Complaints the Securities and Exchange Commission receives via email more than doubled to nearly 1.4 million in 2006--the biggest single-year increase ever. The SEC received 618,584 complaints in 2005. The majority of the SEC's enforcement action leads now come from an online complaint center created in 1996 by John Reed Stark, chief of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement. He attributed the spike to Internet use becoming commonplace. "I don't think I imagined it would be this widely used [by investors] in such an effective way," said Stark.

He pointed to a case filed this month charging the former president of a mortgage company with running a $30 million Ponzi scheme as an example. The respondent, Salvator Favata, agreed to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud, to pay restitution in excess of $20 million, and to forfeit his residence.

Complaints still come in through phone calls and are also referred by other regulators and other SEC offices, Stark noted. Most of the complaints pertain to spam.