEBI, 22 May 2026 for ASIC, 27 January 2026 for the FCA. 2026 is therefore a partial year of about eight or nine months and is not compared with full years.

The 2025 and 2026 drop is not interpretable. For the older regulators, records fall from 198 in 2024 to 124 in 2025. The CFTC falls from 22 to 4 and SEC administrative proceedings from 56 to 14, while SEC litigation releases fall from 101 to 80. The last SEC administrative record is dated 22 May 2026, more than three months before the last SEC litigation record. This could be a real fall in published cases, a source whose latest pages were not fully collected, or a change in what each regulator publishes. We have not checked the CFTC and SEC indexes against the library for those months, so we cannot say which. SEBI does not show the same drop (68, 75 and 48 for 2024 to 2026), which is one more reason to read the older regulators’ fall as a source question and not as a general decline. Treat 2025 and 2026 as unreliable until that is done.

Taking the SEC litigation source out of the six older regulators gives a series that does not have the 2015 break: 111, 145, 115, 104, 116, 130, 89, 97, 76, 68, 99 and 97 records for 2013 to 2024. That like-for-like series is flat to falling and noisy; it is smaller than the full one because it leaves out the largest source, so it is not a measure of enforcement either. Adding SEBI to that same series would give 380, 252 and 165 for 2022 to 2024, which would show a spike and a decline that belong to the new source.

By agency

Between 2015 and 2019 and between 2020 and 2024 the counts were: SEC 821 and 697, CFTC 138 and 128, ASIC 39 and 54, OSC 35 and 18, FCA 17 and 12, AMF France 50 and 32, and SEBI 0 and 533. Each of the older regulators fell except ASIC, though only the SEC and CFTC have enough records to be worth reading. Within the SEC both sources fall: administrative proceedings from 238 to 193 and litigation releases from 546 to 504. The CFTC’s series peaks at 40 in 2018 and 36 in 2019, then eases to 32, 26, 24, 24 and 22. Nothing in the data shows why. SEBI’s 533 records in 2022 to 2024 are a count of a source that begins in 2022 and say nothing about 2015 to 2019.

SEC records also change in kind over the years: the share that are litigation releases is between 61% and 68% in 2015 to 2018 and between 64% and 86% afterwards, so a technique that is brought mainly as an administrative order loses weight in the later shares whatever the SEC did. That is why the technique shares below are also given within a single source.

Techniques over time

For every figure in the chart the denominator is all records filed in that window by the six older regulators (1,100 for 2015 to 2019, 941 for 2020 to 2024). The windows are used because each of those sources is running throughout, but a share built on all records still moves when the source mix does. Counting SEBI as well would put 533 more records in the later window (1,474 in all) and lower every later share, for example insider trading to 22.5% and crypto to 5.4%; that is the effect of SEBI’s start date, not of any change in the older regulators’ cases.

Crypto assets: the clearest rise

The library has 113 records with crypto as an asset class (SEC 67, CFTC 39, OSC 6, FCA 1), none from SEBI. Three are dated before 2017. The share goes from 2.2% (24 of 1,100) in 2015 to 2019 to 8.5% (80 of 941) in 2020 to 2024, and the yearly count peaks at 26 in 2023. A rise appears with a single source too: among SEC litigation releases alone it goes from 1.3% (7 of 546) to 4.6% (23 of 504), and the 95% ranges (0.6 to 2.6 and 3.1 to 6.8) do not overlap. Six of the 26 records for 2023 were filed on one day (22 March 2023), the paid-promotion batch described below; without that day 2023 is 20, still the highest year. The count falls to 12 in 2024, 6 in 2025 and 2 in 2026, in the same years in which the older regulators’ totals fall, so those last values cannot be read.

Forex as an asset class (53 records, 26 of them CFTC) is stable by comparison: 1.9% and 2.1% across the windows, 0 to 8 records in a year.

Spoofing and layering: a cluster, not a steady rise

There are 120 records filed from 2013 on, 72 of them CFTC, 13 AMF France, 20 SEC and 7 SEBI. Counts are 2, 5, 8 and 5 for 2013 to 2016, then 13, 17, 17 and 16 for 2017 to 2020, then 4, 13, 6, 5, 5 and 4. The share of the older regulators’ records falls from 5.5% to 4.0%, which is a comparison between a window containing the peak and one that does not, and so is not a trend in itself. Within the CFTC records alone, spoofing and layering is 42% of 2017 records, 35% of 2018, 42% of 2019 and 34% of 2020, against 8% in 2021. The two SEBI-era values, 13 in 2022 and 6 in 2023, include 4 and 2 SEBI orders, so the bump in 2022 is not a revival of the CFTC cluster.

One day carries part of the peak: on 29 January 2018 eight spoofing records share a filing date, with consecutive CFTC release numbers 7682-18 to 7689-18. A ninth record on that date, the CFTC’s announcement that summarised the actions (release 7681-18), carried no technique tag after the 2026-10-04 corrections and was deleted on 2026-10-07 as a non-matter record, so it is in no group here. Without the eight, 2018 is 9 and the peak is 2019 at 17. The 2017 to 2020 shape stands with or without them: 63 of the 120 records were filed in those four years.

For context, the CFTC’s anti-spoofing provision is 7 U.S.C. § 6c(a)(5)(C), which prohibits bidding or offering with the intent to cancel before execution. The copy of the statute on the Legal Information Institute site, which was opened for this post, carries an amendment note saying Public Law 111-203, section 747 added paragraphs (5) to (7), which is the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The library’s first CFTC records are from 2013, so it cannot show what happened between that enactment and 2013, and it does not show whether the 2017 to 2020 cluster follows from the provision. That would need a source about investigations, and none was used.

Rule 105: two batches, then a trickle

Rule 105 of Regulation M restricts short sales before a public offering followed by purchases in it. The library has 85 records, all SEC: 25 filed in 2013, 33 in 2014, 9 in 2015 and between 0 and 6 in each year since. Forty-three of the 85 (51%) are on two days: 23 on 16 September 2013 and 20 on 16 September 2014, each run with consecutive SEC release numbers (for example D. E. Shaw, Deerfield and Antipodean Advisors). Without those two days the series is 2, 13, 9, 1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 5, 6 and 1 for 2013 to 2025. The share of SEC administrative proceedings carrying the tag falls from 47% in 2013 and 43% in 2014 to 15% in 2015, between 0% and 4% from 2016 to 2022, and 6% in 2023 and 11% in 2024. The tag is almost wholly an administrative-order tag: only 3 SEC litigation releases carry it.

The same-day filings are a fact of the record. Whether they reflect a coordinated effort is something a regulator statement would have to say, and none was used. The eCFR copy of 17 CFR § 242.105, also opened for this post, lists its source history as adopted in 1997 and amended in 2004 and 2007, then in 2018, 2021 and 2024, so the rule text did not change between 2007 and the batches. The list shows no amendment between 2007 and those batches or in the years after them until 2018; it says nothing about why the filings clustered or stopped. It is also the group that lost no tags in the audit.

Paid stock promotion: two spikes

Sixty-eight records, 65 of them SEC, 2 SEBI and 1 OSC. The yearly counts are 11 in 2017 and 12 in 2023 against 0 to 8 in the other years. Each spike has a batch: 7 records on 10 April 2017 (for example Corenman) and 6 on 22 March 2023 (including Lohan and Paul). Without them the two years are 4 and 6, and the series is a flat 0 to 8 a year. The share is 2.8% and 3.4% in the two windows, which is no change. This group lost half its tags in the audit, so it is also the one whose counts depend most on how the tag is judged.

Insider trading and Ponzi schemes: no wave among the older regulators

Insider trading is 794 records from 2013 on (101 of them SEBI, 65 AMF France), 28.0% of the older regulators’ records in 2015 to 2019 and 26.6% in 2020 to 2024. Ponzi schemes are 474 (none SEBI), 17.3% and 19.7%. Both are inside the sampling range of each other (about plus or minus 3 points). By year the Ponzi count runs 28 to 52 a year from 2015 to 2025 with a peak of 52 in 2023 (24.8% of the older regulators’ records), and insider trading among the older regulators 38 to 68 with a low of 38 in 2021 (23.6%); with SEBI added, insider trading is 89 in 2022. Insider trading shares of 39.5% in 2025 and 52.8% in 2026 look like a wave but are not: the count (49, then 47 for part of a year, older regulators only) is in line with earlier years, and the share rises because the other sources shrink. The CFTC supplies 109 of the 474 Ponzi records (23%), and 2013 and 2014 insider trading is low (13 and 26 records) because the SEC’s records in those years rest on administrative orders only; the AMF France adds 8 and 5.

The table gives shares of all records filed that year by the six older regulators, with SEBI’s records for the year shown separately because they are excluded from the shares.

The 2013 and 2014 rows rest on SEC administrative orders (plus the CFTC and the smaller regulators) and 2025 and 2026 on a shrunken denominator; the middle years are the comparable ones. Spoofing here is the union of its two tags and the spoofing group’s yearly counts for 2013 and 2014 (2 and 5) are under 10, as are most of the cells in the paid-promotion and crypto columns, so a single record moves them.

What the seventh regulator adds

SEBI’s 656 records carry no Ponzi, crypto, Rule 105 or unregistered-distribution tag. Its technique tags are price manipulation (157 records), misleading issuer disclosure (176), matched orders or wash trading (143, of which wash trading 54), insider trading (101), front running (53), pump and dump (18), and social media ramps (17), with 85 records untagged, mostly in the issuer-fraud, fund-diversion and broker-fraud orders added on 9 October; a record can carry several. The tag “misleading issuer disclosure” was added to the library on 7 October for SEBI and French AMF disclosure cases: 214 records carry it, 176 SEBI and 38 AMF France. Front running and the matched-orders groups are almost wholly SEBI in these years: of 59 front-running records filed from 2013 on, 53 are SEBI’s, and of 239 matched-orders or wash-trading records, 143 are SEBI’s, 87 of them in 2022. SEBI records raise the price-manipulation count from 9 to 93 in 2022. The SEBI status mix is itself a pattern: dismissals are 68 of 312 records in 2022 (22%), 25 of 153 in 2023 (16%), 7 of 68 in 2024, 15 of 75 in 2025 and 7 of 48 in 2026; settled records are 68 in all. None of these year-to-year changes can be read as a change in SEBI’s enforcement, for the same reasons given for the other regulators and because the library’s SEBI records were selected and written once, from a single reading of each order (on a sample of the first 489, 56 of 60 agreed on every field; the 167 later ones had 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)).

Across all seven regulators the status mix of the 3,273 records is 1,615 judgment, 1,284 settled, 180 filed, 163 dismissed, 24 unknown and 7 appealed; excluding SEBI it is 1,149 judgment, 1,216 settled, 180 filed, 41 dismissed, 24 unknown and 7 appealed. SEBI therefore supplies 122 of the 163 dismissals (75%) and changes the dismissal share from 1.6% of the older regulators’ records to 5.0% of all.

What this does not show

• Selection. These are cases regulators chose to bring and publish, then kept by the library’s reading of what they charge. A change in a share is a change in the library’s records, not necessarily in the underlying conduct, in detection, or in how many cases were brought. No claim here is about how much manipulation occurred.
• No cause. Nothing in this post says why any shift happened, and none is attributed to an administration, a policy or a rule. The two legal facts above come from the statute and rule pages; neither is a statement about enforcement priorities.
• Coverage is uneven by design. The SEC litigation source starts in 2015, the ASIC records in October 2014, the SEBI records in January 2022, and DOJ, FINRA and CIRO records are absent. FINRA is the main enforcer of order-book conduct in US equities, so the spoofing and layering group is mostly futures and a thin set of SEC matters, AMF France decisions and a few SEBI orders. The 2025 and 2026 drop is unresolved.
• Batches. A single day supplied 23, 20, 8, 7 and 6 records in the groups above. The result is stated with and without them, and the conclusion survives for crypto and for the 2017 to 2020 spoofing cluster, but a different batch day could move any small group. Five SEBI records are batches of hundreds of orders each.
• Small groups. ASIC, FCA, OSC and AMF France are under 40 records a year combined; Rule 105, paid promotion and crypto cells are mostly under 10.
• Mixed dates. The AMF France’s and SEBI’s dates are decision and order dates and the others are release or order dates, so a year’s total adds different kinds of event.
• Filing year, not conduct year. A 2019 filing usually concerns earlier trading (SEBI’s batch orders of 2022 to 2026 concern trading in 2014 and 2015), and the library’s duplicates (one matter can appear as an SEC order and a litigation release, and multi-respondent records are counted once) are not removed.
• Checked by AI agents, not lawyers. The library’s original 2,428 records were compared with primary documents on 2 and 3 October 2026 by Claude AI agents working from written instructions, and had sampled second reads; no lawyer reviewed them. The 543 records updated in the status rounds were researched on 4 October the same way. The 209 AMF France records, added on 5 October 2026, were each written by an AI agent reading the French decision and marked reviewed that day; they had a single reading, plus a 60-record sampled second read on 7 October that agreed on every field for 54 (90%, 95% interval 80% to 95%) and on defendants, status, amount and date for 59; the disagreements were mostly technique tags and one decision whose appeal had cut the penalty, and were corrected. The 656 SEBI records, added on 7 to 9 October, had a single reading by one AI agent each; for the first 489 a 60-record sampled second read on 8 October agreed on every field for 56 (93%, interval 84% to 97%), the four disagreements all being penalty amounts, 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). This analysis was also prepared by an AI agent, and its figures were recomputed a second way, but a mistake in a tag or date would carry through. If you find one, use the error link on the case page.

Techniques referenced

• Spoofing — Spoofing is placing orders a trader intends to cancel before execution, to create a false impression of supply or demand and move the price toward a smaller genuine order on the other side.
• Paid stock promotion — Paid stock promotion is publicising a security in exchange for compensation, which is lawful only if the fact of payment, the payer and the amount are fully disclosed under Securities Act Section 17(b).
• Rule 105 offering shorts — Rule 105 offering shorts are short sales of a stock in the restricted period before a follow-on offering is priced, followed by a purchase of that stock in the offering, which Regulation M Rule 105 prohibits whatever the trader intended.
• Insider trading — Insider trading is dealing in securities on material non-public information in breach of a duty of trust or confidence, which exploits a true signal others cannot see rather than injecting a false one into the price.
• Ponzi schemes — A Ponzi scheme pays returns to earlier investors from later investors' money rather than from genuine profits, which is investment fraud with no market involvement and no price to manipulate.

Cases referenced

Reviewed October 4, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.