La Mesa Project Ex-Director Charged in Theft of $40,000

The former director of a federally funded La Mesa nutrition program that provides meals to poor and disabled senior citizens was charged Tuesday with stealing more than $40,000 from the agency over the last two years.

Jerrilyn C. Poitra, 45, a Chula Vista resident, was charged by a federal grand jury in San Diego with 89 counts of stealing public funds and income tax evasion. She could receive 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of the 87 counts of stealing federal monies, and five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the remaining two counts of avoiding taxes.

Assistant U. S. Atty. Stephen P. Clark said that Poitra is now on five years’ probation stemming from a 1984 conviction in San Diego County for welfare fraud. Poitra was director of the La Mesa Nutrition Center for almost seven years until she was forced to resign in April.

Declines to Comment

Trudy Moore, a center official, said that the office delivers as many as 57 meals each day to homebound senior citizens and serves another 70 meals daily to senior citizens in the agency’s dining room. Moore declined to comment on Poitra’s indictment.

According to the federal indictment, from 1986 until she resigned on April 14, 1988, Poitra wrote 87 Nutrition Center checks payable to herself. Clark said the checks were written to Poitra as reimbursements for purchases that were never made. The charges against Poitra allege that she knowingly filed false federal income tax returns for 1986 and 1987, omitting the $40,000 she took from the center.