A former Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum events manager was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail and ordered to pay $500,000 in restitution for his role in a $1.8 million bribery and kickback scheme.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy also ordered Todd DeStefano, 43, to serve three years on probation.
DeStefano is expected to surrender Tuesday to begin serving his jail term.
It is unclear how much time he will actually spend behind bars, his attorneys said outside court.
“Mr. DeStefano has always been a productive member of society in the past. He plans to put this behind him, move on and use his talents to provide for his family in the future,” one of his attorneys, Richard Hirsch, told reporters after the hearing.
DeStefano pleaded no contest Aug. 5 to a felony conflict-of-interest charge. Three others who were indicted along with DeStefano have also pleaded no contest or guilty.
Rave music promoter Reza Gerami, the 42-year-old owner of Go Ventures Inc., pleaded no contest last month to a misdemeanor charge and was immediately sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.
Pasquale Rotella, the 42-year-old founder of Insomniac Events, pleaded no contest Aug. 4 to misdemeanor conflict of interest and was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to make a $150,000 payment to the Los Angeles County Treasurer/Tax Collector.
Patrick Lynch, a former Coliseum general manager who was also indicted, pleaded guilty in March 2012 to a felony conflict of interest charge. He is awaiting sentencing in November.
Former technical manager Leopold Caudillo is awaiting trial. He is due back in court Nov. 18 for a pretrial hearing.
Janitorial contractor Antonio (Tony) Estrada was also named in the grand jury indictment. Authorities have said he is a fugitive.
Prosecutors said the defendants were part of a scheme in which DeStefano provided the rave promoters with access to the Coliseum and low rates in exchange for more than $1.8 million in kickbacks from Rotella and Gerami.
Hirsch countered that “there’s been a totally false impression of what actually happened here,” and said that the defense would have proven that “Todd DeStefano was a great employee and asset to the Coliseum Commission” if the case had gone to trial.
“The most important thing is he was not a public employee because the Coliseum was not run like a public agency and we would have proven at trial that he was not a public employee. He is a good man,” another of DeStefano’s attorneys, Michael Nasatir, told reporters.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy has been critical of prosecutors’ handling of the case, saying at a recent hearing that they were “just tripping over your feet and falling on your faces.”
At a hearing last month, the judge expressed concern over the management of the Coliseum, saying she was concerned a similar case could arise because “there are no checks and balances, which is why what happened here took place.”
“Unless someone shines a light … there’s nobody in charge,” she said. “Things go awry and that’s what happened here.”
The judge said that speaking as a county resident, she hopes “that something changes in the future and there isn’t a case like this again.”
—City News Service