This will depend on the nature of the penalty. If investors or others were harmed financially due to a transgression, the penalties collected will be used to recover those losses and make those investors whole. Until the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, all penalties the SEC obtained were paid to the United States Treasury. Section 308 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the so-called "Fair Funds provision,” permits the SEC to request that certain penalties be added to any disgorgement fund established as part of an SEC enforcement action to return money to shareholders, investors, whistleblowers, or other victims of the defendant’s securities law violations.