Did you ever resolve this?
I am having a similar problem where osTicket is 3 hours ahead when you look at message details.
For example:
Server time (using unix date command) Wed Dec 31 09 GMT 2008
osTicket time (tickets.php) 12
The date format is also incorrect. I have specified a UK format in preferences (d/m/Y) but it displays them US (m/d/Y). I also specified I wanted to use 24h time which also does not work
It's almost like the preferences aren't referenced by tickets.php
Thanks