Watch out, bankers – the government isn’t going to let you slide any longer.

The Federal Housing finance Agency (FHFA) started suing banks in 2011 to recover some of the money that taxpayers lost during 2008. Among these banks is Morgan Stanley, whose faulty mortgage-backed securities helped ruin Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay $1.25 billion in settlement rather than proceed to trial in 2015.  To put the numbers in perspective, however, it’s worth knowing that in September, there was an unpaid balance of $2.8 billion.

According to Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times (2/5, Subscription Publication, 9.61M) “DealBook” blog, “Morgan Stanley sold $10.58 billion in mortgage-backed securities to Fannie and Freddie during the credit boom, while presenting ‘a false picture’ of the riskiness of the loans.”

Let the record show that JP Morgan Chase has already paid nearly quadruple what Morgan Stanley will be paying in settlement. We hope that in the future, the cost of lying to the American public will always be a bitter pill to swallow.