website did appear in PACER filing results, but not all
cases present in the SEC’s litigation releases appeared
in
the PACER records search using the specified party
search terms “SEC” and “Securities and Exchange
Commission.” The most common reason that a case
did not appear in PACER search results was that the
party name was listed as some variation on the
search
terms (e.g. “U.S. Securities and Exchange
Administrative Cases Initiated
23
Table 4: Source Comparisons
Commission”, “Securities and Exchange Commission” [sic]). However, in no case was the data absent from the PACER
system in entirety; searching by case number invariably returned case information.
Of the 237 unique cases found in PACER, 27 were absent from the SEC litigation records in 2010. This was primarily due
to actions related to cases initiated in previous years (n=26). In only one case did a new action appear in PACER without
appearing in SEC litigation releases
21
, suggesting that this is, at worst, a recordkeeping anomaly. PACER appears to over---
count SEC activity. Some search results listing the SEC as plaintiff were in fact actions against the Commission. In
addition,
PACER returns multiple case numbers related to the same civil case;
22
in two particularly egregious matters,
search
results returned more than 50 and 70 unique case numbers for each of two cases. Overall, PACER court records
were
found to suffer from data entry errors and inconsistencies that limit their usefulness in determining the volume of
agency
enforcement activity. Duplicate cases (n=296 of 533 search results), secondary enforcement activity [e.g.
motions to enforce
subpoenas] (n=17), and party---role data entry errors (n=18) inflate counts. Taking into account only
new filings of civil
suits PACER returns 176 cases.
PACER also contains criminal case filings. However, a search of criminal court documents revealed no cases in which the
SEC was an interested party in 2010. This should not be viewed as indicative of agency inactivity, but rather as a
limitation in
the data source. Comparing the SEC’s public agency data and PACER’s data, it appears that the SEC’s civil
and criminal
files are more complete than would be generated by broadly searching PACER. The SEC’s litigation releases
contain all of
the matters returned by PACER, in addition to several others that were omitted using a party---based search
procedure.
Unlike PACER, the SEC provides detailed court documents with rich information at no cost. However,
PACER’s services may
be useful for generating supplemental data once a pool of cases has been established using SEC
(or other) records.
Data from the Federal Justice Statistics Program offer new dimensions of SEC involvement in criminal and civil cases.
According to data from the Executive Office of the US Attorney
24
, 16 suspects in 12 matters were referred by SEC for
prosecution in 2010; this reflects new activity initiated by the SEC (Table 4). In addition, 11 ongoing criminal matters
involving 13 suspects were concluded; the majority (eight) were declined, including both cases with organizational
defendants. Two resulted in guilty verdicts for postal, wire, and radio fraud. In one case the defendant was sentenced to
three years’ probation while in the other the defendant was sentenced to 87 months incarceration. In the third case,
comparing party names). This reduced the cases eligible for count to 244. PACER records were compared with SEC generated data
through a multistage process. First, the authors searched party names in all SEC litigation releases for 2010. If a case could not be
located in the FY2010 data, the authors then searched the SEC website. If this also failed to return SEC generated case information,
the authors reviewed the legal documents in a case to determine the nature of the case, the parties involved, and the dates
initiated. Seven duplicates were detected during the document review phase, leaving a final count of 237 unique matters.
21
The case did appear in the SEC News (available online), though was not captured by the original data collection.
22
Case determined by the parties involved in the suit.
23
The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed 39 civil cases on the SEC’s behalf in FY2010. This number is not meant to be representative of
agency activity in civil court, and thus should not be compared to the number of civil cases filed by the SEC according to agency or
court data.
24
The FJSP data are available through ICPSR with an approved data protection plan. In order to isolate criminal matters related to
SEC activity, matters were filtered by investigative agency, if one was provided. While this is the best approximation of criminal
matters resulting directly from SEC enforcement activity, the U.S. Attorney’s case management system, LIONS (from which the FJSP
data are drawn), does not strictly require that a value be entered for the agency variable. Thus, a certain amount of missing data can
be expected.
7
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.