Key J. David Scam Figure to Be Freed : Swindle: Former Del Mar Mayor Nancy Hoover Hunter to be released from prison after serving 30 months for her part in the $80-million swindle.

Nancy Hoover Hunter, the former mayor of Del Mar who was sentenced to federal prison for her role in the $80-million J. David & Co. investment fraud, has served her time behind bars and is scheduled to be released today, authorities said.

Hunter, 53, who essentially was second in command at the now-defunct La Jolla investment firm, has served about 30 months of her term, which originally was 10 years and was later cut to 6 1/2 years. With good time credits, she has become eligible for parole, authorities said.

“She was a good inmate,” said Bob Thurston, a spokesman for the minimum-security Geiger Corrections Center in Spokane, Wash., where Hunter shared a dormitory-like room with three other female inmates and worked as a math tutor and volunteer counselor. “She was infraction-free. She maintained a good attitude. She had a good work record.”

He added, “I think she felt real good about incarceration time here, as far as it being productive. I think she felt she learned a lot from this experience.”

J. David & Co. collapsed eight years ago after attracting thousands of affluent clients by promising investors unusually high returns. The company actually was running a Ponzi scheme, in which money from new investors was used to pay off old investors, and little actual commodity trading was done.

The complicated fraud bilked about 1,500 investors of $80 million from 1979 to 1984 and indirectly led to the ouster of Roger Hedgecock as mayor of San Diego.

Hedgecock resigned after two trials in San Diego Superior Court dealing with allegations that his mayoral campaigns were illegally financed with tainted J. David funds. The charges led to a guilty verdict that was overturned on appeal.

The swindle also led to seven years of federal court battles against J. David’s principals--civil suits involving millions of dollars as well as criminal prosecutions.

J. David (Jerry) Dominelli, the firm’s founder, pleaded guilty in 1985 to fraud and tax evasion in connection with the scheme. He is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison.

In all, six people involved in the J. David scandal have been convicted of crimes in San Diego federal court. The final case wrapped up only last month, when Mark Robert Yarry, 52, of Southampton, England, a managing director of an offshore J. David bank, was sentenced to three years in prison for mail fraud.

Hunter, who carried on a love affair with Dominelli, endured an eight-month trial in 1989, the longest-running criminal case in the history of the San Diego federal court.

After being charged with 197 counts, she was convicted of four on Dec. 11, 1989. She fainted in court when U.S. District Judge Earl B. Gilliam ordered her to prison immediately. He then set her sentence at 10 years.

In May, 1990, Hunter pleaded guilty to two more felony counts in connection with securities violations at J. David, averting a second trial. The judge kept her term at 10 years.

In May, 1991, however, Hunter testified as a government witness against J. David’s leading salesman, Edward J. (Ted) Pulaski, who was not convicted of any crimes.

She took the opportunity to confess that she had lied on the stand during her own trial. In 1989, she insisted that she had not burned canceled J. David checks when the company collapsed in February, 1984. But she said last year that she had burned them, and other documents, in the fireplace at home in Rancho Santa Fe.

Because of her cooperation, Gilliam cut her sentence in October to 6 1/2 years.

Thurston, the prison spokesman, declined to say where Hunter was headed upon release. Before conviction, she had moved from San Diego to Santa Barbara to be with her second husband, Kenneth Hunter.

Neither Kenneth nor Nancy Hunter could be reached Wednesday for comment. Nancy Hunter’s San Diego lawyer, Robert Brewer, wished her well.

“I am very happy for her and her family, who have stood by her and been loyal to her from Day One of this difficult time,” Brewer said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. S. Gay Hugo-Martinez, who led the prosecution of Nancy Hunter, said she simply hoped she would not run into Nancy Hunter again in court.

“I would hope to think that she recognized that what she did was wrong, it was a crime, she has learned from it and she won’t do it again,” Hugo-Martinez said.