Stephen M. Cohen

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. He 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 in a jury trial. It is estimated that Cohen illegally earned $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, and Cohen had refused to pay any of it. 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.

Since Cohen's right to the domain was revoked in 2006, it was sold to Escom LLC in 2006 and Clover Holdings LTD in 2010, which rebranded the site to a porn collection in 2012.