The Deflategate controversy is still unresolved and getting even more twisted, if that's possible.
The NFL fired an employee who sold the deflated footballs that were used in the AFC Championship Game, ESPN reported Wednesday.
MORE: Belichick jokes about Deflate-gate
Before the footballs could be donated to charity, the employee reportedly took them and sold them.
"There are a few different league officials, according to people I spoke with today, at the game, who handled the footballs," ESPN's Adam Schefter reported. "League employees: League Employee 1, League Employee 2 and League Employee 3, we’ll call them, for lack of a better phrases, whose jobs are to handle the balls on game day. And League Official 1, he's also supposed to take the balls out of play and then send them off to a charitable endeavor to raise money for a charitable endeavor that the league is embarking upon. Only on this day, and since that day, the league has since fired that employee for allegedly selling off some of those footballs on the side. So that employee — League Official 1 — has been fired since the AFC Championship Game."
In addition to being fired, the employee could potentially face criminal charges for stealing and selling NFL property.
To take the story on an even stranger turn, the NFL Referees' Association released a statement Wednesday night refuting "an ESPN story reporting...that an NFL official was fired in connection to the 'deflate-gate' episode in January's AFC Championship game" and demanding an apology from the network.
Here's the NFLRA statement disputing ESPN's story. pic.twitter.com/AZX17rZNY0
— Bart Hubbuch (@BartHubbuch) February 19, 2015It's worth noting the ESPN story, last updated at 10:12 p.m. ET on Wednesday night, says "employee" and not "official" in the headline and opening paragraph.
The Patriots are accused of intentionally underinflating the footballs used in their 45-7 victory over the Colts, though coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady have denied on several occasions that they had any knowledge of the deflated balls. On Jan. 26, NFL investigator Ted Wells announced that his probe could take "several weeks" to complete.