There is in every major scandal a moment of epiphany, at which the glum reality of transgression—the possible loss of loss of liberty—begins to set in. I call it the "men with guns" moment. The subprime mortgage mess reached that moment on Tuesday.

The "men with guns" moment for subprime was officially unveiled at a briefing that was held for reporters in Washington by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The F.B.I. said 14 unnamed corporations are being investigated for "possible accounting fraud" and other violations. Insider trading and "valuation-type stuff" is being probed, Neil Power, chief of the FBI's economic crimes unit, said.

Power was quoted as saying that the F.B.I. is "looking at the accounting fraud that goes through the securitization of these loans" and is working "hand-in-hand" with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This could be potentially explosive stuff, or so it seems at first blush. After all, the subprime mortgage mess is a kind of massive, mind-blowing, symphony of greed.

The players include subprime lenders like Countrywide Financial, which loaned money to pretty much anyone while the housing market was soaring, and major investment banks like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and so on and so on. The banks packaged the mortgages and then sold them to other banks, pension funds, hedge funds, and an array of so-called "sophisticated" investors.

But, there are aspects to this thing that make me think that the announcement Tuesday, "men with guns" moment that it was, was not as much of an epiphany as meets the eye.

The first thing that occurred to me when I heard about this was: Why am I hearing about this?

When the F.B.I. talks about investigations of economic crimes, as opposed to kidnappings or terrorist attacks, it usually talks at the end of an investigation, not the beginning of one. At such a time it may say "the investigation is continuing" or some such, but that is about as far as it goes. This usually takes place at a press conference at which all the agencies involved, even peripherally, have a moment in front of the cameras.

Evidently the F.B.I. didn't feel it was tipping off any miscreants by announcing the "unnamed 14" investigated "corporations." No wonder. The subprime mess is an unbelievably massive economic conundrum, in which the list of potential suspects is something you'd usually find in an Oliver Stone movie.

The possibilities are endless. When Wall Street packages things that it does not entirely understand—in this case, instruments consisting of mortgage loans to working-class stiffs whose terms they didn't understand either—you have a recipe for disaster.

There is fraud directed at consumers—deceptive advertising and unfair loan terms—that has been allowed to glide along pretty much unpunished, thanks to successive depletions of state and federal consumer-protection agencies, and the passivity of regulators like the Federal Reserve.

There is the "valuation-type stuff" that Power mentioned, in which investment banks package financial instruments and then, through accounting hocus-pocus, figure out ways of ripping off investors. So the potential victims range from inner-city working folks to trust-fund babies whose dogs are walked by their private bankers.

The lawsuits have already begun to roll in, and they may well be paving a road map for the authorities to follow.

On January 8, Baltimore sued Wells Fargo, claiming it sold more high-interest loans to blacks than whites, in violation of federal law. (Wells Fargo denied it did anything of the sort.)

A few days later, Cleveland sued 21 major financial institutions, saying they flooded the city with high-rate mortgages that laid waste to inner-city neighborhoods. The defendant list included the crème de la crème of finance: Citigroup, Bank of America, and Countrywide, among several others.

It's too early to say if these suits have merit or are just grandstanding. But there's no question that all manner of sleaze has been allowed to fester in the subprime market for some years, pretty much under the radar.

The F.B.I. is very often called in to sweep up after messes left by other federal agencies, such as in its effective roundup of microcap fraudsters in the 1990s after the S.E.C. let the practice go on unchecked. So that's happening again, it would seem.

A website I adore called the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, says that 223 U.S. lending operations have "imploded" (gone out of business or suffered some major loss) since late 2006. That leads to a lot of unhappy customers, a lot of dissatisfied former employees, a lot of lawsuits and, as night follows day, a lot of investigative leads that can be followed up by those busy men with guns.

So why did the F.B.I. tell us that 14 unnamed companies are under investigation? The only reason that makes any sense is that the F.B.I., apart from seeking some premature publicity, is seeking to reassure people affected by the subprime mess—that is, all us voters out there.

The message is, "Don't worry, folks, the F.B.I. is on the case. The subprime mortgage scandal is as good as solved. You can go back to your homes (if they haven't been foreclosed), and return to happy living and buying stocks."

If that's the message, as I surmise, it is not especially correct.

The F.B.I. was a bit hazy as to the character of those 14 companies under investigation. For example, it's not clear whether the F.B.I. was "dealing" with the firms that securitized mortgages by arresting fraud-committing employees and "flipping" them into informers—which can be done without much notice, by putting the court records under seal—or simply inviting the firms' chief financial officers in for a pleasant chat.

Power would only say, as regards the subprime lenders, that the F.B.I. is "looking over their books and of course there are some irregularities there that we're looking into." It's not clear if those "books" (computer records, I imagine) were handed over voluntarily or seized in raids by agents wearing bulletproof vests.

So what we have here, this wonderful "men with guns" moment, can indeed be relished by those of us watching this subprime thing. But remember that it is, more than likely, just the beginning of a long process, in which the men with guns are going to be doing a lot of relentless digging.

Meanwhile, don't worry, because the F.B.I. is on the case.