After 3\u00bd days\u2019 deliberations, a jury convicted a Point Loma woman Aug. 4 of embezzling millions from the former owner of the now closed Jack\u2019s La Jolla Restaurant, where she served as the firm\u2019s bookkeeper.
\nTara Virginia Moore, 42, had been free on $400,000 bond but was remanded to jail immediately after the jury convicted her of six felony counts, including three counts of grand theft and fraudulent appropriation by a bookkeeper.
\nMoore did not testify in the seven-week trial before the eight-woman, four-man jury. Moore\u2019s attorney, Paul Pfingst, argued Moore should remain free on bond, but the judge ordered her jailed immediately. Pfingst, a former district attorney, argued Moore had loaned Jack\u2019s La Jolla money and was paying herself back for the loans.
\nSentencing is set for Sept. 2. She faces a sentence ranging from 10 to 20 years, said Deputy District Attorney William Mitchell. He said he was relieved by the verdict because he has been working on the case since Moore\u2019s arrest in September 2011.
\nMitchell praised the jury, saying the panel was “a very intelligent jury that was able to understand complex evidence and exhibits and come to the right decision.
\n“She will be ordered to pay restitution. But good luck on that,” said Mitchell, adding that Moore had declared bankruptcy, but that that it is not final either.
\nMitchell repeatedly told jurors in a closing argument to “follow the money [trail].” After Pfingst told jurors the prosecution\u2019s analysis and methodology was too flawed to reach any guilty verdict, Mitchell told jurors in his rebuttal argument to “follow the money and it will tell you the truth of the charges.”
\nMoore was also found guilty of theft from an elder, Dragica Markovich, who was Moore\u2019s former mother-in-law, in 2005 in what Pfingst described as a loan. Markovich testified via a videotaped deposition made in 2012. The loss was listed as $1.3 million in verdict forms.
\nShe was found guilty of defrauding $1.3 million from William Berkley, the former owner of Jack\u2019s La Jolla, which went out of business in 2009, leaving 120 people out of work. It opened in 2003. Many former employees testified.
\nMoore was also found guilty of grand theft from another ex-employer, Richard Anderson, whose loss was listed as $200,000. She was also convicted of theft from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs involving $65,000 in benefits she collected from a deceased former husband after she remarried.
\nThe jury also convicted Moore of forgery but deadlocked on a second forgery charge. The jury acquitted Moore of a second grand-theft count involving Veterans Affairs. Pfingst argued Moore had written receipts from the restaurant owner indicating she was loaning the restaurant money because it developed a cash-flow problem. Mitchell told jurors that restoring money taken in a theft is not a defense.
\nPfingst said Jack\u2019s La Jolla closed because it was not making a profit and that profit-loss statements were continually prepared for the owner during its operations. He told jurors not to consider the closure of the restaurant as relevant to the case.
\nThe jury heard two days of closing arguments and began their discussions on July 30.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 3\u00bd days\u2019 deliberations, a jury convicted a Point Loma woman Aug. 4 of embezzling millions from the former owner of the now closed Jack\u2019s La Jolla Restaurant, where she served as the firm\u2019s bookkeeper. Tara Virginia Moore, 42, had been free on $400,000 bond but was remanded to jail immediately after the jury convicted […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Point Loman, a former Jack\u2019s La Lolla bookkeeper, convicted of embezzlement","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}