In the worldwide scramble for Olympic tickets, the International Olympic Committee strictly prohibits countries and their agents from reselling tickets on the black market. But a U.S. ticket broker says he bought thousands of tickets from two dealers who claimed to have a pipeline to European Olympic officials.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Gene Hammett, who owns Action Seating in Suwanee, Ga., said he purchased and resold thousands of tickets for the 2008 Beijing Games from a father and son with Hungarian connections — and recently paid one of them nearly $3 million for tickets to the Vancouver Winter Games, which come to a close Sunday.

Now, as some fans still search for the Games' last and hottest sporting-event ticket — Sunday's gold-medal hockey match — Hammett is stirring up a new storm in the Olympic business world: He has told The Times that the two dealers, Joseph Bunevacz and his 41-year-old son David, both of Southern California, led him to believe the tickets were coming from several National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in Europe and their official ticket agents.

On Friday, after International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials reviewed information provided by The Times, Mark Adams, IOC communications director, said the committee will investigate whether ticketing rules were violated.

This brilliant article, an in-depth interview, was originally published at the Seattle Times by Christine Willmsen  Click here to read full piece.