Five-year scandal with tickets for KU

Five former University of Kansas employees were charged with conspiring to steal more than $2 million in tickets to athletic events in a scandal that embarrassed the school and likely led to the early departure of Athletic Director Lew Perkins.

Charlette Blubaugh, who was in charge of the ticket office, is thought to be the main source of the ticket scandal. It’s believed that Blubaugh started stealing tickets in 2005 and distributing them to other athletic department employees to sell, either personally or through a third party. Charlette Blubaugh was accused along with her husband, Thomas Blubaugh, who was a consultant to the ticket office.

Former assistant athletic director Rodney Jones, former associate athletic director Ben Kirtland, and former system analyst who worked in the ticket office, Kassie Liebsch, were all three accuse and charged in conspiracy with the ticket scandal.

A report conducted by a Wichita law firm and released in May of 2010 said five Kansas athletics employees and a consultant sold or used at least 17,609 men's basketball tickets, 2,181 football tickets and a number of parking passes and other passes for personal purposes. The report demonstrated that more than $887,000 in basketball tickets and more than $122,000 worth of football tickets were involved.

Is obvious that there was no segregation of duties in the ticket office, since Charlotte Blubaugh and her husband Thomas Blubaugh were able to steal more than $2 million in sports tickets events. Charlotte Blubaugh was in charge of the computer system that was suppose to track tickets and presumably prevent thefts. Blubaugh lied to investigators back in 2009 by advising them that it would be impossible for anyone to have more than 40 tickets to any KU basketball game. She also told the agents that the computer program tracked destination of tickets to prevent such problems. However, the truth was that she manipulated the system to allow for the large scale of illegal issuance of tickets so that the issuance would appear to be in the regular course of business.

The five-year KU ticket scandal came out to the light on Marc 24, 2010 after KU announced an internal and federal investigation into illegal activities regarding the distribution of athletics tickets. Shortly after the investigation was announced Ben Kirtland, who was in charge of all fundraising for KU Athletics, resigned in the midst of the internal investigation, Kirtland was only the first one to resigned, he was shortly followed by the others that were involved in the fraud. The resignations only confirmed all the suspicious.

The ticket scandal did surprise me since KU is consider to be one of the best business schools is shocking that KU did not have a segregation of duties in place to prevent this kind of fraud. It seems that there were no crosschecking on the work of Charlotte Blubaugh. Blubaugh stated that this scandal was happening before

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