Coliseum scandal

    The Times has been re­port­ing for more than a year on fin­an­cial ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies at the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum, stor­ies that have triggered sev­er­al crim­in­al and civil in­quir­ies. Three former Coli­seum man­agers, two na­tion­ally prom­in­ent rave pro­moters and a sta­di­um con­tract­or have been in­dicted in the scan­dal. Full cov­er­age

    A judge ruled that The Times could not be stopped from re­port­ing on testi­mony from the top man­ager of the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum in a de­pos­ition for an open-gov­ern­ment law­suit. Los Angeles Su­per­i­or Court Judge Lu­is A. Lav­in said that in ask­ing the court to deny Times re­port­ers ac­cess to the testi­mony and a pro­hib­i­tion against art­icles about it, the com­mis­sion sought “es­sen­tially a gag or­der.”
    A draft re­port by a con­sult­ant, Sing­er­Le­wak, found nu­mer­ous fin­an­cial prob­lems at the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum. The re­dac­tions in this doc­u­ment were made by the Coli­seum Com­mis­sion.
    Few­er than 15% of top man­agers in the health­care and not-for-profit sec­tors re­ceived car re­im­burse­ments on par with those giv­en to Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum man­agers.
    The fin­an­cially troubled Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum Com­mis­sion is su­ing its former aud­it­or for more than $11 mil­lion, al­leging that it failed to de­tect er­rors in fin­an­cial state­ments between 2007 and 2011, a time where al­leged cor­rup­tion en­snarled the tax­pay­er-owned agency.
    The Ex­pos­i­tion Park Mas­ter Plan of 1992 called for the cre­ation of more parks where park­ing lots ex­is­ted. Ex­pos­i­tion Park is state-owned land that is home to the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum and neigh­bor­ing Sports Arena, Cali­for­nia Sci­ence Cen­ter mu­seum, Cali­for­nia Afric­an Amer­ic­an Mu­seum, and the Los Angeles County Nat­ur­al His­tory Mu­seum.
    This let­ter from the Cali­for­nia Le­gis­lat­ive Black Caucus urges state of­fi­cials to re­ject a pro­posed deal giv­ing USC con­trol of state-owned park­ing lots sur­round­ing the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum.
    Map of the Ex­pos­i­tion Park Mas­ter Plan, call­ing for more parks to be built to re­place park­ing lots.
    July 19, 2012  By Rong-Gong Lin II and Paul Pringle
    The Times and a 1st Amend­ment group, Cali­for­ni­ans Aware, sued the Coli­seum Com­mis­sion, ac­cus­ing it of vi­ol­at­ing state laws by de­lib­er­at­ing a lease in secret with USC and fail­ing to re­lease nu­mer­ous pub­lic re­cords.
    June 6, 2012  By Paul Pringle and Rong-Gong Lin II
    A state of­fi­cial, Robert Stein, who chairs the Cali­for­nia Sci­ence Cen­ter board of dir­ect­ors, sharply cri­ti­cized the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum Com­mis­sion for its hand­ling of ne­go­ti­ations to turn over op­er­a­tion of the Coli­seum to USC and said state rep­res­ent­at­ives should take over all talks on the sta­di­um’s fu­ture. The fol­low­ing is Stein’s pre­pared com­ments to the Sci­ence Cen­ter board, which he de­livered on June 6, 2012.
    May 11, 2012  By Rong-Gong Lin II and Paul Pringle
    Amid a state in­vest­ig­a­tion of the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum’s top ex­ec­ut­ive, Coli­seum Com­mis­sion mem­ber and City Coun­cil­man Bern­ard C. Parks de­man­ded that the pan­el delay a Monday vote on sur­ren­der­ing stew­ard­ship of the pub­lic sta­di­um to USC.
    April 17, 2012  By Rong-Gong Lin II and Paul Pringle
    The be­lea­guered Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum Com­mis­sion un­veiled a pro­posed lease agree­ment Tues­day that would sur­render pub­lic con­trol of the his­tor­ic 88-year-old sta­di­um to USC.
    April 13, 2012  By By Paul Pringle, Rong-Gong Lin II and Andrew Blankstein
    A new city re­port as­sails of­fi­cials in charge of the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum for fail­ing to im­pose even ba­sic fin­an­cial con­trols, al­low­ing the routine squan­der­ing of pub­lic money and per­mit­ting cor­rup­tion to take root in “a dys­func­tion­al and risk-prone cul­ture.”
    April 4, 2012  By By Paul Pringle and Rong-Gong Lin II
    Staggered by a fin­an­cial scan­dal that un­fol­ded on their watch, the pub­lic of­fi­cials who run the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum are pre­par­ing to turn over con­trol of the tax­pay­er-owned sta­di­um to USC un­der a lease that would de­liv­er it in­to private hands for up to 42 years. The Times ob­tained a copy of a con­fid­en­tial draft of the lease agree­ment.
    March 23, 2012  By Andrew Blankstein
    The 29-count in­dict­ment ac­cuses six people, in­clud­ing three former top man­agers for the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum, of con­spir­acy, em­bez­zle­ment and bribery charges for al­legedly steal­ing mil­lions from the his­tor­ic sta­di­um. Two top rave pro­du­cers were also in­dicted.
    March 22, 2012  By Andrew Blankstein
    A second com­pany with ties to the Los Angeles Coli­seum said Thursday they an­ti­cip­ate that their chief ex­ec­ut­ive will be ar­res­ted by in­vest­ig­at­ors from the Dis­trict At­tor­ney’s Of­fice.
    In­voices ob­tained by The Times show that the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum ap­proved cash ad­vances to the stage­hands uni­on, the In­ter­na­tion­al Al­li­ance of The­at­ric­al Stage Em­ploy­ees.
    The Jan. 10, 2012 amended law­suit by the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum Com­mis­sion against Patrick Lynch, Todd and Carisse DeStefano, their private firms, and Go Ven­tures and In­som­ni­ac.
    Sept. 29, 2011  By Paul Pringle and Andrew Blankstein
    Wealthy de­veloper Rick Caruso resigned Wed­nes­day from the scan­dal-plagued Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum Com­mis­sion, end­ing a stormy ten­ure dur­ing which he clashed fre­quently with fel­low pan­el mem­bers over their stew­ard­ship of the sta­di­um.
    A private com­pany foun­ded by Leo Cau­dillo, tech­no­logy man­ager at the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum, has re­ceived about $30,000 in pay­ments from the pub­licly owned sports and en­ter­tain­ment com­plex. At­tached are cop­ies of some pur­chase or­ders he sub­mit­ted re­quest­ing pay­ments to the com­pany, HH Tech. The or­ders are au­thor­ized by Ron­ald Leder­kramer, the Coli­seum’s chief fin­ance of­fi­cial. Also at­tached is a copy of a state­ment Cau­dillo filed with the gov­ern­ment ...
    March 3, 2011  By Rong-Gong Lin II
    The Cali­for­nia De­part­ment of Al­co­hol­ic Bever­age Con­trol has ac­cused the Los Angeles Me­mori­al Coli­seum of mul­tiple vi­ol­a­tions of their con­di­tion­al al­co­hol li­cense dur­ing the Elec­tric Daisy Car­ni­val rave last year, in­clud­ing al­low­ing teen­agers to con­sume al­co­hol. The Coli­seum was also ac­cused of al­low­ing con­sump­tion and sales of al­co­hol out­side of its li­censed area, such as the park­ing lot. Pen­al­ties for a vi­ol­a­tion of an al­co­hol li­cense can range from a ...
    Jan. 26, 2011  By Rong-Gong Lin II
    USC Pres­id­ent C.L. Max Niki­as warned stu­dents from at­tend­ing raves, which he called “a spe­cif­ic danger that has be­come in­creas­ingly pre­val­ent” in Los Angeles. He spe­cific­ally re­ferred to raves held near USC at the Coli­seum and Shrine Aud­it­or­i­um, and warned that be­cause the hal­lu­cino­gen­ic drug Ec­stasy is com­mon at the events, “they present ser­i­ous risks to all who at­tend.” The let­ter, re­leased on Jan. 26, 2011, was dis­trib­uted a week ...
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