Christopher W. Burns disappeared on September 25, 2020, the day before he was supposed to hand documents to the SEC. Six years later, the FBI raised the reward to $150,000 and put him on a brand new list.
The SEC just released its best enforcement number in history, and the headline is almost entirely one man who ran a Ponzi scheme before some of the people reading this were old enough to vote. What the number underneath that number looks like is a different story altogether.
The agency that is supposed to catch financial fraud just announced it is done measuring success by how many cases it brings. Before you decide whether that is reassuring or alarming, read what they replaced the old measure with.
The SEC shrank its enforcement staff by nearly 17 percent in 2025 and dismissed dozens of cases inherited from the prior administration. For people who got a private placement pitch last year, that number matters more than the press release announcing it.