John Butler

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.

The former manager of the U.S. Cellular Coliseum says Illinois State Police won't let him help review more than 70 boxes of business records they seized during their fraud investigation.

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.

An attorney for the lead defendant in the Coliseum fraud case claims that prosecutors are trying to “criminalize” a contract dispute between the City of Bloomington and its former arena managers, arguing the charges should be dismissed.

The lead defendant in the Coliseum fraud case claims police investigators engaged in “prosecutor-shopping” before his indictment, suggesting the case was so weak federal prosecutors wouldn’t take it.

The former managers of Bloomington’s downtown arena are not owed any unpaid commission money because those sponsorship deals violated their management agreement with the city, according to a new court filing.

The former manager of the U.S. Cellular Coliseum who’s accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Bloomington taxpayers has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that he’s owed $67,175 in unpaid commissions.

Newly released audits for the former U.S. Cellular Coliseum show the city was warned eight years ago that its finance department wasn’t providing adequate oversight over the arena’s records, due in part to staffing shortages.

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.

The five defendants in the U.S. Cellular Coliseum case pleaded not guilty Friday to more than 100 counts of fraud, theft, and money laundering.