An internal investigation at Kansas University — and, by extension, stretching into federal law enforcement — is looking into potentially illegal activities regarding the distribution of athletics tickets.

The investigation continues as Kansas Athletics Inc. placed one of its top fundraisers on administrative leave this month for undisclosed reasons, which was first reported by the Journal-World.

Rodney Jones, assistant athletics director for the Williams Fund, has been stripped of his duties, which include serving the needs of the fund’s more than 4,200 members, many of whom receive special access to purchasing tickets for athletics events.

The Journal-World broke the story about Jones — a former director of the KU Ticket Office — on March 8, soon after Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little informed the Kansas Board of Regents that an investigation was under way.

While details regarding the internal investigation remain unclear, Gary Sherrer, vice chair of the regents, said that the tickets probe “goes deeper” than a simple campus matter.

“If somebody makes money and doesn’t report it on their taxes, somebody at the federal level is going to get involved,” Sherrer said.

Indeed, ticket brokers have received subpoenas from federal investigators, and talk has been swirling since February that such investigators had questioned officials at Kansas Athletics Inc. offices.

One ticket broker, known to have received a subpoena, insisted on anonymity in discussing the case. That was on the advice of his attorney, as federal investigations are to be conducted behind the scenes and not in public.

“We’re not involved,” the broker said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Representatives for the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation have declined to discuss whether any investigation indeed was under way.

Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, repeated Tuesday what he had said back in February when asked by the Journal-World whether his office was looking into reports of ticket improprieties involving Kansas Athletics Inc.

“I get lots of calls every week asking if so-and-so or such-and-such is under investigation,” he said. “I always say that I can neither confirm nor deny a federal investigation.”

Said Michael Devine, a spokesman for the IRS: “I can neither confirm nor deny any activity involving individual taxpayers. That’s the law.”

Calls to Jones’ cell phone were not returned Wednesday.

Jones came to KU in 1997, after graduating from the University of Oklahoma and working in its athletics department. He would become manager of the KU Ticket Office until being promoted a few years ago to work with the Williams Fund, which last year generated about $15 million in donations for the athletics department.

Fund members receive priority in purchasing tickets for KU football and basketball, both during regular seasons and for post-season games. Jones was among department staffers who helped create the points system that governs access to tickets for football and basketball; as ticket manager, he would be seen distributing tickets to alumni and others during the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Charlette Blubaugh, who worked for Jones in the ticket office before taking over its management after Jones’ promotion, left Kansas Athletics last month to take a job as executive administrative assistant to the athletics director at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Contacted Wednesday morning, Blubaugh declined to discuss her departure.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with anything there that may have been going on,” she said.

Jim Marchiony, an associate athletics director for Kansas Athletics, agreed, saying that Blubaugh had left for family reasons: “It had nothing to do with anything you might be asking about.”

Sherrer, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Bill Graves and is about to enter his fourth year as a member of the regents, said he was looking forward to receiving the results of KU’s internal investigation and learning about any other investigations that may be ongoing.

He’s unclear about when that may occur.

“Agencies outside KU — law-enforcement agencies — they don’t give timelines,” he said.

Sherrer said he wasn’t interested in “micromanaging” the ticket situation at KU, confident that “the chancellor and university are engaged in bringing some resolution to this.”

Where the probes lead is the question.

“And at that point, regents can make a judgment: Did the system work?” Sherrer said. “There’s always that balance, it seems to me: You can have a system that is so expensive and so good that it discovers if anybody ever makes off with a paper clip, or you can have one that is cost-effectively effective.

“The fact that something happened doesn’t necessarily condemn the system that’s in place,” Sherrer continued. “People are pretty creative and inventive when they do things they ought not to be doing. But, fortunately, in most cases, they eventually are caught and proper actions are taken.”

The responsibility for such actions — outside law enforcement, of course — rests with Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, Sherrer said.

“Knowing the chancellor, I know she’s very engaged and very aware,” Sherrer said.

Sherrer said that KU alumni would be “savvy enough” to withhold judgment about the investigations until after results were disclosed.

“First, we don’t know the depth and breadth of it,” Sherrer said. “If this is an individual or a couple of individuals in a very large organization who took advantage and violated the trust of that organization, that happens, unfortunately, every day — in business, in nonprofits, in government, certainly — so I think people need to keep a perspective on it.

“I think most people would agree this is one of the most successful athletic departments in the country. Now, if you found out this was sort of a cultural thing, and lots of folks engaged and what have you, then you’d have concern at this point. But I’ve seen no evidence of that.”