For the third time in less than a year, the Justice Department has busted out the Civil War-era False Claims Act to sue a major bank for fraud in connection with the mortgage crisis. This time, there's a whistleblower involved that stands to take home a big share of the government's recovery.

Citigroup agreed on Wednesday to pay $158.3 million to resolve allegations first raised last year in a sealed lawsuit brought by whistleblower Sherry Hunt, an employee of CitiMortgage Inc. in Missouri. The settlement, announced by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, came a week after Bank of America agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve False Claims Act mortgage fraud claims brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. The Justice Department is continuing to press claims similar to those in the BofA case, meanwhile, in a False Claims Act suit that Manhattan prosecutors filed in May against Deutsche Bank AG.

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