$500,000 bail for `deadbeat dad'; Man was deported from Canada.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Linda Bock

MILFORD - One of the state's top "deadbeat dads" - who owes $493,912 in child support, interest and penalties - was recently deported from Canada, and was ordered held on $500,000 cash bail yesterday after he was charged with criminal nonsupport, according to state Department of Revenue officials and prosecutors.

David Fisher, 48, formerly of Hopkinton, appeared on the state's 2002 Ten Most Wanted poster for failure to pay child support. He was sent back to Massachusetts by Canadian authorities three weeks ago and charged with abandoning his children without support, leaving the commonwealth without paying child support and failure to comply with a child support order. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf at his arraignment yesterday morning in Milford District Court. Judge Robert B. Calagione continued his case to Jan. 28. Mr. Fisher was arraigned in the same Milford court in which criminal charges for failure to pay child support and a warrant for his arrest were issued against him on Dec. 2, 2002.

Mr. Fisher married his ex-wife on Aug. 16, 1980, and they lived in Hopkinton. She filed for divorce Nov. 24, 1999. According to prosecutors, Mr. Fisher agreed to pay $883 weekly child support; he earned $2,700 per week at the time. He owes $314,373 in child support, $119,692 in interest and $59,847 in penalties, according to the state Department of Revenue and prosecutors, and faces up to 10 years in jail.

Colleen E. Cunnally works for the DOR and was appointed as special prosecutor for the case. She said Mr. Fisher has not made a single voluntary child support payment since the divorce. She said he is estranged from his ex-wife and three children.

"This is a man who willingly evaded paying child support,'' Ms. Cunnally said after the brief court proceeding.

According to DOR officials and prosecutors, Mr. Fisher, who was a computer programmer at the time, agreed Jan. 28, 2000, to pay $883 weekly in child support for his three children, who were 10, 16 and 17 at the time of the divorce. After a judge denied Mr. Fisher's request to reduce child support payments, he was found guilty of contempt for violating the terms of the existing child support order. When Mr. Fisher and Ann Fisher divorced in June 2001, the order to pay $883 weekly child support was part of the settlement.

Ms. Cunnally said Ms. Fisher was forced to sell the family home in Hopkinton after the divorce. The uprooted family moved to Upton and the three...