Former L.A. Coliseum tech manager pleads no contest in corruption case, could avoid jail time

A former Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum technology manager charged in the stadium corruption scandal has pleaded no contest to a charge of conflict of interest, the L.A. County district attorney’s office said Thursday.

Leopold Caudillo Jr., one of six men charged in the case, was accused of directing more than $20,000 in stadium business to a company he controlled. As part of a plea deal with the district attorney’s office, Caudillo would pay $2,750 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service.

Caudillo lost his job shortly after The Times reported that the company had received about $30,000 in Coliseum business.

The district attorney’s office said sentencing was scheduled for April 2, 2018.

Asked why the sentencing would take place a year from now, district attorney spokesman Greg Risling said that if Caudillo complies with the terms of the agreement, the felony count will be reduced to a misdemeanor at sentencing.

In 2012, The Times reported how Caudillo had enlisted a private company he founded with a co-worker, HH Tech, to help stage events such as a UCLA-USC soccer match, ESPN’s X Games and a run-up to the Lingerie Bowl, an alternative Super Bowl halftime show.

Caudillo was named in his capacity as a Coliseum manager as the purchaser of HH Tech’s services on 13 of 14 orders disclosed under the California Public Records Act. He also submitted three requests for checks to be issued to HH Tech.

State conflict-of-interest laws generally prohibit government employees from making, participating in or otherwise influencing a decision by their agency in which they have any financial interest.

In 2012, Caudillo said he did not benefit from the payments and no longer held any ownership interest in HH Tech; the most recent records available at the time from the state listed him as its manager.

Caudillo originally pleaded not guilty in 2012.

The Times previously reported that, according to records and interviews, Caudillo bought a Lincoln Town Car from the commission at a substantial discount and kept the government license plates on it for five years, saving himself hundreds of dollars in annual registration costs and other fees.

Caudillo’s plea wraps up a five-year-long legal saga for five of the six defendants in the Coliseum corruption scandal, a case that grew out of a Times investigation in 2011.

According to prosecutors, alleged bribes and kickbacks flowed between government officials at the Coliseum and people who did business there in an amount that exceeded $2 million. The amount of money defendants have agreed to pay back is a little over $1 million.

The prosecution of other defendants in a bribery-and-embezzlement case was marred by the district attorney’s office’s acknowledgment that it repeatedly had mishandled evidence, angering a judge who rebuked prosecutors as seemingly incapable of overseeing complex prosecutions involving large numbers of documents. That forced prosecutors to the bargaining table with defense attorneys.

As a result, two concert promoters who were charged with bribing a public employee — Insomniac’s Pasquale Rotella and Go Venture’s Reza Gerami — were allowed to plead no contest to misdemeanor counts in deals that did not require them to spend any time behind bars. Rotella was ordered to pay $150,000 to Los Angeles County and serve three years’ probation; Gerami was given a similar deal and ordered to pay $30,000.

They could have faced up to six or seven years in prison.

The main defendant in the case — former Coliseum events manager Todd DeStefano, who could have received a 10-year prison sentence — was allowed to plead no contest to one felony count. He was sentenced to six months in county jail but was released in December after serving three months. He was also ordered to pay $500,000 in restitution.

Former Coliseum general manager Patrick Lynch pleaded guilty in 2012 to felony conflict of interest in a deal that kept him out of jail. He also repaid the Coliseum Commission $385,000 he received from a contractor, Tony Estrada, who is a fugitive in the embezzlement and conspiracy case.

A county probation officer has said Lynch should have spent a year in jail for his crimes.

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