Client Was ‘Playing With New Printer’ : Fake $20 Bills Just a Joke, Lawyer Says

An attorney for a Cypress College employee under investigation on suspicion of counterfeiting $49,000 in $20 bills said Wednesday that his client “was playing with his new printer. That’s the extent of it.”

Santa Ana lawyer Jim Bates said Stephen Scott Sebastian, 24, “was making a little bit of a joke there, and he was experimenting with this new machine, and if anybody, especially the U.S. Secret Service, thinks this is an effort to defraud the U.S. government, they are sadly mistaken.

“I think,” Bates added, “that they have more important things to do than chase after this.”

Sebastian was arrested Friday at the Cypress College Production Center on suspicion of manufacturing and possessing counterfeit currency, violations of federal law.

Two janitors notified the Cypress Police Department Thursday night of having found parts of phony $20 bills. Police on Friday morning contacted federal agents, who seized printing plates and paper from the print shop and $21,000 in fake 20s from Sebastian’s home, police said.

Officials said they believe none of the fake money was circulated.

May Go to Grand Jury

No charges have been filed in the case, still under investigation. Irwin Michael Cohen, assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Los Angeles, has said the case may be presented to a federal grand jury for possible indictment.

If convicted, Sebastian, a Garden Grove resident whose annual salary is no more than $20,000, Bates said, could be sentenced to up to 15 years in state prison, a $5,000 fine or both.

Sebastian declined comment. Bates said Wednesday that “no one was given money as though it were real.”

“I don’t know if you’ve seen the money in question,” Bates said. “The back of a $20 bill is supposed to be green. These are black and white--they aren’t even the right color.

“Also, the paper is the last kind you’d want to counterfeit on. It’s like toilet paper. A Girl Scout selling cookies wouldn’t accept this stuff. . . . It’s just so ludicrous that a federal case is being made out of this.”