It's been more than 55 months since FBI and IRS agents raided Pilot Flying J headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn.

Since then, the company for which Browns owner Jimmy Haslam serves as CEO has paid a combined $177 million in fines and civil settlements stemming from a scheme in which the truck-stop chain defrauded customers.

Fourteen former Pilot employees have pleaded guilty, four former executives are on trial, and two others have been granted immunity.

The company reached an agreement with the federal government more than three years ago, and extensive documents released by the feds have been available to read since former Pilot president Mark Hazelwood was indicted in February 2016.

But yet it's been the almost-daily accounts this month — as Hazelwood, former Pilot Flying J vice president Scott Wombold and former regional account representatives Heather Jones and Karen Mann have been on trial in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga — that have shifted a lot of the focus on the case back to Haslam.

The son of Pilot founder Jim Haslam II has presided over the company since 1996. The Browns owner has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the scheme, which targeted "unsophisticated" trucking companies and cheated them out of fuel rebates.

But the trial hasn't been kind to Haslam, whose voice was heard on a secret recording that was played in court Tuesday.

"Sounds like Stick's old deal with Western," Haslam can be heard saying, in reference to former Pilot vice president of sales John "Stick" Freeman.

Freeman was recorded admitting he was caught cheating Western Express out of rebates it had earned. To make up for it, Pilot bought a broken-down airplane from the Nashville company for $1 million.

"I mean, (Haslam) knew all along that I was cost-plussin' this guy," Freeman said. "He knew it all along. Loved it. We were making $450,000 a month on (Western Express)."

"Cost-plussin" was Pilot code for fraud. And Freeman said the top executives — Haslam and Hazelwood — were well aware of a scheme that was so prevalent at Pilot that it was TAUGHT at training sessions.

Again, let's be clear: Haslam denies any wrongdoing, and he hasn't been charged in the case.

Still, the details being laid out in court make an 0-11 NFL season seem like a walk on a beach — or an extended period spent with a competent general manager, coach and quarterback. (Imagine that.)

How could this impact the Browns?

That's the 10-figure question.

In August 2013, the Sports Business Journal reported that if Haslam was forced to step down from his role with the Browns because of the Pilot case, his father, who was 83 at the time, would be in charge of the team.

If — and this is still a sizable if — Haslam is forced to do just that in the coming months, our guess would be Dee Haslam, not Jim II, would be calling the shots in Berea. In the past, as the charges continued to pile up for former Pilot employees, there were rumors that Jimmy had transferred ownership of the Browns to his wife, but we've been told that isn't the case.

Jimmy and Dee are the owners, and their billion-dollar investment, according to Forbes, is now worth almost $2 billion.

The NFL, not surprisingly, is staying out of this mess for now.

Spokesman Joe Lockhart told the media this week that he's "not familiar enough" with the Pilot case, thus avoiding comment on whether Haslam could face any discipline from the league.

But really, aside from forcing Haslam to sell the team, which would be the nuclear option, the most significant thing the NFL could probably do is ask Haslam to have someone else run the team. (What's a six-figure fine to someone who is worth $3.7 billion?)

In October, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. purchased a 38.6% stake in Pilot Flying J. By 2023, Buffett's group will own 80% of Pilot, with the Haslams keeping 20% of the family business.

Would Jimmy consider another lucrative sale — with this one involving his chronically underperforming football team?

In an interesting conversation on Sports Illustrated reporter Richard Deitsch's podcast a couple weeks ago, best-selling author James Andrew Miller said if he owned an NFL team, he would try to sell now.

Franchise values have soared to insane levels, despite the league facing such significant challenges as CTE, TV ratings dropping and some fans siding with Donald Trump instead of its peacefully protesting players.

We don't believe the Haslams would take that route, though a sale would surely be welcomed by a sizable amount of the team's frustrated fans.

The Haslams, to their credit, have done a bunch of admirable things for Northeast Ohio.

Two recent initiatives that come to mind are the donations of new turf fields and scoreboards to five high schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and the giving back of proceeds from sales at the FirstEnergy Stadium Pro Shop.

Those efforts, while great, don't make the past actions of Haslam's company any less horrific.

This hasn't been a good month for Jimmy, and it has absolutely nothing to do with his NFL team's amazing ability to be consistently terrible in a league in which 4-12 and 5-11 has a way of quickly turning into 12-4 and 11-5.

It's possible it can get worse.

And even if it doesn't, looking for solutions for a bad NFL franchise might seem like a vacation when compared to what's going on in Tennessee.

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