Bruce Carton

The SEC is understandably loath to file subpoena enforcement actions. Such actions are basically a waste of time and resources, and involve getting a court to order people to do what they are already required to do. Sometimes, however, the SEC has no choice but to wield the “stick” of subpoena enforcement when people simply won’t comply.

Shamoil T. Shipchandler has been named Regional Director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office, filling the vacancy created when former Regional Director David Woodcock left the agency in June 2015 to join law firm Jones Day.

A report from the SEC’s inspector general says he is looking into allegations of bias among administrative law judges in the SEC’s administrative proceedings, but has found no evidence so far to support those accusations. More inside.

I’m always up for watching some insider trading drama, and Showtime will attempt to deliver some on January 17, 2016 when it debuts its new Wall Street drama series, “Billions.”

The Justice Department and SEC both announced high-profile cases on Tuesday against a large group of hackers and traders. Over a five-year period, the group allegedly carried out a scheme that involved hacking more than 150,000 confidential press releases from the computer networks of Marketwired, PR Newswire Association, and Business Wire to execute illegal trades. This stolen information allegedly generated more than $30 million in illegal profits. Details inside.

You might not think that fraudsters impersonating the SEC would be a significant or ongoing problem but the volume of the SEC’s “Investor Alerts” on this topic would seem to suggest otherwise.

Yesterday, over six years after the criminal case began in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme case, the Madoff firm’s long-time controller, Irwin Lipkin, was sentenced to six months in prison. Lipkin is the 15th — and final — defendant to be prosecuted in the Madoff case.

In what was likely his last formal speech as an SEC commissioner, Commissioner Dan Gallagher invoked into his inner Stuart Smalley to take aim one last time at his favorite target, the Dodd-Frank Act.

Last week, a former I.T. professional at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, received a two-year sentence for a particularly brazen insider trading case scheme — a scheme that foolishly ignored a huge “flashing stop sign,” according to the sentencing judge.

Facing an August 3 deadline to appeal the Second Circuit’s Newman decision, the United States today filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S Supreme Court. The U.S. argued that the Second Circuit’s decision “erroneously departed” from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dirks v. SEC.