SEC Charges Archer-Daniels-Midland and Three Former Execs with Accounting Fraud

SEC Charges ADM and Three Former Executives with Accounting and Disclosure Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed settled charges against Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) and its former executives, Vince Macciocchi and Ray Young, and a litigated action against its former executive Vikram Luthar, for materially inflating the performance of a key ADM business segment, Nutrition, which ADM touted to investors as an important driver of the company’s overall growth.

The SEC’s complaint against Luthar alleges that he directed “adjustments” to Nutrition’s transactions with other ADM business segments when Nutrition was falling short of its operating profit targets for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. According to the complaint, the adjustments included retroactive rebates and price changes not customarily available to ADM’s third-party customers that were essentially one-sided transfers of operating profit to Nutrition, with the goal of making it appear that Nutrition was meeting the 15% to 20% per year operating profit growth Luthar and other ADM executives projected to investors.

The SEC’s settled order against ADM, Macciocchi, and Young finds that Macciocchi and Luthar led efforts to identify and structure adjustments for fiscal years 2021 and 2022, and that Young negligently approved improper adjustments for fiscal years 2019 and 2021. These adjustments also included retroactive rebates and price changes, were targeted to specific dollar amounts to hit Nutrition’s operating profit goals or mask a shortfall, and were not provided to third parties, according to the order.

SEC Charges Three Former Executives and New York Company in Alleged Financial Accounting and Disclosure Fraud Scheme

On January 27, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged two former senior executives of Near Intelligence, Inc., a now-defunct global data intelligence company, Anil Mathews, its former Chief Executive Officer, and Rahul Agarwal, its former Chief Financial Officer, for allegedly inflating revenue in a financial accounting and disclosure fraud scheme involving Near’s largest customer, MobileFuse, LLC. MobileFuse and its former Chief Executive Officer, Kenneth M. Harlan, were charged with aiding and abetting the alleged fraud.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that from May 2021 to September 2023, Mathews and Agarwal engaged in a round-trip accounting scheme to overstate Near’s reported revenue by on average 27% for fiscal years 2021 and 2022 and the first two quarters of 2023. According to the complaint, the scheme—which relied, in part, on Near and MobileFuse exchanging grossly inflated invoices, and Near recognizing revenue according to its invoices to MobileFuse—accounted for at least $37.3 million of improperly reported revenue. As alleged, the defendants fabricated documents or made misstatements to conceal the scheme from Near’s independent auditors. Harlan and MobileFuse allegedly provided substantial assistance to Mathews and Agarwal in perpetrating the scheme. The complaint further alleges that Mathews misappropriated over $300,000 from Near to pay for the rental of a luxury single family residence for him and his family and presented false invoices to conceal his misappropriation.

SEC Files Settled Action as to Massachusetts Resident for Alleged Insider Trading in Massachusetts-Based Biopharmaceutical Company

On January 26, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled insider trading action as to Massachusetts resident Brian Suthoff, who allegedly avoided losses of almost $20,000 by trading ahead of negative news announced by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company Sage Therapeutics, Inc. Suthoff consented to the entry of a judgment without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations.

According to the SEC’s complaint, in June 2023, Suthoff owed a duty of trust and confidence to a Sage insider who learned material non-public information regarding the FDA’s position on Sage’s application for approval of its drug for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). The SEC alleges that in the days leading up to Suthoff’s trade, the insider learned on an “extremely restricted” basis that the FDA had just stricken MDD entirely from the proposed label listing approved uses of the drug, attended committee meetings about the FDA’s comments regarding the proposed label, and received emails imposing special confidentiality restrictions and a special blackout period on the trading of Sage securities given the FDA developments. As alleged, Suthoff misappropriated the non-public information from the insider and then—in advance of Sage’s August 4, 2023 announcement that the FDA had denied approval of Sage’s primary drug candidate for the treatment of MDD—liquidated all the Sage shares he had held for more than two years. The SEC alleges that Suthoff avoided losses of $19,680 when Sage’s share price dropped 53% following the announcement.

Back to Basics and Staying Under the Radar: General Counsel’s Guide to SEC Enforcement Under Trump 2.0

Takeaways for Corporate Counsel Under Chairman Atkins, the SEC will focus on traditional “bread and butter” enforcement actions involving investor harm, fraud and high-impact, financially consequential cases with a lower focus on technical violations. Chairman Atkins has also maintained a view that high corporate penalties are counter to the SEC’s mission of investor protection and instead burden shareholders without holding the appropriate parties accountable for wrongdoing. The SEC is expected to scale back on “regulation by enforcement” and possibly lower penalties against companies. Nonetheless, it remains crucial for companies to remain vigilant and out of the crosshairs of more than hundreds of enforcement attorneys and accountants still in the job:

1. Safeguard material nonpublic information by implementing robust policies and training on protecting such information.

2. Monitor the cross-border risks and coordinate globally to detect patterns of trading in advance of significant events or announcements.

3. Ensure that the internal controls and reporting mechanisms are up to date and, to the extent companies receive internal reports from whistleblowers about such matters, they should engage counsel immediately to minimize any potential liability.

4. Investigate and remediate any whistleblower complaints as the SEC received 1,744 whistleblower tips in 2024, some of which have a statute of limitations of up to ten years.

5. Engage counsel immediately to minimize any misconduct and any potential liability.

6. Report, cooperate, and remediate to be rewarded, and companies should take proactive steps to monitor, report, and remediate potential violations.

SEC Eyes Rollback of Insider Trading and Cybersecurity Disclosure Rules

Uyeda outlined several possible reforms to Regulation S-K, including eliminating the requirement that companies disclose whether they have an insider trading policy or explain why they do not. Removing the requirement would not affect laws against insider trading but would ease the burden on companies, he said.

Uyeda also called for simplifying cybersecurity and corporate governance disclosures and eliminating requirements on unregistered-securities sale lookbacks, performance graphs and other legacy line reports. […]

Former SEC Division of Enforcement senior counsel Rebecca Fike doubted whether the S-K disclosures Uyeda targeted for elimination were truly immaterial and questioned Uyeda’s assertion that the regulations require unnecessarily lengthy responses.

“I don’t necessarily think they are material, but I do not necessarily think they are immaterial either,” said Fike, now a partner at Reed Smith. “I think investors care about different things.”

For example, if an investor were deciding between five companies and four had robust insider trading policies and one did not “that could matter,” she said.