Melbourne Storm's owner News Limited has revealed that the club's salary-cap breaches for the five seasons from 2006-10 actually totalled $3.17 million and that it was set to exceed the cap by $1.3m next year.
But while News Limited chief executive John Hartigan, reading from a prepared statement that took more than 15 minutes to deliver, named former CEO Brian Waldron and four other current or past club officials as the culprits behind the cheating he also cleared coach Craig Bellamy and the players.
And the club's four independent directors, Rob Moodie, Peter Maher, Gerry Ryan and Petra Fawcett, who have launched legal action against the NRL over the manner in which it reached the penalties, have been dumped from the board by News Limited.
Nearly three months after the NRL stripped the club of its two most recent premierships and three minor premierships as well as ruling that it would play for no points in 2010, independent auditor Deloitte's forensic investigation of the breaches has finally been completed.
And while the NRL had handed down those penalties on April 22 in the belief that the breaches for the five seasons tallied $1.7m, Hartigan confirmed at News Limited headquarters in Sydney on Thursday morning that the rorting ran much deeper.
Hartigan revealed that in 2007 when Bellamy's team thrashed Manly in the grand final to lift the NRL trophy it had actually been nearly $500,000 over the cap while in 2009 when it beat Parramatta the breaches totalled close to $1m and the 2010 total was more than $1m over.
While Bellamy fully co-operated with the Deloitte investigation and was cleared of any knowledge of what was happening behind closed doors, the players refused to be involved despite being given assurances that any information they provided would remain private.
But while Hartigan said that no evidence was uncovered to suggest any of the players at the club over the five years had any knowledge of the breaches, he added that the fact that only one former player gave evidence meant they could not be absolutely exonerated.
And Hartigan named 13 current or former players who received payments illegally as part of the breaches, including the so-called 'Big Four' of skipper Cam Smith, Greg Inglis, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk.
As well as that quartet the other nine are current players Ryan Hoffman, Anthony Quinn and Brett White as well as the retired Matt Geyer and Will Chambers, Michael Crocker, Steve Turner and Antonio Kaufusi who have all moved on either to other clubs or other codes.
Hartigan also named Waldron, Matt Hanson, Paul Gregory, Peter O'Sullivan and Cameron Vale as the club officials who were involved, with only Hanson and Gregory still employed by the club but suspended from duties since late April.
And Vaile, who is now working for AFL club North Melbourne, was the only one of the five to co-operate with the Deloitte probe.
"How did this happen? The answer is we had some rats in our ranks," Hartigan said.
"A small group of senior managers at the club orchestrated and concealed the extra payments."
"Is it fraud? That's something for the police to decide," he said.