Witness Says Hunter Was Angry at Being Excluded

Nancy Hoover Hunter complained about being shut out of a closed-door meeting conducted in the office she shared with J. David (Jerry) Dominelli at Dominelli’s investment company, according to testimony Friday in Hunter’s fraud and tax-evasion trial.

Debra Hart, former executive assistant to Dominelli and Hunter, said that Dominelli occasionally excluded Hunter from meetings in the year before the J. David & Co. investment firm collapsed.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Richard Marmaro, Hart testified about a 1983 meeting attended by Mark Yarry, a top J. David salesman who faces a 26-count indictment stemming from the firm’s huge Ponzi scheme.

“The door slammed, and Nancy Hoover came out,” Hart said. She “was angry, visibly and vocally, about being excluded from the meeting.”

Hart testified that her desk was outside the spacious office shared by Dominelli and Hunter at J. David’s La Jolla headquarters.

Hart said she could not remember Hunter’s exact words, but “the substance was that she had been excluded from a meeting and she didn’t like Jerry doing that to her when she was supposed to be a principal of the firm.”

Hunter is on trial in the federal court of District Judge Earl B. Gilliam in San Diego on a 234-count indictment that alleges she played a key role in the Ponzi scheme. Dominelli is serving a 20-year prison term for his part in the fraud.