Cox Turns Over $2,000 Donated by Swindler : Investors: Congressman is only second of 60 Republicans to return campaign contributions to victims of convicted First Pension founder William E. Cooper.

Rep. Christopher Cox, responding to a plea by victims in the $136-million collapse of First Pension Corp., said Thursday that he has turned over to them $2,000 in campaign contributions from the convicted swindler who operated the now-defunct company.

The Newport Beach Republican, who also has been sued by investors, is only the second of 60 GOP politicians to return campaign donations made by the company’s founder, William E. Cooper.

Gov. Pete Wilson returned $8,000 to investors in mid-June, less than a week after a victims group had started sending letters to current and former officeholders seeking the refunds. The victims had asserted that Cooper had used “money stolen from investors.”

Cox said Thursday that it took him longer to refund the money because he first had to get approval from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces rules on receiving and disbursing money from federal campaign funds.

“It’s the right thing to do,” the congressman said. “They [the commission] said, by the way, that I am under no obligation to do it.”

Both investors and the receiver sued Cox in June along with former law partner Gary Mendoza, now commissioner for the state Department of Corporations. The suit charges that while they worked in the Orange County office of the Latham & Watkins law firm in the mid-1980s, they learned about the fraud in preparing a securities offering for Cooper and helped to hide it.

Cox and Mendoza have vociferously denied the allegations. The congressman said he worked on only one matter in 1985, nearly two years before the law firm eventually completed the work. Cooper has said he deliberately concealed the fraud from the firm.

Cooper, who is serving a 10-year prison term after his guilty plea to fraud last year, gave $500 to Cox’s initial campaign to win the congressional seat in 1988. Cooper, a big fund-raiser for the county GOP, donated $500 more a year later and $1,000 for Cox’s reelection campaign in 1990. Cooper also hosted a 1991 fund-raiser for Cox at his Villa Park home.

Cooper’s financial empire collapsed in April, 1994. Through a series of companies, Cooper put money from up to 8,000 investors in phony mortgages, siphoning off funds to start other companies and make campaign contributions to Republican power brokers. Many investors were elderly Southern Californians who had entrusted his companies with their life savings.

Three months ago, an ad hoc committee of First Pension victims sent letters asking local, state and federal politicians who had received some of Cooper’s largess to return the money to them.

None of the other politicians--from former President George Bush to all five Orange County supervisors--has returned any contributions so far, said Sandra van Loben Sels, a spokeswoman for the ad hoc group.

Cox said that state and local politicians have fewer restrictions in returning money to the receiver. FEC rules, he said, require that in making any refunds, federal politicians must return donations to the donor. Cox said he asked the commission to allow him to give the money instead to the court-appointed receiver for First Pension.

“Obviously,” he said, “we would not wish to refund the money to Cooper.”