Ignorance of the law is no excuse. I don’t know who individually ends up with responsibility for what happened, but it was some variation of theft, fraud and/or obtaining financial advantage by deception. They made up debts that did not exist, then made people pay them (or in some cases I believe took the money directly from their accounts). If some loan shark rocked up at your door falsely claiming you owed them thousands of dollars and threatening to kneecap you if you didn’t pay up I don’t think anyone would have trouble seeing it as a criminal act, and what the government did was pretty much the same thing.