The former chairman of Air America Radio, Evan Montvel Cohen - who former colleagues said engineered transfers of more than $800,000 to the liberal radio network from a boys and girls club in the Bronx - is missing, according to a lawyer who is trying to have him served with legal papers. At least two people have said Mr. Cohen is in Hawaii. He has not responded to a series of e-mail messages in recent weeks from The New York Sun asking him about his role.
Mr. Cohen, 39, helped lead the launch of Air America in March 2004. Less than two months later, Piquant LLC acquired the radio network from Mr. Cohen's Progress Media. Piquant LLC has agreed to pay $875,000 to Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, without interest, in installments over the next two years.
| Though they haven't really started yet. |
Board members of the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx, where Mr. Cohen was employed as development director at the time he helped launch Air America, have said Mr. Cohen earned their trust through a very successful fund-raising event that he staged in Manhattan for the nonprofit club.
| That's how he managed to get signatory authority, eh? |
Mr. Perlman said he knew Mr. Cohen through Mr. Cohen's brother, Thomas Montvel Cohen. All three men attended Beloit College in Wisconsin. Despite claims to friends and coworkers that he had graduated from Beloit, however, Evan Cohen never fulfilled his graduation requirements nor did he receive a degree from the school, according to Beloit's registrar, Sherry Sandee.
Ms. Sandee said Mr. Cohen attended Beloit intermittently from 1984 to 1989, missing several semesters. She said he tried to make up the missing credits just before he started the Air America venture in 2003. For those credits, Mr. Cohen, a government major, submitted a project entitled "Fleecing non-profit organizations" "Examining the role of government in economic development."
It was at Beloit that Mr. Cohen befriended a future White House aide, David Goodfriend. After serving as deputy staff secretary to President Clinton, Mr. Goodfriend became a leading figure in conceptualizing and launching Air America. It was he who introduced Mr. Cohen to investors.
Mr. Cohen was the first person named in a recent lawsuit filed by an owner of radio stations that is seeking more than $1.5 million it says it is owed by Air America. But process servers have been unable to serve Mr. Cohen with the lawsuit, according to an attorney, Randy Mastro. "We are still trying to locate him," Mr. Mastro, a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration who is representing MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting in its suit against Air America, said yesterday.
The law firm Stillman & Friedman was initially representing Evan Montvel Cohen but no longer is, according to Mr. Mastro, who is with the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Julian Friedman, of that firm, did not return phone messages yesterday.
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