SEC Announces Enforcement Results for FY 2021

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it filed 434 new enforcement actions in fiscal year 2021, representing a 7 percent increase over the prior year. Seventy percent of these new or "stand-alone" actions involved at least one individual defendant or respondent. The new actions spanned the entire securities waterfront, including against emerging threats in the crypto and SPAC spaces. For example, the SEC charged a company for operating an unregistered online digital asset exchange, charged a crypto lending platform and top executives alleging a $2 billion fraud, and brought an action against a special purpose acquisition company, its merger target, top executives, and others for alleged misconduct in a SPAC transaction.