6th Person Pleads Guilty In Kansas Ticket Scam

January 28, 2011 /

KansasCity.com

A former University of Kansas athletic department consultant pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiring to steal millions of dollars worth of sports tickets.

Thomas Ray Blubaugh, 46, is married to Charlette Blubaugh, the former KU ticket operations director who pleaded guilty Thursday to her role in the scheme.

Federal authorities announced in November that the Blubaughs and three others had been indicted for conspiring to steal about $2 million worth of tickets to football and basketball games from 2005 to 2010 and selling them to individuals and ticket brokers.

Blubaugh pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He agreed to forfeit, with others convicted in the case, $2 million in proceeds and other property.

Blubaugh, a former ticket operations director at the University of Oklahoma, came to Lawrence after his wife secured a similar job at KU in 2004. By at least the fall of that year, according to university records, Blubaugh was performing occasional consulting work for the school. The university eventually paid him $116,500 even though senior athletic department officials did not know he was on the payroll.

They learned of his employment May 13, long after federal and university investigations of the ticket scandal had started.

Ben Kirtland, a co-defendant in the case, signed his invoices.

Blubaugh and his lawyer declined comment after the hearing.

The federal and university investigations into the scam, first reported in March by The Kansas City Star, led to the resignations of at least seven top athletics department staff members.

Kassie Liebsch, a former KU ticket director, and Rodney Jones, former assistant athletic director in charge of the Williams Educational Fund, pleaded guilty previously. Two other former employees, Jason Jeffries and Brandon Simmons, pleaded guilty to related charges in July, before the five others were indicted. Like all of the defendants who have pleaded guilty thus far, the Blubaughs are cooperating with authorities.

Kirtland, the only remaining defendant, is scheduled for trial March 8.

Richard Hathaway, a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office, said Blubaugh began obtaining tickets from his wife in 2007 and through an intermediary sold them to ticket brokers in Oklahoma. He split the cash with his wife, Hathaway said.

Tom Blubaugh’s work for the university did not become known until 13 days before the university released an extensive internal investigation on the scandal. His role in the scheme has been unclear to the public.

The university investigation suggested that he helped his wife and Kirtland destroy records at KU’s football stadium when his wife could not get ticket records to reconcile for the 2008-2009 basketball season.

At one time, he worked with Simmons in Norman, Okla., at the University of Oklahoma athletic ticket office.

Blubaugh apparently was the only other person his wife trusted to handle the ticket inventory remaining after orders from season ticket holders had been mailed.

At Charlette Blubaugh’s plea hearing on Thursday, a prosecutor said that Charlette Blubaugh held back large groups of tickets for distribution to Kirtland, Jones, Liebsch and Tom Blubaugh.

The internal investigation quoted Simmons as saying he once had seen Blubaugh passing money back and forth with an assistant athletic director at the University of Oklahoma. Investigators cautioned, however, that any conclusion that such conduct “represented improper conduct is purely conjecture.”

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/28/2616852/sixth-person-pleads-guilty-in.html#ixzz1CMP0YF8x


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