Social media giant Facebook has been fined $645,000, a total which the company will make back in just about nine minutes, as estimated by Variety, by the United Kingdom over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to Gizmodo.
The fine is the most Facebook can legally be fined for the offense.
The fine comes after it was revealed last year that Facebook had allowed about 87 million users' data to be harvested by the UK-based Cambridge Analytica after the firm's CEO was caught on video bragging they helped President Trump get elected.
The firm is, in fact, credited by many, including The Guardian, as one of the many reasons Trump was able to ascend through the Republican party ranks to the presidency.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office even put out a statement saying the firm had taken information from British citizens, claiming "at least one million UK users [were] among the harvested data."
"The ICO's investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply 'friends' with people who had," the Information Commissioner's Office said in their statement.
