SEC

Canadian penny stock trader John Babikian, once dubbed the “Wolf of Montreal,” obtained a new legal identity, secured residency in Latvia, and bought a luxury apartment in Dubai after disappearing from public view following a U.S. securities settlement.

Two Democratic U.S. senators pressed Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins on Monday to explain the abrupt resignation of the agency’s enforcement director and whether it was tied to the SEC’s pullback from cryptocurrency cases linked to Donald Trump.

An entrepreneur who used ties to prominent academics to raise nearly $27 million for a cluster of startups ran what U.S. regulators described as an “IP-rich” and “Ponzi-like” scheme that recycled new investor money to repay earlier backers while funding a lavish personal lifestyle.

Margaret Ryan, the former head of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), resigned last week after clashing with agency leaders over the direction of the watchdog’s oversight, including cases tied to President Donald Trump, his family, and his administration.

Elon Musk’s lawyers sought to negotiate a settlement of the SEC’s case over his delayed disclosure of a Twitter stake without fully involving the agency’s litigation team, an unusual approach that surfaced in federal court earlier this month.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Monday that Judge Margaret Ryan has stepped down as director of its Division of Enforcement after little more than six months on the job. 

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency has marked a stark shift in white-collar crime enforcement, with federal prosecutors and investigators stepping back from complex foreign-bribery, money-laundering, and corruption cases, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Meta internally projected late last year that roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue, or approximately $16 billion, would come from advertising tied to scams and banned goods, according to company documents reviewed by Reuters. 

Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have turned a family-branded cryptocurrency venture into a cash machine that eclipses the Trump Organization’s traditional businesses, according to a Reuters investigation that traces opaque token purchases by overseas investors and a wave of U.S. policy shifts friendly to digital assets.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has officially closed its 6-year investigation into Swedbank’s anti-money laundering (AML) efforts without imposing an enforcement action.