Jun. 14--If you believe in the inherent goodness of your fellow man, reading the Securities and Exchange Commission's daily news digest could persuade you to seriously reconsider your outlook on life.

The digest, available at www.sec.gov/news/digest, offers a compendium of enforcement actions that federal securities police are taking against ne'er-do-well brokerages, Ponzi scheme perpetrators, inside traders, boiler room pitch artists and other species of bad actors frequenting the financial services industry.

Occasionally, a big fish will show up in the digest, as was the case this month when the SEC announced it had filed securities fraud charges against former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo and other executives of the debilitated mortgage provider that was acquired last summer by Bank of America.

While Mr. Mozilo and his cohorts were telling outsiders Countrywide was a prime quality mortgage lender, the SEC alleged that Mr. Mozilo used the term "toxic" to describe a profitable subprime product in internal documents. The agency accuses him of pocketing nearly $140 million in profits from selling Countrywide shares based on nonpublic information.

Casual financial page readers will recognize Mr. Mozilo's name, but most of those appearing on the SEC's daily blotter are unknown except to their victims.

Take the June 9 edition, which detailed charges against Berkshire Resources, a Wyoming outfit that raised about $15.5 million from 265 U.S. and Canadian investors who thought all of their money was going into oil and gas drilling projects.

Instead, about $6.7 million went to expenses that had nothing to do with such projects, according to the SEC. By the agency's accounting, the diversions included $1.3 million used to pay for mortgages, home furnishings, electronics, cars and credit card bills belonging to family members of David and Jason Rose, the father-and-son team who are Berkshire's principals.

Seldom is a digest published these days without the mention of the ubiquitous phrase "Ponzi scheme." The June 9 edition was no exception, detailing three such operations.

The largest resulted in charges against two California men accused of operating an $80 million Ponzi scheme that victimized about 500 investors in the United States, South Korea and Taiwan.

According to the SEC, Peter C. Son and Jin K. Chung promised investors annual returns of up to 36 percent from trading foreign currencies, going so far as to generate monthly statements showing fictitious returns.