CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 3, 1991 | MATT LAIT, TIMES STAFF WRITER
A mistrial was declared Tuesday after jurors said they were deadlocked in the trial of a man accused of running a swingers' sex club from a house in upscale Cowan Heights. Stephen M. Cohen, 43, of Trabuco Canyon had been charged with two misdemeanor counts of violating local zoning laws by operating an adult business in the residential area.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 28, 1991 | MATT LAIT, TIMES STAFF WRITER
In the heart of pricey Cowan Heights, Stephen M. Cohen operated a swingers club that held parties offering a smorgasbord of sexual activities for $40 a couple, a prosecution witness testified Thursday. Sheriff's investigator Charles Daly, testifying on the first day of Cohen's misdemeanor trial, said he "heard a lot of moaning and groaning" and saw a number of sexual acts at the Brier Lane residence that he and a female officer went undercover to investigate.
BUSINESS
June 1, 2001 | Joseph Menn
Online porn portal Sex.com offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of fugitive Stephen Michael Cohen, the former Orange County businessman who hijacked the lucrative Web address for five years. Cohen forged a letter to Internet registrar Network Solutions in 1995 to gain control of the domain name, then turned it into a hard-core site that was among the Web's biggest moneymakers, according to records in the long-running legal fight that followed.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 2, 1991 | MATT LAIT
A Cowan Heights swingers' club was not a business, but rather a private organization like the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts or Elks Lodge, a lawyer for the club's operator said in closing arguments Monday. "It was not a business, but a club to support a lifestyle," defense attorney William J. Kopeny said. Prosecutors disagreed, noting that the club's owner, Stephen M. Cohen, took out advertisements and collected fees from "patrons." The club, prosecutors say, was operated for a profit.