Six years ago, in February 2012, JPM was fined $5.3 billion under the National Mortgage Settlement reached with Attorney General Eric Holder. It was one of those sweetheart deals that Holder cut over and over with the big banks — by imposing cost-of-doing-business fines, instead of criminal charges, in keeping with his “too big to jail” policy.

However, as financial muckraker David Dayen reports at The Nation, only $1.1 billion of that $5.3 billion total had to be paid in cash; “the other $4.2 billion was to come in the form of financial relief for homeowners in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.”

Here’s the rest of the story: “JPMorgan moved to forgive the mortgages of tens of thousands of homeowners; the feds, in turn, credited these canceled loans against the penalties due under the 2012 and 2013 settlements. But here’s the rub: In many instances, JPMorgan was…