Jeffries, Simmons ask for sentencing delay in KU ticket scandal case

By Mark Fagan     Sep 8, 2010

Jason Jeffries, former assistant director of ticket operations, in a 2005 file photo. Jeffries and Brandon Simmons, former assistant athletics director for sales and marketing, were charged in a ticket scandal investigation in which KU Athletics allegedly lost millions of dollars.

Two former employees who admitted stealing tickets from Kansas Athletics Inc. are asking that their sentencings be delayed for at least six months, so they can spend more time helping federal prosecutors build cases against others suspected in the crimes.

Jason Jeffries and Brandon Simmons filed separate motions Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Wichita, requesting that their scheduled Sept. 29 sentencings be put off.

Both men are seeking reduced sentences on their convictions for misprision, the formal name for knowing about a felony without alerting authorities. Both men pleaded guilty in July. Cooperating with prosecutors was a stipulation in both of their plea agreements.

Misprision is punishable by up to three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a year of supervised release.

Both men are among six people — five former employees, and a consultant — who were implicated in an internal KU investigation that documented the theft and sale of Kansas University football and basketball tickets for personal gain, a scheme KU says involved at least 19,000 tickets and cost Kansas Athletics between $1 million and $3 million — and possibly more.

Jeffries, who resigned earlier this year as director of ticket operations, and Simmons, who had been assistant athletics director for sales and marketing, are the only two to have been charged and convicted.

In their plea agreements, Jeffries and Simmons admitted taking regular season tickets for KU football and basketball games. Together, they admitted conspiring to taking as many as 56 basketball season ticket packages annually for their own benefit.

The tickets — which neither Jeffries nor Simmons had paid for — were sold to brokers, who in turn sold them to people looking to attend games at Allen Fieldhouse.

Also implicated in the KU report were three former employees: Charlette Blubaugh, former associate athletics director of ticket operations; Rodney Jones, former assistant athletics director for the Williams Fund; and Ben Kirtland, former associate athletics director of development. Tom Blubaugh, a paid consultant for the department, also was cited in KU’s report.

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