The Serious Fraud Office had previously asked to see GMTV files, following another phone-in scandal, and Richards said: "This may well be what happens again."
He also could not assure MPs that the matter was now at an end. When they asked him if the fine against ITV would bring the episode to a close, he said it "certainly isn't the end of the matter".
Richards said that although the Serious Fraud Office had not yet asked Ofcom to hand over any evidence relating to the ITV phone-in scandal, it would be "only happy" to cooperate. But he dismissed suggestions that it was the regulator's responsibility to alert police to any wrongdoing.
He said: "We do not want to get ourselves in the position of recommending whether something is or is not a criminal offence.
"They know what we've done. They know the issues. It's fully in the public domain."
He added that Ofcom had been "constrained" in its investigation because of an "anomaly" in the way ITV is split up.
The broadcaster is made up of a number of smaller regional licences, making it difficult to punish what he said was a "systemic and widespread problem" at corporate level.
He said: "This is a very important issue. If Parliament was considering new legislation, without doubt the sanctions system should be linked to where responsibility lies.
"These are network programmes but the sanction only relates to an individual licence."
Richards was speaking to the Culture Select Committee, and his comments follow the revelation that at the 2005 British Comedy Awards, 'Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway' was given the People's Choice award even though more people had voted for the BBC programme 'The Catherine Tate Show'.
The reason given for the vote rigging was that singer Robbie Williams had been told he would be giving an award to Ant & Dec, in a bid to lure him into appearing at the ceremony.
Ant and Dec are to return the award, and there has been no suggestion that they, or Williams, knew of the deception.
Richards said Ofcom's ruling on the British Comedy Awards mix-up would be published "in the coming weeks".
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