In January Earthstation 5, the peer-to-peer software developer that declared war on the entertainment industry and told them to “fuck off,” announced that they hired Sex.com’s former owner Stephen Michael Cohen as a consultant.

Salon.com summed up Cohen as a “a convicted felon with a penchant for offshore investing, porn and Internet empire-building.” After being handed a $65 million judgment in the case, Cohen fled to Mexico to avoid paying up.

According to ES5 president Ras Kabir, ES5 offered Cohen an executive job with the company. “He initially turned us down,” said Kabir. “However after several telephone calls, he finally gave in and agreed to help us in the capacity of a consultant. We now have Mr. Cohen permission to disclose his identity.

Kabir: I have read some of the transcripts in the sex.com case presented to us by Mr. Cohen’s attorney. Further, I have read everything that the current owner of Sex.com (Gary Kremen) has published on his web site.

What I can tell you is Mr. Cohen has a judgment against him for over 80 million dollars including interest and attorney fees. The original judgment against him was for 65 million dollars and that judgment was a CIVIL Judgment, not a CRIMINAL CASE..

What I have not seen in the press to my surprise is Mr. Kremen’s deposition where he stated he had no interest in Sex.com. It seems that these issues are now coming to light in Mr. Kremen’s case with Network Solutions.

My research staff has informed me that when Mr. Cohen had Sex.com it was making in the upper hundreds of millions of dollars annually and today under the current management (of Mr. Kremen) it is almost worthless with very few hits and almost no advertisers. That says a lot about Mr. Cohen’s skills and that is worth a lot to our company.

According to the court records, Mr. Cohen was NEVER involved in Spamming. All of the money made by SEX.COM was made through memberships and advertisement.

According to our research, between the years 1995-2000, Sex.com had several million adult customers (monthly) paying up to $4 per minute to view Sex.Com website content making it the most lucrative online website in the world. In addition, Sex.com had mass income from banner advertisement, online sex feeds, and other content.

I have read the notices that were filed with SPAMHAUS and others. Each of these notices talk about an ISP known as Sand Man Internacional that listed Mr. Cohen?s as the administrator. However, in one of the depositions on file at the SEX.COM site, it clearly states that Mr. Cohen was not running that ISP at the time.

Needless to say, Mr. Cohen is no saint by any means and yes he does have a criminal record for bankruptcy fraud while representing a client. Most people on this earth I find are staintless. I have a rule; if you born on this planet and you have a birth certificate, you are aren?t a saint either.

It is well known in the press and even Mr. Kremen admits that Mr. Cohen is worth more than 100 million dollars today, and that he has received no funds from his judgment by Mr. Cohen.

We take security of our employees, partners and the ones that help us very seriously. There are many people in Palestine that do not like the fact that we have a Jewish partner and this has caused us some serious problems here in Palestine. Mr. Cohen is not a partner of our company even though we did in the past offer him a partnership of which he turned down.

Of top of that as the press will tell you, Mr. Cohen has several homes located in the South of France and Mexico, a private jet and is the part owner of numerous casinos and several businesses throughout Europe.Mr. Cohen of course states he has no money and is currently living on welfare in Mexico.

Whatever the case may be, he doesn’t need us; WE NEED HIM because regardless of the Sex.com issue, he is recognized worldwide as the creator of the largest and most lucrative internet site in the world.

Background on Earth Station 5: A company that specializes in music downloads and movie swapping.Its operators have crafted a finely honed bad-boy image that seems to taunt officials to discover who they are and to catch ’em if they can.

The company claims to have its headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to take advantage of loose Palestinian copyright and intellectual property laws that it says can keep U.S. legal hounds at bay. But the company’s business and Internet paper trails don’t support that claim. The West Bank and Gaza addresses the company lists for its offices don’t exist, the telephone numbers don’t answer, company officials refuse to meet with reporters and they communicate only by e-mails and call-backs. Reporters are not allowed to visit Earth Station V offices or talk to workers.

A spokesman for Earth Station5, Steve Taylor, said the company has about 100 employees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he declined a reporter’s request to visit their work sites, saying that Palestinian militant groups did not approve of Earth Station5’s activities — particularly its broadcast of pornographic movies — and were threatening the company’s operations and employees. Militants also were angry, he claimed, that the company had Jewish partners. Experts agree, the electronic veil offered by the Internet is so impermeable that the company’s employees could be sitting at desks almost anywhere in the world, while using the West Bank as their electronic address.

According to Taylor, the company also has offices in the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem. Computer specialists in each town said they were not familiar with Earth Station5.

Business registration papers filed with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and other company documents list Stephen Michael Cohen, as the “sole director” of Earth Station5. Taylor said Cohen was a “consultant” who “brings a lot to the table because of his expertise.”

Cohen has been listed as a fugitive from the United States since 2001 for failing to appear in a court case in which he was ordered to pay $65 million in damages for stealing the Internet domain sex.com. According to the judgment, in 1995 Cohen forged a letter by the real owner of sex.com instructing the agency that registered domains to transfer ownership to him. Cohen controlled the domain name for five years, building sex.com into what reportedly was one of world’s most visited and profitable Web sites.