Lawyer fights to get back $186M for DHB successor

David Cohen, once an outside attorney for Westbury-based body armor company DHB Industries Inc., saw founder David Brooks as "a financial genius."

But Cohen, 69, has now become a point man in the fight to restore to the company -- now Point Blank Solutions of Florida -- $186 million that Brooks is alleged to have looted from the manufacturer to support a lavish lifestyle.

"I have spent a fortune" in civil actions, said Cohen, a Jericho lawyer. Cohen is fighting a 2008 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert, who said DHB, not Brooks, has to pay $35 million to settle a shareholder class-action suit.

Brooks, indicted in 2007, was jailed last week after prosecutors said he had orchestrated schemes to conceal tens of millions of dollars in assets. Cohen, meanwhile, is focused on getting $186 million back.

"My first impression was that he was an idiosyncratic man," Cohen said. "He marched to his own drum. But he seemed like a financial genius."

Cohen signed on in 2000 and left in 2002, after complaining to DHB's board about what he saw as Brooks' unethical behavior. Brooks' attorneys did not return phone calls.

" I believe in corporate governance," Cohen said. "I understand fiduciary responsibility. To see that totally destroyed is what put me as aggressively on the side I'm on."