Zoobilee ticket counterfeiting ends with restitution, community service for ex-mayor
Goddard’s most recent ex-mayor has entered into a diversion agreement with prosecutors who last year charged him with making fake tickets to the Sedgwick County Zoo’s annual charity fundraiser, Zoobilee.
Jamey Lee Blubaugh signed his diversion packet in open court on Monday, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in a written statement.
Blubaugh’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday afternoon.
In August, Bennett’s office charged Blubaugh and his wife, local real estate agent Elizabeth Blubaugh, each with one count of counterfeiting, a misdemeanor. Blubaugh also is a real estate agent, known for his “Blues Brothers” commercials from the early 2010s.
The allegations, which accuse the couple of photocopying 2019 Zoobilee passes so others didn’t have to pay the $140 apiece purchase price, were made public just days after Blubaugh resigned from his post as Goddard’s mayor.
Announcement of his diversion agreement comes on the same day Blubaugh had been scheduled for a bench trial, court records show.
“Among the standard conditions of diversion, for the next 12 months, Mr. Blubaugh must follow the law, perform 50 hours of community service, and pay $980 in restitution as well as court costs and diversion fees,” Bennett wrote in the statement, adding that Blubaugh had applied for diversion after he was formally charged last year.
Diversion allows defendants to have their prosecution suspended and criminal charges subsequently dismissed if they promise to follow rules and stay out of trouble for a certain period of time, often a year. It’s typically offered to first-time and low-level offenders facing certain misdemeanor charges.
A copy of Blubaugh’s diversion agreement was not immediately available in Sedgwick County District Court’s public database on Monday. But his wife’s diversion agreement offers some insight into the alleged counterfeiting. She was granted diversion in December. According to the document:
The couple “followed through on a plan” to create fake tickets to the Sept. 7, 2019, Zoobilee event by photocopying a real ticket on a copy machine at a local real estate office, going so far as to use heavy stock paper “to make the tickets to legitimate.”
The fake tickets, which the couple gave to others, bore the same serial number as the real pass they’d purchased, though.
Within days of the fundraiser, the Sedgwick County Zoo reported to law enforcement that several entrance passes carrying identical serial numbers had been used — tipping off an investigation into their origin.
According to an arrest affidavit released last fall, the Blubaughs initially told law enforcement that they’d sold the real ticket used to make the photocopies to a woman they didn’t know in Old Town after their daughter couldn’t attend the fundraiser.
Months later, a disgruntled former employee of the real estate office where the fake tickets were made told authorities that the Blubaughs photocopied them and handed them out to people.
Blubaugh, who was midway through his first term when he resigned, blamed his departure from Goddard government on “ongoing conflicts and communication” with the town’s city administrator including disagreement over office space and mayoral power. The DA’s office announced his alleged involvement in the counterfeiting case two days after Blubaugh stepped down.
Zoobilee, an annual that includes food and entertainment, raises money for the zoo’s operation.
