SEC pursued junk bond pioneer Michael Milken in the 1980s, Ivan Boesky before that… unsure of specifics of SEC personnel getting to “high office” because of that but seems obvious that high profile successful prosecutions would be career-making

(Granted those examples are from the 80s but i would think there are more recent examples…)

Milken was prosecuted by Rudy Giuliani which didn’t hurt Giuliani’s career, but Rudy was a US district attorney or something, not SEC

Agree with your sentiment generally though, seems like a boatload of people could have been put away after the financial crisis but they instead profited from bailouts