SEC's 2026 crypto cases chase scams and an FTX auditor

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed 348 enforcement actions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to its annual results on sec.gov published Nov. 10. The crypto cases it chose to highlight are retail frauds, a Ponzi trial and an audit settlement tied to FTX, with no standalone registration case among them.

The total is down from 456 a year earlier and is the lowest since 1991, according to a Reuters review of agency statistics carried by marketscreener.com. Of the 348, 235 were standalone actions and 113 were follow-on proceedings to bar people already convicted or enjoined. Monetary relief came to $1.095 billion: $752 million in disgorgement and interest and $343 million in civil penalties. A court deemed $235 million of that disgorgement satisfied in a separate non-SEC case. The agency said it returned about $731 million to more than 250,000 investors.

The crypto cases on the SEC's list

Crypto shows up in the release as a fraud problem. The SEC charged three purported crypto asset trading platforms and four investment clubs that allegedly took at least $14 million from retail investors, recruited them on social media with tips supposedly generated by "SI", the agency's term for super intelligence, and moved the money overseas. It also charged the founder and CEO of a bitcoin mining business who allegedly raised over $95.6 million from about 6,400 investors and misappropriated $48.5 million.

In February a jury found Ismael Zarco Sanchez liable for securities fraud and registration violations as a lead salesperson for CryptoFX, a $300 million Ponzi scheme that targeted more than 40,000 mostly Latino investors. The SEC also settled with the audit engagement partner whose negligent work on FTX audits led to a GAAP violation. cointelegraph.com identifies him as Francis Decker of Prager Metis. A July judgment ordered BitConnect promoter Michael Noble to pay disgorgement, interest and a $50,000 penalty in a case filed in 2021.

The shift started earlier. Cointelegraph, citing Cornerstone Research, reports that the SEC filed 13 crypto-related actions in 2025, down from 33 in 2024, and that five of the 13 came before Gary Gensler left in January 2025. The bigger fights over crypto market structure have moved to Congress, which faces the CLARITY Act deadline on Jan. 3, and to the derivatives regulator, as the CFTC's push on perps shows. Treasury tools now cover some ground the SEC once did, as in FinCEN's MEXC order.

What the new analytics office means for crypto users

The Division of Enforcement launched an Office of Super Intelligence and Analytics this year. Its listed work includes anomaly detection, faster document and transcript review, and "improved blockchain and financial-flow analysis", aimed mainly at fraud, cyber and SI-enabled manipulation. A separate Retail Fraud Working Group screens tips on Ponzi schemes, impersonation scams and manipulation, and more than a dozen investigations have already come out of it, the SEC says.

Chairman Paul Atkins said case counts and dollar totals are "not the only or most telling measures" of enforcement. Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom Reuters sees as the likely next chair of the Senate Banking Committee, said the new Democratic majority will "closely scrutinize whether the Atkins SEC is protecting the American people."

The SEC received about 26,000 whistleblower tips in fiscal 2026 and paid more than $158 million to 65 whistleblowers, the most individual awardees since fiscal 2023.