SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — It seems like it took forever to get here, but regulators on Friday finally leveled their guns at former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, accusing them of being less than truthful about the risks tied to issuing billions of dollars in home loans to millions of people who never should have received them.

One of those executives is former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd, an Occupy movement poster boy for the 1%.

Mudd became CEO of Fannie Mae in 2004, replacing Franklin Raines, who left the government-backed mortgage lender after the Securities and Exchange Commission said Fannie Mae stretched a few accounting rules beyond the law under his stewardship.

Mudd held the position until September 2008, when the newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency relieved him of his duties. According to Forbes, he pocketed close to $9 million in his last year at Fannie.

Critics claim Mudd took Fannie Mae down a dangerous path, lending money to unqualified home buyers in a bid to build up the company’s loan portfolio and profits. It eventually collapsed. What the SEC wants to show in court is that he knew all along how risky this game was, but hid it from investors who bought securities backed by Fannie Mae-issued mortgages.

In his own defense, Mudd later testified before Congress that there was no way he could have foreseen the collapse of the mortgage market bubble Fannie Mae helped create.

Mudd isn’t the only one on the hot seat. Former Freddie Mac Chairman and CEO Richard Syron is also named in the lawsuit. The two of them last appeared together in 2008, when they were asked by Congress to explain how their companies got into this mess. By then, Fannie and Freddie had secured $200 billion in federal bailout funding, joining that exclusive club of institutions deemed too big to fail.

After leaving Fannie, Mudd moved into the CEO office at Fortress Investment Group LLC FIG, -0.17% , a Wall Street private equity fund that bills itself a “provider of alternative asset management services.”

If Mudd loses the lawsuit brought against him by the SEC, he faces being permanently barred from ever running another company. That might be a little harsh. There’s no evidence he’s mismanaged Fortress. And it’s important to remember that he’s presumed innocent until found guilty.

But most people long to see someone held accountable for the Great Recession unleashed by the real estate meltdown of ‘08.

So far, none of the big players in Washington or on Wall Street has been punished. Many of them are making bigger bonuses today than they did before the crisis — before the bailouts. So for most folks, a few convictions and banishments from the world of finance are long overdue.

Daniel Mudd just happens to be among the first to face trial. But in the months ahead he will become the face of all that went so terribly wrong along that cozy Wall Street-Washington corridor.

— Jim Jelter