Sex.com : one domain, two men, twelve years and the brutal battle for the jewel in the Internet's crown

What's in a name? For the owner of sex.com, a cool $100 million a year.

With five million page views every day, sex.com was the most valuable piece of virtual real-estate on the planet and the dubious jewel in the crown of the newborn internet.

But the fact that it didn't physically exist didn't mean that it couldn't be stolen.

With an ingenious scam - the full details of which have never been revealed until now - lifelong con-man Stephen Cohen was able to snatch sex.com and walk into a life of untold wealth and luxury.

But Cohen had under-estimated the determination of Gary Kremen, the man he had stolen it from, to get his property back.

It would take ten years and millions of dollars, but Kremen would see Cohen finally pay for his crimes. "Sex.com" details the extraordinary battle between two extraordinary men: a Stanford scholar with uncanny foresight; and an uneducated con-man with a genius IQ and an unnatural gift for persuasion.

The fight pushed each man to the edge, rewrote the law, and shaped the history and development of the internet as we know it. Kieren McCarthy has had exclusive access to both protagonists and so can reveal the sordid, hitherto unpublished, details of the world's largest ever heist.