SAN DIEGO - The director of a local youth music ensemble who failed to register as a sex offender when he moved from Poway to El Cajon last year was sentenced Thursday to 32 months in state prison.
Vincent Harry Greco, 64, pleaded guilty April 16 to a felony charge of a sex offender failing to notify authorities of his change of address.
Greco, who volunteered as the director of Jazz Ensemble at the San Diego School of Creative Performing Arts, pleaded guilty in 1969 to committing a lewd act on a child under 14 in Napa County and was required to register as a sex offender wherever he lived for the rest of his life, said Deputy District Attorney Kristian Trocha.
Defense attorney Douglas Miller unsuccessfully urged Judge David Danielsen to strike Greco's prior conviction because it was 40 years old.
Miller said many parents of Greco's music students told him the defendant did an outstanding job.
The attorney said Greco tried to register with local authorities when a family in El Cajon let him live in a motor home on their property.
But Trocha said the defendant submitted a false report to sheriff's officials, saying he was planning on moving to another state.
The prosecutor said Greco tried to circumvent the system by handing in a fake registration.
"I think his reasons are selfish," Trocha told the judge.
Danielsen, in denying the request to strike Greco's old conviction, said the purpose of the sexual offender registration law was to protect children, and that Greco put himself in a position where he was around young people.
The Jazz Ensemble that Greco helped establish is made up of students ranging in age from 13 to 19.
"This is not an act of forgetfulness, it's an act of deceit," Danielsen said of the defendant's crime.
Greco has a "gift" of being a talented musician, the judge said, "but with that gift, he's got a flaw."
