It turns out two triathletes are very probably the proximate cause of the attention the Feds begun to pay to Ironman's Lottery program. Mark Machell is a frequent Slowtwitch Forum Reader. His "sig" on the Slowtwitch forum is: TRSTriathlon.com followed by the Twitter handle @_dark_mark. That Twitter account is how Mr. Machell chose to break the news to the world:

"We are taking full credit for the DOJ's smackdown on the WTC." He then describes how Ryan Heisler, another Slowtwitch Forum contributor, a TRS columnist, and @rrheisler on Twitter, authored a letter to the Department of Justice describing what he felt was an illegal lottery operated by Ironman.