You'll find a great many months-long investigations where the claims being made at the time of the bust ended up being utterly nonfactual.
Classic Example: the Branch Davidians were ultimately tried and found guilty on weapons charges --- but not on any of the counts initially claimed by the ATF, which had been monitoring them for a year and a half. The ATF claimed, amongst other things, that the Davidians had a .50 caliber Browning heavy machinegun --- because one member bought .50 ammo. Federal records showed that same man to own a bolt-action and perfectly-legal .50 rifle, but the ATF chose to ignore that fact (despite the information being in their specific bailiwick of weapons registration) because it did not advance what they hoped would be a successful raid and subsequent high-profile prosecution.
You'll find a great many months-long investigations where the claims being made at the time of the bust ended up being utterly nonfactual.
Classic Example: the Branch Davidians were ultimately tried and found guilty on weapons charges --- but not on any of the counts initially claimed by the ATF, which had been monitoring them for a year and a half. The ATF claimed, amongst other things, that the Davidians had a .50 caliber Browning heavy machinegun --- because one member bought .50 ammo. Federal records showed that same man to own a bolt-action and perfectly-legal .50 rifle, but the ATF chose to ignore that fact (despite the information being in their specific bailiwick of weapons registration) because it did not advance what they hoped would be a successful raid and subsequent high-profile prosecution.