I've seen stacks be too short straight from the factory as a manufacturing defect. We can't automatically assume they intentionally cheated, the letter didn't claim it was tampered with. Just that it was missing one layer of laminate.

What I want to know is, why weren't these motors teched before the racing started? Where I race it's standard procedure to measure the stator length and then place a tamper resistant seal on the can before the first qualifier.