College Employee Target of Counterfeiting Inquiry

The supervisor of the campus print shop at Cypress College in Orange County is under investigation after $49,000 in phony $20 bills were found in the shop and at his home, authorities said Tuesday.

Stephen Scott Sebastian, 24, who for more than two years has run the print shop at which faculty handouts and tests are reproduced, was arrested there Friday on suspicion of manufacturing counterfeit currency and possession of counterfeit currency, violations of federal law.

U.S. Secret Service agents seized the fake greenbacks from the print shop and Sebastian’s home Friday after two janitors reported finding a piece of a false bill in a trash can in the print shop the night before, Cypress police said.

“There’s no doubt (somebody) printed up a lot of money; as to just what his motive and intent were, that’s a big question mark,” Cypress Police Lt. Bob Bandurraga said Tuesday. “How sloppy it was . . . left you thinking it couldn’t really be a serious counterfeiting operation.”

None in Circulation

Federal agents said they believe that no phony bills have been circulated.

Gail Taylor, the college’s public relations director, said she thinks that the case is a mix-up that has been “blown out of proportion” and that “Steve just got carried away.”

Sebastian declined comment Tuesday.

“I’m on my way to see a lawyer,” he said from the doorway of his Garden Grove home.

Sebastian was released on his own recognizance the day he was arrested, said Irwin Michael Cohen, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Secret Service office.

Bandurraga said the U.S. Treasury Department was called after the janitors reported finding the counterfeit money.

He said the officers found that someone “had run these sheets of paper through the printing press, both sides, and they hadn’t been cut yet. And they weren’t hidden. . . . But they weren’t open to public view. They were in stacks between other stacks of paper.”

Taylor said: “Steve had been fooling around with the color on one of our new presses. We hadn’t had color before. I have a feeling Steve just got carried away. . . . He was real proud of what he could do with that press, and he had been showing things off to everybody.”