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Penalty distribution by technique

Penalty distributions within every technique are heavily right-skewed: the median is far below the mean, and outliers extend well beyond the upper whisker. Any single "typical penalty" figure for a technique is misleading, which is why this site reports medians alongside the spread.

Distribution of civil penalties by manipulation techniqueA horizontal box plot for 12 techniques on a logarithmic scale, because penalties span six orders of magnitude. Each row shows the interquartile range as a box, the median as a vertical line, whiskers to the furthest values within 1.5 times the interquartile range, and individual outliers as points. Sample size is printed beneath each label.Civil penalty (USD), logarithmic scale $1k $10k $100k $1m $10m $100m $1bn $10bnLogarithmic scale: each gridline is ten times the previous one.Price manipulation n=49 Price manipulation median: $30m$325m$400m$475m$475m$800m$1.2bn$1.4bn$1.7bnBoiler rooms n=4 Boiler rooms median: $2m$37mPonzi schemes n=90 Ponzi schemes median: $1m$12m$13m$17m$19m$20m$23m$27m$32m$32m$100m$111m$147m$5.9bnSpoofing n=63 Spoofing median: $600k$9m$12m$15m$17m$24m$25m$30m$38m$41m$45m$50m$1.7bnWash trading n=45 Wash trading median: $600k$5m$5m$5m$6m$7m$9m$35m$41m$325mPaid stock promotion n=40 Paid stock promotion median: $238k$2m$3m$3m$6m$6mPump and dump n=11 Pump and dump median: $223k$910k$26mUnregistered distributions n=33 Unregistered distributions median: $150k$3m$19m$37mInsider trading n=120 Insider trading median: $100k$581k$682k$1m$1m$1m$1m$1m$2m$2m$2m$2m$3m$3m$4m$4m$10m$14m$40m$41m$55m$91m$1.7bnReverse merger schemes n=15 Reverse merger schemes median: $100k$575k$1m$2mNaked short selling debate n=6 Naked short selling debate median: $45kUndisclosed control blocks n=10 Undisclosed control blocks median: $31k$2m
How civil penalties are distributed within each manipulation technique, shown as a box plot rather than an average.

How this was calculated

Only actions where a civil monetary penalty was stated in the release are included, and only techniques with at least four such actions are charted. Boxes span the first to third quartile, the line is the median, whiskers extend to the furthest observation within 1.5 interquartile ranges, and points beyond that are drawn individually rather than removed.

What this chart does not show

  • The horizontal axis is logarithmic. Penalties in this data run from a few thousand dollars to several billion, and on a linear axis every box collapses to an invisible sliver while every large outlier stacks against the right edge. Read distances as ratios rather than as differences.
  • Outliers are shown, not trimmed. In enforcement data the outliers are usually the most consequential cases.
  • Techniques are our editorial tags, not charges. A case tagged with several techniques appears in each of their distributions.
  • Penalties for the same conduct vary with cooperation credit, self-reporting and the defendant’s ability to pay, none of which is captured here.
  • Sample sizes are small for most techniques. Treat differences between adjacent rows as unproven.

Source

Computed from this site's own case library, which is compiled from the primary releases of the issuing regulators. Regenerated on every build, so the figures move as cases are added.

Regenerated 2026-09-08

Reuse

Free to reuse with attribution. The chart, the underlying figures and the CSV below are published under CC BY 4.0. Credit Market Manipulation and link back to this page. The regulator releases the data is compiled from are separately available at their own sources, listed on our sources page.

The data

Download CSV · the same figures are rendered below so the page is complete without downloading anything.

Penalty distribution by technique — full dataset
techniquenminq1medianq3maxoutlier_count
price-manipulation49350001560000300000009570000017338383728
boiler-rooms41000077500205000012368929374757171
ponzi-schemes90750022705710000004925000590000000013
spoofing63484001750006000001775000173383837212
wash-trading4510000025000060000015600003250000009
paid-stock-promotion40350010000023750077548360140485
pump-and-dump1150000125000223229430464263715852
unregistered-distributions331500050000150000750000374757173
insider-trading120668147158100000241500173383837222
reverse-merger-schemes15200004500010000024023215000003
naked-short-selling-debate622500287504500050000750000
undisclosed-control-blocks1010000125003100028108316000001

All charts · the full case library as JSON