Maybe it's someone with an investment in CloudFlare? 'Look at these awful DDOS attacks everyone is getting? We have magic techniques to stop them if you pay us.'
let me get you some tinfoil, you might be running low.
when DDoS prevention (traffic scrubbing, really) was just becoming a thing, many of the smaller and less scrupulous players in the market did precisely that.
Source?
Myself. I worked with the Electronic Crimes Taskforce in the US while at a "Tier 2" global IP transit provider.