FOLLOW US

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has faulted the agency’s technology office for “avoidable errors” that permanently erased nearly a year’s worth of text messages from former Chair Gary Gensler’s government-issued phone.

According to the special report dated Sept. 3, the loss was inadvertent but stemmed from a poorly understood automated policy implemented in August 2023 by the SEC’s Office of Information Technology (OIT). The policy triggered an “enterprise wipe” of Gensler’s mobile device after it was mistakenly classified as inactive. Compounding the problem, the device had not been backed up for nearly a year.

In an attempt to recover from the wipe, OIT “hastily performed a factory reset,” which erased both stored messages and critical operating system logs, the OIG said. The office learned of the loss in January 2024, several months after the incident.

The SEC has since disabled text messaging agencywide (with limited exceptions), notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the records loss in June 2025, and implemented new backup measures for senior officials. Still, the watchdog cautioned that the missing texts could affect the agency’s ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The OIG also criticized the SEC’s $53,000 after-action review, saying flaws in data collection undermined its reliability. Investigators were unable to determine why Gensler’s device stopped communicating with the SEC’s mobile management system, which led to the mistaken wipe.

“A series of additional OIT actions, deficiencies, and missed opportunities, including a lack of backups and procedures that failed to consider record retention requirements for capstone officials, exacerbated the situation,” the report stated.

While the SEC did attempt to recover or reconstruct the deleted texts, the OIG concluded that some federal records remain unrecoverable. The office recommended updated policies and procedures governing mobile device management for senior officials. SEC leadership has accepted the findings and provided corrective action plans with timelines.

Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs partner and CFTC chair, led the SEC beginning in 2021 under President Joe Biden. He stepped down in January 2025 following the presidential transition and now teaches at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

The SEC and Gensler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.