Few would have predicted that he would become what he is today: CEO of a multimillion-dollar sex empire - Philadelphia's King of Porn.
Web porn and phone sex
Just one block from the Liberty Bell, Cohen runs HotMovies. com, one of the world's largest distributors of Internet pornography. Each day, more than two million people - the lustful and the lonely - visit HotMovies. com to watch a smorgasbord of smut.
"In the video-on-demand world, he's the biggest," porn star Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy said in a recent interview. "He's the king."
Cohen also runs a bustling phone-sex call center out of a grimy six-story office building on 7th Street near Chestnut, where a soot-smudged American flag sways above the glass-door entrance. Cohen pays dozens of women to sit in cubicles and talk dirty to callers who dial numbers like 1-800-WE-R-HORNY.
Another Cohen company, National A-1 Internet, hosts a slew of steamy websites, including Girls.com, Stripclubs.com, Spanking.com, KinkySingles.com and SexToys.com. Until recently, Cohen also ran Escorts.com, an online red-light district often used by prostitutes and johns.
Despite his success, Cohen, 53, remains pretty close to invisible - just like at Northeast High.
He abhors the spotlight. He goes to great lengths to keep his life and work secret.
"I think you'd have a better chance of having Jesus talk to you," said Paul Fishbein, founder of the Los Angeles-based AVN Media Network, the go-to spot for news about the porn industry.
Cohen's protective shield has grown thicker since October, when a swarm of FBI and IRS agents, and state and city police, carted out more than 80 boxes of evidence from his offices.
The raid sprouted from a State Police investigation that allegedly linked Cohen's Escorts.com to prostitution, according to authorities.
Cohen has not been charged with any crime.
