This week, Citigroup announced that it had settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges that the mega-bank misled investors in a derivatives deal and then bet against them. Under the terms of the settlement, Citi agreed to pay $285 million.

Citi is not the first bank to settle these sorts of charges with the SEC. Previously, Goldman Sachs had agreed to a $550 million settlement, while JP Morgan Chase paid $154 million. (Goldman’s settlement was over the now infamous “shitty deal.”)

Having to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars may seem like a lot, but it’s chump change to these banks. Citigroup, for instance, just announced profits of $3.8 billion for the last quarter alone, while JP Morgan made $4.2 billion. Goldman Sachs this week announced just the second losing quarter since the bank went public in 1999, but it paid its SEC settlement in 2010, a year in which the bank made $39.2 billion overall.

And as ProPublica pointed out, Citi’s settlement will not only cost it a pittance, but ends the SEC’s inquiries into the vast multitude of junk the bank peddled onto its unwitting customers:

The bank says it has settled all of its potential liability to a key regulator – the Securities and Exchange Commission — with a $285 million payment that covers a single transaction, Class V Funding III. ProPublica first raised questions about the deal [1] in August 2010. In announcing a case, the SEC said it had identified one low-level employee, Brian Stoker, as responsible for the bank’s misconduct.

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