The Justice Department is reportedly looking under the hood at Fiat Chrysler, investigating the automaker for possible violations of securities laws.

This is according to a Bloomberg report, which cites the always helpful “people familiar with the matter.”

These sources couldn’t provide any further details on the investigation, which they describe as being in the early stages, but Bloomberg posits that it may be related to claims already made in an ongoing civil lawsuit against FCA.

In that complaint [PDF], the owners of an Illinois Chrysler dealership claim that FCA inflates its sales figures by allegedly paying some dealers to report bogus sales figures in exchange for cash.

The plaintiff in that case points to one competitor, which allegedly received “tens of thousands of dollars” for agreeing to falsely report selling 85 FCA vehicles.

FCA isn’t commenting on the Bloomberg report and has previously referred to the civil lawsuit as “nothing more than the product of two disgruntled dealers.”

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