UI worker facing sex charges is fired for sale of tickets during ‘historic’ title run

In this photo illustration, social media apps are seen on a mobile phone. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

A former University of Iowa employee who is facing criminal charges of enticing a minor to have sex was fired earlier this year after his complimentary tickets for women’s basketball games were sold online through a ticket broker.

State records indicate Mark Sevcik, 66, worked for UI as an information technology consultant for more than 12 years, from September 2011 until he was fired in March of this year.

His firing came two months after Iowa City police executed a search warrant of his office at Carver Hawkeye Arena and then charged him with two felony counts of enticing a minor under 16 to commit a sex act and three misdemeanor counts of telephone dissemination of obscene material to a minor.

Sevcik has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A trial date has yet to be scheduled.

Sevcik is accused of contacting individuals he believed to be girls under the age of 16 and, between August 2023 and January 2024, sending them pornographic photos and hundreds of messages indicating he wanted to have sex with them.

Court records indicate the case was initiated by undercover police officers posing as underage girls on the social media app called Kik. According to a search warrant application, Sevcik contacted at least one of the undercover officers while at work inside Carver Hawkeye Arena.

On Jan. 3, 2024, police officers armed with a search warrant approached Sevcik at an Iowa City McDonald’s and ordered him to turn over his cell phone. According to police, he refused to do so and had to be physically restrained before the officers could seize the phone. That same day, officers executed a search warrant at Sevcik’s office where they seized multiple cell phones, computers and hard drives.

Sevcik fired for ticket sales after his arrest

Although the charges were pending when Sevcik was fired, his termination from UI is alleged to be unrelated to the criminal allegations.

According to evidence presented at a recent hearing on Sevcik’s claim for unemployment benefits, as an employee of the university Sevcik had the option of claiming complimentary tickets to some of the women’s basketball games.

In February of this year, Sevcik allegedly talked to his son about transferring to him some of those complimentary tickets – and he then used his son’s phone to apply for and acquire the tickets. At the time, the team was making a highly publicized run for a national title led by point guard Caitlin Clark, and game tickets had skyrocketed in value.

In February, KCRG reported that the asking price for verified tickets on the website Seat Geek ranged from $217 to almost $5,000.

According to testimony given at the May 31 unemployment hearing, Sevcik believed his son would use the tickets to attend the games – a permissible use under UI policies that allow such tickets to be shared by employees with family members.

On March 1, however, the school’s senior associate athletics director received information from the ticket office suggesting that Sevcik had been awarded tickets that were then put up for sale on the open market through a ticket-selling website.

Upon further investigation, the school determined tickets to the Michigan game on Feb. 15, the Illinois game on Feb. 17, and the Ohio State game on Feb. 18, had been assigned to Sevcik and then sold online. The available public records give no indication of the sale prices.

When the school asked Sevcik about the sales, he allegedly stated that he did not know it had been occurring because the emails informing him of the sales were routed to his spam folder.

Days later, Sevcik was fired, with the university arguing that he had violated school policy by providing his login and password to his son and by allowing for the transfer of tickets to a third-party ticket seller. Sevcik applied for unemployment benefits, which led to a challenge by the university and a May 31 hearing before Administrative Law Judge Sean Nelson.

At the hearing, the university cited two policies relevant to the case – one that asks employees to handle data and other information from the public with honesty and integrity, with special attention to privacy rights, and one that forbids employees from sharing login and password information with others.

While noting that the ticket sales took place amid “the University of Iowa’s historic season led by one of its most iconic athletes,” Nelson found that the school’s own policies state that the punishment for selling complimentary tickets is the loss of future access to such tickets – not termination. In addition, Nelson ruled the evidence indicated Sevcik wasn’t even aware of the sales “until it was too late and he was facing termination.”

As for the school policy that prohibits workers from sharing login or password information with others, Nelson found that Sevcik’s act of logging on to the ticketing site through his son’s phone – giving his son access only to the employee-offered tickets – didn’t violate the rules, a fact that university officials acknowledged at the hearing.

Nelson awarded Sevcik unemployment benefits, finding that his “version of events (was) more credible than the employer’s recollection of those events.”

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