Mysterious GOP Donor Held on Fugitive Warrant : Child support: Man described as No. 1 deadbeat dad paid $400,000 to sit with Bush at fund-raiser in April.

A mysterious Los Angeles Republican donor who sat with President Bush five months ago at a star-studded Washington fund-raiser was arrested Saturday in Salt Lake City on a fugitive warrant alleging that he failed to pay $101,000 in child support.

Michael Kojima, 51, labeled by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office as “America’s most wanted deadbeat dad,” was arrested in the Salt Lake City International Airport as he prepared to board a plane for a vacation with his wife at a dude ranch, authorities said. He had eluded investigators for four months, moving frequently and living under assumed names, officials said.

“We finally caught up with the guy,” said Wayne Doss, director of Los Angeles district attorney’s bureau of family support. “We’ve had a lot of deadbeat dads who disappear but I can’t think of any who have gone to this length to avoid being caught.”

Kojima entered the national spotlight April 28 when he made the largest donation--$400,000--at the largest political fund-raiser in U.S. history, a $9-million affair, earning himself a seat at the head table with Bush.

However, in an embarrassing development for Bush, whose reelection effort has centered on “family values,” the widely publicized mystery donor turned out to be a man who had married six times and failed to support any of his four children. A failed restaurateur, he also owed an alleged $1 million in business and personal debts.

Republican fund-raisers put the donation into an escrow account and have asked a judge to sort through the legal quandary of just whom the $400,000 belongs to. However, the GOP maintains that it “has a valid interest in and is entitled to the political contributions.”

Presidential spokesmen have tried to distance themselves from Kojima, emphasizing that even though the April fund-raiser was called the “President’s Dinner,” the money was raised to help Republican congressional candidates, not the Bush-Quayle reelection campaign.

When asked about Kojima’s arrest Saturday, Tony Mitchell, deputy press secretary for the Bush-Quayle campaign, declined to comment, referring a reporter to the Republican Congressional Committee. A spokesman for that committee referred a reporter to the “President Dinner’s” committee. A spokesman for that committee could not be reached.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office began searching for Kojima in May in connection with a complaint by one of his ex-wives, Burbank beautician Chong Kojima, who was owed $101,000 in support and interest.

After several attempts to arrest Kojima at his condominiums in Brentwood and West Los Angeles, investigators collected information about the elusive entrepreneur as he rented different cars and apartments every several weeks, flew around the country and ran up dinner bills that occasionally reached several hundred dollars a night.

“This is all rather baffling,” Doss said. “One of the things that puzzles me is that he is apparently willing to undertake enormous expense, moving around, renting furniture, cars and apartments to avoid an obligation which, if he had paid it, might cost him less.”

Curiously, Doss said, he received a telephone call from Kojima’s attorney notifying him that Kojima had enough money to pay court-ordered child support payments. However, the attorney said Kojima preferred to negotiate a partial payment, Doss said, and the district attorney’s office refused.

Instead, investigators seized four of his cars and two bank accounts. The cars, including a Mercedes and a Maserati, netted $40,000 at public auction. Another $8,000 was seized from bank accounts registered to Kojima’s International Marketing Bureau and the Assn. for Refining Cross-Culture, a company registered to his current wife, Chiey Nomura.

Investigators learned recently that Kojima had apparently moved to Utah, where he was using several names. Doss said investigators learned that he planned to take a vacation with his wife at a Colorado dude ranch this week to celebrate her birthday. Salt Lake City authorities were contacted to assist in the investigation and arrest.

Jim Potter, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County sheriff, said Kojima was arrested at 7:05 a.m. as he left a restroom near the gate where he was to board a plane. Kojima had planned to meet his wife in Denver, authorities said.

Potter said two airport police officers happened to be talking to each other outside the restroom when Kojima emerged and appeared stunned by their presence. He turned back and was heading toward his car when he was taken into custody, Potter said. Kojima had about $2,000 in U.S. money and some foreign currency.

Kojima is being held on $100,000 bail until an extradition hearing Tuesday, Potter said.

Nomura, who runs a foreign student exchange business in Los Angeles, learned of her husband’s arrest Saturday when she was paged by a reporter at the Denver airport where she was waiting for her husband.

Asked why her husband had not paid the child support, she said only that she had learned about his unpaid child support through newspaper reports. She declined to comment on his arrest, referring a reporter to his attorney, T. J. Pantaleo. Pantaleo declined to comment.

As far as investigators could tell from records and information they gathered, Kojima continued to conduct business while a fugitive.

After the President’s dinner, Kojima was described by Republican fund-raisers as a major international businessman who put together consortia for financing large-scale, international projects.

But the International Marketing Bureau, from whose assets he told fund-raisers his donation came, was nine months delinquent on its state tax return at the time of his donation.

Its only address was his current wife’s student exchange program--a purportedly charitable endeavor that also made political donations and failed to file tax reports.

The Times has reported that Kojima used his donations to develop personal business connections in Asia. Two businessmen who met Kojima in Japan said he portrayed himself as a political insider. He dropped the names of important Japanese and American politicians and businessmen, wore a presidential Roundtable pin on his lapel and frequently displayed a photograph of himself with Bush, they said.

But interviews with his former wives and business associates yield a portrait of a onetime chef who could never apply himself long enough to make a success of his enterprises.

One of his ex-wives, Soon Kojima, a Harbor City garment manufacturer trying to raise two teen-age sons without child support, said her husband often talked about politics and tried to have his picture taken with politicians. But she said she could not understand where he would find enough money to make such contributions.

A laundry list of other creditors testify to his seeming inability to be successful in business. Among the creditors are Lippo Bank, an Indonesia-based lender that helped finance some of Kojima’s ill-fated Chinese restaurant ventures in Los Angeles, and a North Carolina fish company whose products Kojima was exporting to Japan about the time he made his first large donations to the Republican Party in 1988.

Asked why Republican fund-raisers had not been more careful in checking out their contributors, one spokesman for the “President’s Dinner” said at the time: “It’s a little difficult to cross-examine a man who’s a major donor. . . . Anybody who can write a check for $400,000 and it doesn’t bounce in Washington these days is going to get a lot of interest.”

Times staff writer David Savage in Washington contributed to this report. Becklund reported from Los Angeles.