SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

March 2008
RECORD COUNT: 46,842
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The proceedings in this dataset go before the administrative judges of the Securities and Exchange Commission, rather than judges in criminal or civil cases filed in a federal court.  Administrative judges can issue cease-and-desist orders; hand out civil penalties; and bar parties from associating with investment advisers, brokers or dealers.  This database also tracks administrative proceedings conducted in parallel with criminal or civil proceedings.

Structured similarly to a courtroom docket sheet, this database covers proceedings from 1989 to the present, although there are a few records (less than 25) with filing dates between 1972 and 1989.

What can you do with this data?  It lends itself nicely to simple lookups on a company of interest's history with the SEC.  The names of involved parties are not entered consistently, however, so be sure to use wildcards when searching for a particular person or company.  For example, if you want to look up "Goldman, Sachs & Co." and put in your search exactly that way, you'll leave out the proceeding that includes "Goldman, Sachs & Company."  Also, it would take careful analysis to show, for example, how many times a given person or business is one of the parties involved in an SEC administrative proceeding. The database also includes the SEC offices that originated the proceeding, which can help when trying to analyze data for a particular region.

Here is an inventory of the material included:

SEC.DBF --

FIELD NAME	DESCRIPTION
CASENO		Unique case number
REMARKS		Notations of any actions taken that date
NAMES		Names attached to each case
STATUS		Status of case (generally, the case is either pending or closed)
FILED_DATE	Date case filed
OFFICE		Office originating the loan
		ADO - Atlantic District Office       	
		BDO - Boston District Office       	
		BRO - Should be Boston District Office (BDO)       	
		CRO - Central Regional Office      	
		DRO - Should be Central Regional Office (CRO)     	
		ENF - Division of Enforcement       	
		FW  -  Should be Forth Worth District Office (FWDO)    	
		FWDO - Forth Worth District Office     	
		HO - Head Office (Same as Headquarters)        	
		HQ - Headquarters (Same as Head Office)       	
		IM - Office of Investment Management       	
		LA - Should be Los Angeles Regional Office (LARO)       	
		LARO - Los Angeles Regional Office    	
		MRO  - Market Regulations Office    	
		NERO - Northeast Regional Office   	
		PDO  - Should be Pacific Regional Office (PRO)     	
		PRO  - Pacific Regional Office     	
		SERO - Southeast Regional Office     	
		SFDO - San Franciso District Office     	
		SLDO - Salt Lake District Office     	
CLOSE_DATE	Date case closed

RULEPRAC2006.PDF -- Regulations governing administrative proceedings. It's also on the Web at http://www.sec.gov/about/rulesofpractice.shtml. The rules were altered in March 2006.

OLDRULESOFPRACTICE.pdf -- The previous rules. 

README.TXT -- Notes and record layouts.

Additional Web material from the SEC is available at http://www.sec.gov/litigation.shtml. You can search for full copies of some documents.