The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the Clippers, according to the New York Times, and it’s already issued one subpoena. While the scope of the investigation is unclear for now, the fact that the feds are watching the Clippers for under-the-table dealings potentially makes this a much bigger deal than simply breaking NBA rules.

How does breaking NBA rules amount to a federal crime by the Clippers? While there’s a lot left to come out, the main idea is that the Clippers committed some level of fraud. Daktronics was a publicly traded company, the only one of the four tied up in the Leonard scandal to fit that description, while Aspiration, Lockton Insurance, and Boingo Wireless were not. Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to disclose big investments, and it sure feels like that never happened when dealing with Leonard.

There’s all types of potential avenues for a federal investigation. It could be securities fraud and misleading investors. It could be tax fraud in some capacity. It could be wire fraud, or labor racketeering. The feds are just poking around for now, but there are numerous ways their investigation could go.

Torre said that he was anticipating the federal investigation into the Clippers with the DOJ previously looking into Aspiration, as well as SEC probes into Aspiration and Daktronics. Watch Torre’s video here:

The NBA dropping the hammer on the Clippers felt like an exclamation mark to end this story. Apparently, there’s so much that could still be to come. The Clippers scandal was always a bombshell, and it keeps getting bigger.