The unstated purpose of reality television is for viewers to feel superior to the poor saps on screen. And this week it is also apparently the purpose of the Department of Justice, which indicted two of the stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Monday. In a case involving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Inspector General, the IRS, the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee and the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey, Teresa Giudice and her husband Joe stand accused of cheating on their taxes, hiding assets from a bankruptcy court and, in what is described as a “mail and wire fraud conspiracy,” fraudulently obtaining several home mortgages with false applications from 2001 to 2008.

“The Giudices falsely represented on loan applications and supporting documents that they were employed and/or receiving substantial salaries when, in fact, they were either not employed or not receiving such salaries,” reads the indictment.

Far be it from me to get in the way of a stampede of schadenfreude. But before we move straight to delighting in the misfortune of obnoxious pseudo-celebrities, let’s note that this case actually feels like a rerun. Since the financial crisis, the Justice Department swears it’s made strides in prosecuting financial fraud. What it means is that it has found defendants like Teresa and Joe Giudice, who commit the crime of lying to a bank. Meanwhile, the banks—who have lied to homeowners, courts, investors, and bankruptcy trustees—have escaped prosecution entirely.

Consider the disparity in offenses here. According to the indictment, the Giudices would fill out loan applications claiming Teresa drew a salary as an executive assistant or owner of a stucco company. The couple would even submit fake pay stubs and IRS forms to this effect. In actuality, Teresa was not employed at all; she was actually a real housewife. The Giudices pulled off this mortgage loan scam six times in seven years, securing mortgage loans or home equity lines of credit totaling around $2.4 million (they used a similar scheme to acquire $2.5 million in loans for a pretend construction business).

These sound like big numbers, and they are until you remember that 11 leading banks illegally foreclosed on as many as 244,000 borrowers, who had either not actually defaulted on their loans, were approved for a loan modification or were supposed to be protected by various federal laws. And in nearly all of these cases, the banks proved their standing to foreclose in court by presenting false documents, exactly what the Giudices stand accused of.