Things looking up for internet bad boy Gary Kremen

photo by Ian White

San Francisco entrepreneur Gary Kremen has fought a decade-long battle over Sex.com, and it might all nearly be over.

Last year, VeriSign agreed to pay about $15 million to Kremen to settle a lawsuit that claimed it improperly transferred the Sex.com domain name to someone else.

And now, after more than four years on the lam in Mexico, the guy who tried to run off with ownership of the Sex.com name, Stephen Cohen, has been arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana and hauled…

into a San Jose federal court — and ordered to pay Kremen $65 million.

Here’s our colleague Chris O’Brien’s piece about Kremen that ran in Wired on Aug, 2003. It gives a good insight into Kremen, his run with Match.com, his run-ins with investors such as Kleiner Perkins and Canaan, and at least one nipple-squeezing woman he hung out with at the wreck of a house he inherited at Rancho Santa Fe. It includes nice quote from Ron Posner, a venture capitalist who was on the Match.com board: “VCs would call me in the middle of the night and say, ‘What are we going to do about Gary?'”

But with the prospect of $65 million, Kremen may have the last laugh.