Sheri Coleman and sons Garett and Gavin.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the brother of murder victim Sheri Coleman, alleging that money raised for charity by the local community was spent improperly.

Mario DeCicco is president of the charity Sheri Ann & Her Boys, which was created following the 2009 strangling deaths of Sheri Coleman and her young sons Garett and Gavin inside their Columbia home. Husband and father Christopher Coleman was later convicted of all three slayings and is serving concurrent life sentences.

Madigan filed the complaint in Cook County Circuit Court against DeCicco, of La Grange Park, for misappropriating $33,173 from Sheri Ann & Her Boys, a violence prevention charity created in honor of his sister and her sons. The lawsuit alleges violations of the state’s Charitable Trust and Solicitation for Charity Acts.

The community donated funds to this charity at garage sales and local places of business in the wake of the murders. The charity’s original mission was to build a memorial in honor of the victims at Bolm-Schuhkraft Park in Columbia.

An investigation by Madigan’s office revealed that of the $35,725 held by the Sheri Ann & Her Boys charity, only $2,550 of the charity’s funds appeared to have been spent on violence prevention efforts. The lawsuit alleges that at least $33,173 of the charity’s funds appeared to have been improperly withdrawn as cash and spent on expenses outside of the organization’s mission.

“The circumstances in this case are extremely disheartening,” Madigan said. “I am filing this action to ensure that the misappropriated charitable funds are recovered and dedicated to violence prevention efforts as originally intended.”

The Attorney General’s lawsuit asks the court to remove DeCicco as the charity’s president and dissolve the charity. It also asks that the court order a full accounting of the charity’s funds DeCicco withdrew as cash or used from 2010 to the present and hold DeCicco liable for assets that he misused or for which he is unable to account. The complaint also asks the court to ban DeCicco from acting as a charitable fiduciary in Illinois.

Assistant Bureau Chief Barry Goldberg and Assistant Attorney General Pasquale Esposito are handling this case for Madigan’s Charitable Trust Bureau.