Porn Valley- After more than four years on the lam in Mexico, the former owner of the lucrative pornography portal sex.com will finally have to face the wrath of a San Jose federal judge who had ordered him to pay a $65 million fraud judgment before he skipped the country.
Stephen Cohen, who lost a nasty court fight over the rights to the Web site, appeared Friday in federal court in San Diego, a day after being arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana and turned over to U.S. law enforcement officials. Cohen's next stop is San Jose, where he'll have to answer to a contempt order issued against him in 2001 by U.S. District Judge James Ware.
Ware issued an unusual arrest warrant against Cohen after he had repeatedly defied court orders to relinquish millions of dollars he earned from sex.com -- a Web site he was accused of stealing. The judge concluded that Cohen owed San Francisco entrepreneur Gary Kremen a total of $65 million for hijacking the domain name for sex.com in the mid-1990s, and ordered him to turn over his assets.
But Cohen kept failing to show up for court appearances amid evidence he had left the United States with millions. He has been living in a home in Tijuana, according to court papers.
Kremen originally registered the domain name in the early 1990s, but Cohen secured the site by defrauding domain name registrar Network Solutions, triggering the litigation. Cohen, in court papers, denied stealing the Web site, but invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned by Kremen's lawyers early in the case.
Kremen said Friday all he has to show for the judgment thus far is Cohen's house in Rancho Santa Fe, but he hopes the arrest will result in compliance with the judge's orders.
``I'm not jumping for joy at his misfortune,'' Kremen said. ``The guy has the keys to his jail cell. He just has to do what the judge wants him to do.''
A federal appeals court upheld the $65 million judgment three years ago.
