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The Courts Government News

Sex.com Hijacker Captured in Mexico 252

Posted by Zonk from the longest-slashdot-story-evar dept.
Revvy wrote to mention that Stephen Cohen has finally been brought to justice. From the article: "Cohen, a multiple felon and longtime con man, had been on the run since before 2001, when a judge ordered him to pay a San Francisco entrepreneur for hijacking the Internet address Sex.com. In 1995, Cohen forged a letter to Internet authorities to gain control of the address, which he transformed into a highly profitable site for pornography ads. Cohen, who had been living in a Tijuana mansion, was arrested on an immigration violation by Mexican authorities and turned over to agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service, according to Deputy Marshal Tania Tyler."
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Sex.com Hijacker Captured in Mexico More

Sex.com Hijacker Captured in Mexico

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  • Mr. Cohen (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChrisF79 ( 829953 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:18AM (#13895954) Homepage
    From sex.com to prisonrape.com. A fitting end to this story.

  • If he's so rich .... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by qwave54 ( 671614 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:19AM (#13895958)
    couldn't he have just paid off the right people in the Mexican government to get them to look the other way??

  • The wheels of justice turn slow. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Trigun ( 685027 ) <evil AT evilempire DOT ath DOT cx> on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:20AM (#13895964)
    He was living in a MANSION in mexico. How hard did they even look for this guy.

  • Off to Federal Pound-Me-In-A$$ Prison (Score:5, Funny)

    by jdwest ( 760759 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:21AM (#13895972)
    ... where turnabout is foreplay.

  • Blame the Internet Authorities (Verisign) (Score:5, Informative)

    by cdn-programmer ( 468978 ) <terr&terralogic,net> on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:26AM (#13896004)
    Yes - I think it was Verisign. This is a DNS entry which could have been fixed in a few minutes. This is not like he absconded with the website and couldn't be reached. The website is an address in a nameserver! People should understand this. The issue is beauracatic bungling and Verisign was doing a lot of this back then.

    • Re:Blame the Internet Authorities (Verisign) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cdn-programmer ( 468978 ) <terr&terralogic,net> on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:38AM (#13896077)
      AH yes - Network solutions was bought by Verisign. It was really Network solutions who screwed up. They didn't even follow their own poliies on lame names back then. There was a lot of crap going on.

      How is this different than someone stealing your identity and going to the bank and withdrawing your money and the bank says what? You don't have any money anymore because we gave it to someone else? Bullshit. It is the Banks responsibility to ensure they are dealing with who they think they are dealing with and ditto for Network Solutions. As I said before, Network Solutions could have fixed the problem with a simple DNS change and that only takes a few minutes. For Network solutions to hide behind their own error and refuse to correct things until a Judge orders them to is just bullshit.

      IMHO Network solutions should be held liable because it was their error.

  • Time for revenge... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nomayogr ( 711191 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:32AM (#13896044) Journal
    It says in TFA(tm):
    "During the years of litigation, he had moved his millions overseas and then left the country himself, occasionally calling Kremen to taunt him."
    and
    "While Kremen was busy with other things, including the company that grew into online dating site Match.com, he did nothing with Sex.com"
    If I were Kremen, I'd have to go visit him at least once to tell him: "Yeah Cohen, there's a lot of prisoners on my Match.com site, you should really set up an account and try and form a long lasting relationship. Our 200 point match engine can provide you with a companion you'll really like to be sodomized by"
    • Our 200 point match engine

      Do they really need 200 points to match up for a prison mate? I was thinking one point is sufficient: "are you in the same cell?"

      I mean, for this kind of match up, it really doesn't matter what the "lady" is looking for in a relationship, does it?

  • So is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:40AM (#13896098)
    ...or is this a case of somebody crossing the border to get INTO Mexico?
    • ...or is this a case of somebody crossing the border to get INTO Mexico?

      Meanwhile, a New Hampshire Sherriff is charging illegal immigrants with trespassing. Why? Every time his department finds one (and he finds himself running into a LOT of them), he finds they're not here legally and calls the INS- the INS says "sorry, we don't have time to pick them up." So they're part of a revolving door.

      That revolving door runs off tax dollars. Guess what? Illegal immigrants don't pay a dime in taxes (not eve

      • Re:INS can't be bothered to pick up arrested illeg (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:36AM (#13896438)
        Your lack of faith in "diversity" is disturbing, citizen-unit. Stop questioning and return to your simple life of mass media induced stupor!
      • Butler County Ohio started sending bills to the INS for housing illegal immigrants in the County Jail (usually picked up for other crimes)

        That said, don't expect any action on this anytime soon. Bush can't come down against illegals because a lot of his heavy supporters rely on illegal workers to reap profits off of low wages, but he can't come down in favor of letting them in either, because a good chunk of the rest of his supporters are opposed to having illegals in the country at all and want stricter i
      • I don't see how that would pan out at $50 / per. You mention throwing them in jail, and it takes hours to arrest and process somebody as I understand it.
      • Illegal immigrants don't pay a dime in taxes (not even sales in NH) and he's having to spend an increasing amount of time dealing with them. So he and the DA decided to throw them in jail and charge them $50 a pop

        Uh, how do they not pay sales tax? Do they whip out their illegal-immigrant card at the supermarket and say "I'm not a citizen, please remove the sales tax from this purchase" ? Get a clue.

        Meanwhile, the INS, police, court-appointed lawyers and the various bureaucrats involved COST tax dollars.
        • New Hampshire has no sales tax.
        • Uh, how do they not pay sales tax? Do they whip out their illegal-immigrant card at the supermarket and say "I'm not a citizen, please remove the sales tax from this purchase" ? Get a clue.

          New Hampshire has no salestax, Mr. Knowit A. Dipshit.

          My point is that they're doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the NH public; they pay no property, wage, or sales tax...pretty much the only way the government gets any money from you. They're not even spending the money here, they wire it home to Mexico or wh

          • Ah, You see I neither know nor really care about the NH tax structure.

            My point is that they're doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the NH public; they pay no property, wage, or sales tax...pretty much the only way the government gets any money from you.

            My point is that you're ignoring the reality here. They contribute low/under minimum wage jobs, from restaurant staff to janitorial services, (traditionally), to keep your costs down. If restaurants had to pay minimum wage, or heaven forbid a livable
    • or have you missed every crime / car chase movie ever made? If you are running from the law, you run to MEXICO.
      Haven't you even seen the greatest movie of all time, Convoy ? The genius part is that they use the CB as a narrative device, but I digress, Long story short guy is being chased by smoky (thats what us CBers call Johnny Law, aka CHiPs, aka Oinkey the pig, the fuzz, the cops dammit) and had to make it across the border of.... you guessed it.... Mexico.

      There is even a song about this subject, the mag

  • It's not like he can't run a web site from behind bars. Every prison library has computers and Internet access nowadays. I'll be surprised if he is not still raking in dough from online ventures -- overseas if not domestically.

  • He was WHAT? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @08:50AM (#13896146)
    "arrested on an immigration violation by Mexican authorities and turned over to agents of the U.S. Border Patrol,"

    OK, so let me get this straight: he was deport from Mexico to the United States?

    I think I need to go lie down now...

  • what was it? (Score:3, Funny)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:03AM (#13896231) Journal
    This is /.

    Anything having to do with a breakdown or interruption at sex.com:

    "...I felt a great disturbance ... as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly relieved...."

  • 5 years??? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Antifuse ( 651387 )
    What astounds me is that it took until 2000 for him to get the domain back. 5 years!!! Sweet mother of crap. And another 5 years for them to find the damn guy. I wonder if that $65 million judgement is even close to the amount of money that Cohen raked in via sex.com. Also - Tijuana? Are you kidding me? You're fleeing from the law, and you go to Tijuana? That's like being wanted for murder in Detroit, and fleeing to Windsor. For all his con-man smarts, he clearly ain't all THAT smart.

  • In the Netherlands ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cablepokerface ( 718716 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:40AM (#13896456)
    ... wussies that we are, this guy would just get some prison time (since internet fraud isn't regarded a class A felony) and a fine (not even coming close to what he earned).

    I really hope they take away all his money and he gets 30 years. It's about time these criminals get what they deserve.

  • WTF?!!?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by multipartmixed ( 163409 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:42AM (#13896463) Homepage
    Let me get this straight:
    Immigration officials picked up an illegal American living in Mexico

    Have I fallen into some kind of alternate universe?

    If so, is it the one where Spock has a goatee, or do I get treated to Nana Visitor in tight leather pants?

    • I am very proud of you for not using the "In Soviet Russia..." joke. Because you were a good boy, I shall make your reality Nana in tight leather pants.

  • Major slimeball story (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <(farrellj) (at) (gmail.com)> on Friday October 28, 2005 @10:04AM (#13896592) Homepage
    In the mid 90s I worked as a sysadmin/programmer at one of the first web pr0n companies. These were the early pioneering days, so we had to develop our own creditcard processing back-end (had banks of modems dialing out; and a daemon named "getmoney" that did the batch job), as well as our own "hot" live streaming video.

    The "state of the art" in streaming video that we had in 1995-96 was basically a tiny postagestamp-sized jpeg multipart/x-mixed-replace slideshow -- which the dominant netscape browser supported perfectly, but IE no longer does -- pushed out by our "exclusive" sun sparc video server boxes.

    This was hot tech and this guy Steve Cohen approached us about getting our stuff setup in Mexico for sex.com. I'm not exactly sure about all the details, but we ended up with some sort of deal where we would provide a dozen video servers + installation & support in exchange for rights to the video feeds he was going to operate with the talent in Mexico. We also paid a bundle to setup a microwave link across the US/Mexico border.

    So then he turns slimy: Mr. Cohen failed to provide the promised feeds (guess he wanted to be exclusive). And he never payed for our expensive equipment either. My boss flew down there to talk things out and apparently back then Mr. Cohen was cozy with the federalis and had him thrown in jail for a few days before he could fly back out. I then get a call from El Slimeball wherein he tries to BRIBE me into a) not remotely disabling the servers since I was the admin, and b) coming to work for him in sunny Mexico (enticing me with pathetic stories of how the blowjobs flow freely from his slutty girls.)

    I guess he didn't know that his techs had already locked me out, or maybe he thought I had some backdoors, but I couldn't stop him remotely; all I remember finding was some useless hostbased rlogin accounts. I also wasn't about move to mexico, and I was (*gasp*) loyal, so I declined the hefty bribe (by not giving my account info for the wire transfer).

    Anyway - that's my little anecdote of the famous Steve Cohen asshole. Hope there'll be a live jailcam video feed. :)

  • What is that, like a double-wide?

  • Good ol' Days... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RexRhino ( 769423 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @11:16AM (#13897249)
    I needed to change servers for a company I was working for back in 96 or 97... of course I didn't have any of the domain registration information, because the guy who had all the info got fired. So what was the high-security way to get access to change my domain registration information? I had to fax a request on company letterhead! Yes, that is right, anyone could steal anyone elses domain name, simply by making a faxed request on company letterhead! Of course, I was not stealing the domain, I really was authorized by my employer to make the changes. But it was SIMPLE beyond comprehension.

    Yes, I know those were the 90s wild west days of the Internet, but come on? Company letterhead as a security device? I am shocked that domain highjacking wasn't far more of a problem than it was!

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