Former Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was fined $5 million today by a federal judge for his role as head of a brokerage firm that took $1.2 billion from its clients — mostly farmers and ranchers — amid its impending collapse.

Recall that his brokerage, MF Global, lost big money betting on European sovereign debt. When it happened, the firm’s officers began dipping into clients’ money in a futile effort to prevent its collapse. In the end, all of the money was returned to the clients, but the firm’s breach of trust was unlike anything that had happened in the history of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulatory entity that took Corzine to court.