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Sex.com Hijacker Captured in Mexico

Posted by Zonk on 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."

6 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. If he's so rich .... by qwave54 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    couldn't he have just paid off the right people in the Mexican government to get them to look the other way??

    1. Re:If he's so rich .... by c_forq · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's what I was thinking. I had a friend arrested in Mexico before, and after being loaded into the patrol car they gave him a couple options (in English): to go to the jail, be processed, and spend some time behind bars, or to stop at an ATM and make a withdrawl. He chose the ATM, and joined us again about 30 minutes after being arrested, but now down about $200.

      --
      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
    2. Re:If he's so rich .... by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here's some good advice to remember: if you're ever arrested in a foreign country (not Canada or Western Europe though...) a good thing to do is to ask the police to recommend a lawyer for you. They will give you the name of someone that they "work well" with. The lawyer will split his fee with the police, and you'll be free to get your ass to the airport ASAP.

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
  2. INS can't be bothered to pick up arrested illegals by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...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 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, and wouldn't you know- a bunch of "immigrant rights" activists threw a hissy fit.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  3. Major slimeball story by Saeger · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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. :)

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  4. Good ol' Days... by RexRhino · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!