the securities and exchange commission brought more enforcement actions against registered investment advisors and companies than any other class of registrant in fiscal 2021 according to recently released figures from the agency over the past year the sec brought 159 enforcement actions against rias or investment companies amounting to 23 of the total cases the agency brought in 2021 brokerdealers weren’t too far behind finding themselves targeted in 110 cases 16 of the total actions the sec brought only incidents involving securities offerings 150 and delinquent filings 120 saw more enforcement activity in 2021 “the sec’s enforcement division is the cop on the beat for america’s securities laws” sec chairman gary gensler said in a statement “we go after misconduct wherever we find it in the financial system holding individuals and companies accountable without fear or favor” in total the sec brought 434 standalone enforcement actions in fiscal 2021 up from 405 in 2020 but off somewhat from the prior four years between penalties and disgorgement the sec won monetary judgments of more than 38 billion through its enforcement actions new enforcement areas the sec highlighted actions brought in emerging areas like crypto and special purpose acquisition companies or spacs which have emerged as a popular vehicle for taking companies public in september for instance the commission brought charges against an online crypto lending platform and senior executives alleging a 2 billion fraud in july the sec brought an enforcement action against a spac its merger target and others involving a series of misleading claims made to investors about the viability of the technology the merger target—a spacetransportation company—promised to deliver “this year has seen a number of critically important and firstoftheirkind enforcement actions” gurbir grewal director of the sec’s enforcement division said in a statement in the advisor arena perennial trouble areas like disclosures conflicts of interest and fees and other sorts of compensation matters routinely get escalated to enforcement actions those can take on many forms including new spins on classic forms of misconduct in august for instance the sec charged a roboadvisor with breaching its fiduciary duty for investing client funds in two exchangedtraded funds sponsored by its parent company many cases involve multiple defendants so the highlevel number of enforcement actions brought in a given category doesn’t tell the whole story the 159 cases the sec brought against rias and investment companies actually implicated 233 defendants according to agency data in some cases defendants are added as a case unfolds that happened this month when the sec added a defendant to a cherrypicking case involving an ria in florida in june the commission brought charges against an advisor and his firm for an alleged scheme involving thousands of trades executed on behalf of clients using a common account the defendants then allegedly allocated the losing trades to individual client accounts while allocating the profitable trades to the parents of the firm’s president and chief compliance officer who was just added as a defendant to the sec’s complaint last week