How do I report a securities scam?

Where to send it

The SEC's Office of the Whistleblower runs the primary channel for tips about "fraudulent or unregistered securities offerings, Ponzi or pyramid schemes, high-yield investment programs, theft or misappropriation of funds or securities, price or volume manipulation, insider trading, false or misleading company statements," and related conduct, all submitted through the Tips, Complaints, and Referrals (TCR) system. A successful online submission generates a confirmation number, and the SEC publishes a guide to preparing a quality TCR to help someone include the facts investigators actually need. The TCR intake form itself times out after 60 minutes of inactivity and warns against pasting links to file-sharing services or HTML-like characters into the fields, so it helps to have documents ready to describe rather than upload as links.

That system is different from the SEC's Investor Complaint form, which is the right place for a dispute over an existing account, a broker who won't return calls, or a specific transaction gone wrong, rather than a securities-law violation someone is reporting on the public's behalf. The SEC's own routing page separates these paths further: possible law violations go to the fraud-reporting form, account or professional problems go to the investor complaint form, and issues with the SEC itself, a self-regulatory organization such as an exchange or FINRA, or an SEC employee each have their own channel.

Not every scam belongs at the SEC. Fraud involving futures contracts, commodity pools, or foreign-exchange trading falls under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the SEC, and anyone soliciting the public to trade futures or advising on them is required to register with the National Futures Association, which can be checked through NFA's BASIC database before sending money. If the concern is about a specific broker's conduct — unauthorized trades, account churning, forged signatures — FINRA's BrokerCheck and its linked disciplinary-actions database are the tools for pulling the broker's history, and FINRA takes complaints against member firms directly.

Whistleblower status and awards

Filing a tip through TCR does not automatically make someone a whistleblower; that status, along with its confidentiality and anti-retaliation protections under the Dodd-Frank Act, requires separately executing a Whistleblower's Declaration, and an anonymous submission must be filed through an attorney, per the SEC's whistleblower program rules. Eligible whistleblowers who voluntarily provide original, timely, and credible information that leads to a successful enforcement action with sanctions over $1 million can receive an award generally between 10 and 30 percent of the money collected, as described in the SEC's whistleblower award announcements. Those awards come out of an investor-protection fund built from monetary sanctions, not from money taken away from harmed investors, and the SEC has paid more than $721 million to over 114 people since the program's first award in 2012 according to that same release. None of this changes how the underlying report is filed — the reporting form is the same one everyone uses — it only changes what legal protections and potential payouts attach to it afterward, details covered in the SEC's whistleblower FAQs.

Checking the person or firm first

Before reporting — or before investing at all — it is worth verifying whether the person soliciting the investment is licensed anywhere. Investor.gov's guidance on checking an investment professional points to the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database for advisers and BrokerCheck for brokers, noting that "unlicensed or unregistered persons commit much investment fraud in the United States." The SEC's PAUSE Program separately lists entities that falsely claim U.S. registration or impersonate real regulators and firms, which is a common tactic in crypto and forex pitches; anyone who was contacted by a firm on that list, or by a group impersonating a real one, should mention that specifically in their SEC report. Investor.gov's red flags checklist lists the recurring signs — guaranteed or "risk-free" returns, pressure to invest immediately, and demands to pay by gift card, wire transfer abroad, or a personal account rather than a brokerage — all of which are worth including in the report itself since they help investigators spot a pattern across victims.

What to gather before filing

A useful report includes names, dates, dollar amounts, account numbers, the exact promises made, and copies of any communications, statements, or marketing material — the SEC's own guide to preparing a quality TCR exists because vague tips are harder to act on. If the scam also involved a stolen identity, a fake charity pitch, or a broader consumer fraud angle, that overlapping conduct should also be reported to the Federal Trade Commission and, for anything conducted online, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, since those agencies handle categories of fraud the securities regulators do not. If money already went out the door, contacting the bank or payment platform immediately to ask about a reversal or recall matters more than any single report, because speed — not paperwork — is what occasionally gets funds back.

Next step

File the report through the SEC's Tips, Complaints, and Referrals form if the concern is a securities-law violation, or the SEC Investor Complaint form if it's a dispute over an account or professional. For futures, options, or forex fraud, go through the National Futures Association. Before sending any report, run the person or firm's name through BrokerCheck or IAPD to document their registration status — that record strengthens the report and helps confirm, one way or the other, what the SEC or FINRA will be looking at.