SEC Enforcement Actions API — Search Violations and Penalties

Access structured SEC enforcement action data via API. Search by violation type, respondent, date range, and penalty amount. Track fraud cases and regulatory trends. Start free.

SEC Enforcement Actions API

The SEC brings hundreds of enforcement actions each year against individuals and companies for securities fraud, insider trading, accounting violations, and other regulatory breaches. Datastream structures this data and exposes it through a searchable API.

What you get

• Structured enforcement data: Respondent names, violation types, relief sought, penalty amounts, and dates
• Flexible filtering: By violation type, date range, and respondent
• Historical coverage: Enforcement actions from 2010 to present
• Real-time updates: New actions indexed within hours of SEC publication

Quick start

Search for recent enforcement actions:

curl -H "x-api-key: $OMNI_DATASTREAM_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/events/enforcement?limit=5"

{
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2024-12-15",
      "respondent_name": "Acme Corp",
      "violation_type": "Securities Fraud",
      "relief_sought": "Injunction, Disgorgement, Civil Penalty",
      "penalty_amount": 15000000,
      "litigation_release_number": "LR-26123",
      "summary": "SEC charges Acme Corp and two executives with securities fraud for overstating revenue..."
    }
  ]
}

Filter by violation type:

curl -H "x-api-key: $OMNI_DATASTREAM_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/events/enforcement?violation_type=insider_trading&date_from=2024-01-01&limit=10"

Use cases

Compliance and due diligence

Screen counterparties, portfolio companies, and potential hires against SEC enforcement history. Automate checks that compliance teams currently do manually.

Regulatory trend analysis

Track enforcement volume, penalty amounts, and violation types over time to identify where the SEC is focusing attention. Useful for policy teams and legal practices.

Risk assessment

Cross-reference enforcement respondents against your portfolio holdings. Flag companies or executives with prior SEC actions.

Legal research

Search enforcement actions by violation type and date range. Replace manual searches on the SEC litigation releases page with structured API queries.

Violation types

Type	Description
fraud	Securities fraud, wire fraud
insider_trading	Trading on material non-public information
accounting	Accounting fraud, improper revenue recognition
market_manipulation	Pump and dump, spoofing, layering
investment_adviser	Investment adviser fraud, breach of fiduciary duty
offering_violations	Unregistered offerings, Reg D violations
fcpa	Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations
whistleblower	Whistleblower retaliation

API endpoints

Endpoint	Description
GET /v1/events/enforcement	Search and filter enforcement actions

Filter parameters

Parameter	Description	Example
violation_type	Category of violation	insider_trading
date_from / date_to	Date range	2024-01-01
limit	Results per page	20

Why Datastream for enforcement data

Feature	Datastream	SEC.gov	LexisNexis	Bloomberg Law
Structured JSON API	Yes	No (HTML)	No (proprietary)	No (terminal)
Violation type filtering	Yes	No	Manual	Manual
Penalty amount search	Yes	No	Limited	Limited
Webhook alerts	Yes	No	No	No
Pricing	Pay-as-you-go	Free (unstructured)	Enterprise	Enterprise

Get started

Get your API key

Start searching enforcement actions in under 60 seconds.

• Search Enforcement Actions Tutorial
• API Reference — Events
• Full documentation