The last of five former officials charged with misconduct related to their oversight of Bloomington's city-owned arena pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft on Friday and agreed to pay $20,500 restitution to the city.
The jury trial was delayed Tuesday for the former general manager of the city-owned arena accused along with four others in what was billed as a massive fraud scheme.
It’s been a year since five former U.S. Cellular Coliseum officials were charged with 111 criminal counts—accused of a running a brazen multiyear fraud scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Bloomington taxpayers.
The lead defendant in the Coliseum fraud case lost two of three rounds in a McLean County courtroom Friday, as a judge rejected attempts to kill the case before trial.
A new court filing accuses the former Coliseum manager of using a secret internal document to run a multiyear fraud scheme and tricking the City of Bloomington into one last cash grab in the final weeks of his contract.
Charges were dismissed this week for one of the defendants in the Coliseum fraud case, with a judge saying the indictments were too vague and did not fall within the statute of limitations.
New court filings in the Coliseum cases show that prosecutors are not done searching for evidence—and that a former city official has been roped back in.
The full scope of the investigation into alleged mismanagement at U.S. Cellular Coliseum became clearer Friday as prosecutors disclosed a long list of potential witnesses and police interviews already conducted with past and present City of Bloomington officials.
It’s typically in bad taste to blame the victim, but the investigation into mismanagement at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum begs the question: Why didn’t the city realize what was going on?
