HARRISBURG — Attorney General Dave Sunday announced that former Blair County attorney Michael B. Cohen has been sentenced to one month to three years in prison for creating a false custody order, to benefit his client.
Cohen, 42, of Hollidaysburg, pleaded guilty in September to forgery. The forged document prompted his client to break the existing custody agreement terms by moving her child out of the county. As part of his sentence, Cohen was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, in addition to the costs of prosecution.
“The defendant’s actions were not a simple lapse in judgement. As an attorney, he knew the law, yet time and time again, he attempted to falsify legal documents for his own personal gain,” Attorney General Sunday said. “Thanks to the prosecutors at the state and federal level, the defendant is facing accountability for his actions.”
Friday’s sentence is one of five Cohen has been issued in the last three months on state and federal convictions.
In February 2021, a client paid Cohen $10,000 to represent her in the custody matter in Blair County. He sent his client a photo of the fraudulent custody order in December 2022, which contained significantly different terms for custody arrangements. In an interview with investigators, Cohen admitted that he created a custody order on his computer and wrote a judge’s name on the order to make it appear legitimate.
The child’s father contacted police when the mother did not meet a scheduled custody exchange. Cohen sent a letter to the judge admitting that the client’s actions were due to his advice based on the order he created.
In October, he pleaded guilty to theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received in Bedford County and was sentenced to five years of probation.
Last month, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison on federal charges, followed by two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to forging the signature of a United States District Judge on two occasions.
Friday’s forgery sentence will begin at the same time as his federal sentence and will run concurrently. A separate county sentence of six to 23 ½ months in jail will also be served concurrently to the federal sentence, on two additional cases handled by the Blair County District Attorney’s Office.
This case was prosecuted by Senior Deputy Attorney General Megan McGoron.
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