The ex-wife of local businessman Evan Montvel-Cohen is asking District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco Tydingco-Gatewood for the maximum sentence to be rendered against him. Sharla Torre was married to Cohen for almost 30 years until their divorce in July 2020.

In March 2020 he was charged with Aggravated Identity Theft and Wire Fraud. He was arrested for allegedly using one of his employee’s personal information to rent an apartment in Tamuning in 2019.

The case however has been delayed over the past two years because Montvel-Cohen had several medical emergencies which eventually led to heart surgery, additional procedures, and cardiac rehabilitation, according to court documents. Eventually, in August of last year, Montvel-Cohen agreed to plead guilty.

On Monday, Montvel-Cohen asked that he be sentenced to time-served with one year of home confinement as a condition of supervised release. According to court documents, the sentence would take into account his serious medical condition.

Although Montvel-Cohen is asking for leniency, his ex-wife Sharla Torre is asking the court to impose the maximum sentence possible. In a six-page letter sent in mid-February to Judge Tydingco-Gatewood she wrote “This is not the first time that Evan has schemed to win the court’s leniency by pleading guilty. In 2009, he won leniency in Hawaii Circuit Court by pleading no contest to theft; his sentence was five years probation and some restitution money. He truly believes he can outsmart our justice system.”

In the Hawaii case, Cohen was accused of stealing more than $60,000 from a landscaping firm where he worked as a Business Manager in 2005. In July 2009 he was sentenced to five years probation and was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.

Torre also cited two other cases in Guam and in New York in which Evan “willfully misled, deceived and involved me in.” She stated that he entrapped her by telling a web of lies, faking events and documents, “raging at me and keeping me in crisis and chaos mode to confuse and confound me, thus obfuscating his malicious intentions and deeds.”

Montvel-Cohen may sound familiar. He was the focus of an HBO documentary “Left of the Dial” in 2005. The documentary centered around the start of the liberal talk radio network Air America. Montvel-Cohen and a prominent local media executive were the driving force behind the radio network, but both eventually resigned amid allegations of a poor business plan and allegations that Cohen misled investors about the company’s finances. Montvel-Cohen was accused of transferring over $875,000 from the non-profit organization “Glory Wise Boys and Girls Club'' in New York to help fund the radio network. At the time he was serving as the non-profit organization’s Director of Development. The New York City Sun reported that Montvel-Cohen cited the reason for personal loans from the non-profit group was for chemotherapy to treat his alleged brain cancer.

Torre in her letter to the federal judge wrote “I now have strong reason to believe that Evan lied about having debilitating brain cancer from 2000 to 2003, with self-proclaimed recurrences until 2015”. Torre stated he never let her accompany him to the hospital and never saw any hospital bills. “What I do remember is only stories of how his doctors involved him in clinical trials and that’s why there were no bills to pay,” she wrote.

One of the most compelling parts of her letter however is the abuse afflicted on her and their son. Torre wrote Evan’s financial misdeeds led to their son defaulting on an outstanding college tuition bill of about $20,000, which ultimately has complicated his prospects for finishing college.

Their son also wrote a letter to Judge Tydingco-Gatewood insisting that his father be given the maximum prison sentence. He wrote that not only did he take control of his personal bank account behind his back while attending college in New York, he opened and used a credit card in his name, racking up charges and defaulting on payments. “Evan Montvel Cohen is the worst, most dishonest, irresponsible and insensitive person I’ve ever met. He has actively lied to me, stolen from me and severely impacted my chances of completing my education and getting a job. He has hurt me and my family in immeasurable ways and is a danger to the people around him. It would be a grave mistake to let him go free and under-punished,” he wrote.

Suffering from emotional and mental trauma, Torre wrote that in her research to make sense of her experience to begin to heal, “I’ve come to believe that Evan is a malignant narcissist/ psychopath.”

Torre states that he has been and remains a true danger to society, “he is incapable of honesty, responsibility, true humility or remorse. I truly believe he is beyond rehabilitation”.

In early March, Judge Tydingco-Gatewood also received a letter from Montvel-Cohen’s mother, Elisabeth Kalau. The letter was a follow-up to a telephone interview with a representative from the court. During the interview, Kalau said she was asked her thoughts about the anticipated sentence. “I expressed hope that "it sticks." With that I mean, that the sentence goes to the extent of the law and make crystal clear that he has to stop his fraudulent behavior,” she wrote. She added, “P.S. That I have dementia is yet another of Evan's falsehoods”.

Montvel-Cohen was scheduled to be sentenced next week but it was rescheduled to May 24.