You have to lie to clients/customers by saying you comply with with PCAOB standards, fabricate audit reports for over 500 companies while actually failing to conduct real audits, resulting in a negatively affected 1,500 SEC Report filings.
This usually includes things like Annual SEC Filing 10-K reports and Quarterly 10-Q reports, both watched heavily by investors.
TBH a lot of them probably reported the red flags right away, since with 500 companies you could generate that many reports in 1 to 3 quarters, meaning this decision came comparatively quickly to your average court proceedings.