thumb|right|240px|[[Business card|alt=His Sex.com business card]]

Stephen Michael Cohen is an American who gained notoriety after acquiring control of the domain name Sex.com in 1995. He also has citizenship in Mexico, in Israel and in the principality of Monaco. He was later implicated in involvement in running the controversial peer-to-peer service EarthStation 5.

Cohen was born in Los Angeles and attended Van Nuys High School in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles. Cohen obtained his Juris Doctor (JD) degree at the University of Southern California Law School in 1972. and by the late 1980s, he organized swinger get-togethers at a home in Orange County, California. In 1990, he was arrested for operating a sex club in a residential zone; he was found not guilty by a jury verdict. It is estimated that Cohen illegally earned US$100 million between October 1995 and November 2000 from his ownership of sex.com.

In April 2001, the court ordered damages of $65 million be paid to Kremen. Cohen left the United States in 2001 and was living in Tijuana, Mexico, when he was arrested on October 28, 2005. As of 2011 the amount of damages owed to Kremen had increased to $82 million with interest and Cohen to this date, has refused to pay one penny towards the judgment. Courts have ruled in Kremen's favor several times since 2006, with evidence that seven individuals, including some of Cohen's family members, and twelve companies were used to help him hide the money.

References

  • (BOY) Boyle, Matthew. December 8, 2005, 4:33 PM EST. "Sex.com, drugs and a rocky road: Tracking down the millions owed after the theft of a tangled web domain". CNNMoney.com. /Fortune/News/Technology. [https://web.archive.org/web/20051215200440/http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/08/technology/sexcom_fortune_121205/].
  • (GLA) Glasner, Joanna. August 14, 2002, 2:00 AM. "Sex.com Takes Aim at Registrar". Wired. /Tech Biz/Media. [https://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/08/54514].
  • (SWA) Swartz, Jon. Posted March 31, 2005, 8:33 PM. Updated 1 April 2005, 8:21 AM. "Appeals court upholds Sex.com ruling". USA Today. /Money. [https://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-03-31-sexcom_x.htm].
  • (VIO) Violet Blue. December 21, 2006. "Sex.com: A URL—All Crime And No Sex". SFGate.com. /Open Source (Column). [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sex-com-A-URL-All-Crime-And-No-Sex-3306551.php].
  • http://www.davidkushner.com/book/the-players-ball/

Additional reading

<nowiki>*</nowiki>David Kushner, The Players Ball. ' NY:Simon& Schuster, 2019 (an account of the conflict between Gary Kremen and Stephen Michael Cohen for control of the internet domain sex.com).

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