NFL Failures, EDM Greed and Massive Corruption: The Inside Story of the L.A. Coliseum Scandal

"The guy got off with a slap on the wrist," says Caruso, the former Coliseum commissioner.

Controller Wendy Greuel, who is running for mayor, did an audit that showed that, among other things, Lynch had sent $870,000 to Uruguay as down payments for soccer games that never happened. She faulted the Coliseum Commission — which included potential mayoral rivals Caruso and Yaroslavsky — for failing to monitor those events.

ILLUSTRATION BY KOREN SHADMI

Electronic dance music promoter Pasquale Rotella.

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More About

• Tony Estrada
• Todd DeStefano
• Pat Lynch
• College Basketball
• College Football

Yaroslavsky resents the allegation.

"The controller never expressed an interest until this became a public news story," Yaroslavsky says. "They did not tell us anything we did not know. So use your imagination about why the controller wanted to do an audit."

While Estrada also was indicted, he was nowhere to be found. A few months before the indictments were handed down, Estrada rang up the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. He said he was going away for a while. His parents were buried at Forest Lawn, and he wanted to know how he could go about exhuming their remains, so he could take them with him.

In a recent Skype interview with the Los Angeles Times, Estrada claimed credit — correctly — for blowing the whistle on the Coliseum scandal. He said he was hiding out in Brazil.

Rotella and Gerami were indicted on six and nine counts, respectively, including conspiracy, bribery and embezzlement. They pleaded not guilty.

By that point, Rotella had taken Electric Daisy Carnival to Las Vegas, where it had become an even bigger phenomenon.

Before the 2012 event — which drew 300,000 people — Rotella put on an EDM conference, where he was asked about the charges pending against him in L.A.

"I wouldn't go back and change anything because I wouldn't know what to change," he said.

The moderator, Skip Paige of Goldenvoice, then came to his defense: "Dancing is not a crime," he said. "People need to embrace it, and those who don't will be left behind."

Even if Rotella goes to prison, he has the infrastructure in place to continue with EDC, says Kerri Mason, who covers the genre for Billboard. As to the effect on his reputation, she says, "You don't want to say it helps it, but I don't think it hurts it."

Gerami has had a tougher go of it. Last year's Monster Massive was canceled for lack of a venue after 28,000 tickets were sold, and the resulting fight over refunds generated ill will. After Rotella and Gerami had a falling-out, Gerami hosted the Together as One show on his own, at a park in Orange County.

In March, the district attorney's investigators estimated Gerami had only about $375,000 in total assets — almost half in the form of a 2006 Ferrari. (For comparison, Rotella had $1.75 million that they could locate.)

But DeStefano is the worst off. He is facing 23 counts of embezzlement and bribery.

DeStefano declined to comment for this story through his attorney, as did the other defendants. He has pointed out to friends that Lynch approved his relationship with the promoters. He still struggles to see what he did wrong.

"From Todd's perspective, he would always say, 'I thought I was doing right by the Coliseum,' " Chris Irving says. "He slowly is understanding the two-masters thing. But he would say, 'It's not like I did this in secret.' "

In arguments submitted to the grand jury, DeStefano's lawyers note that the EDC footprint included state-owned parking lots, which are not controlled by the Coliseum. Therefore, they argue, "the majority" of DeStefano's work for Rotella did not conflict with his duties at the Coliseum.

Gerami's lawyer intends to make an argument along the same lines — that DeStefano was paid for "off-site" consulting work, not for the use of the publicly owned facility. However, that argument is undercut by the memos on DeStefano's checks, which describe the payments as "venue rent."

In a statement to the Weekly, DeStefano's attorneys, Michael Nasatir and Richard Hirsch, called the charges "exaggerated" and noted that the Coliseum was profitable when DeStefano worked there.

Since the EDM concerts left, the facility is awash in red ink. The new management has moved to hand it off to USC.

DeStefano has struggled to make a living as his legal bills mount. In an email soon after he "quit" the Coliseum the first time, he suggested to Rotella that he be named president or executive producer of EDC. Rotella put him off.

Forrest Hunt, executive producer of Rotella's company, later testified that DeStefano was not much use to them away from the Coliseum.

"We'd listen to him," Hunt said. "But, y'know ... he's not a production guy. He doesn't really know what he was talking about, so we didn't, you know, take his advice."

DeStefano now is trying to produce EDM concerts on his own. A few weeks ago, he applied to host two shows in the parking lots around the Coliseum. One was for Halloween, and the other was for New Year's Eve.

See also: Nedy Warren, Unsung Hero of Coliseum Scandal, Wrote Investigative Report That Led to Corruption Charges