On Friday, the largest US mortgage lender and third-largest US bank admitted to deceiving the U.S. government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages.

According to the settlement, Wells Fargo "admits, acknowledges, and accepts responsibility" for having from 2001 to 2008 falsely certified that many of its home loans qualified for Federal Housing Administration insurance, reports Reuters.

Wells Fargo also admitted to having from 2002 to 2010 failed to file timely reports on several thousand loans that had material defects or were badly underwritten, a process that Kurt Lofrano, a former Wells Fargo vice president, was responsible for supervising.

The intentional deception by this corrupt bank led to an insurmountable debt liability for American taxpayers as the FHA was forced to pay out insurance claims on all the defective loans.