Jonathan Neal Williams was in a tough spot, trying to pay off his debts to drug dealers with money he ran off on his color printer.

It didn't take long for the dealers to catch on. And legitimate businesses didn't welcome his currency either.

That was the sequence of events described at Williams' sentencing hearing Wednesday in federal court in Roanoke. The Giles County man, who had pleaded guilty to two counterfeiting charges in May, drew a prison term of one year, nine months.

"You have behaved terribly," U.S. District Court Judge Glen Conrad told Williams.

According to federal public defender Randy Cargill, who served as Williams' attorney, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlene Day, who prosecuted his case, Williams had been in trouble for years.

Just 23 years old, Williams had spent more than a decade using and abusing alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, Oxycontin and Ecstasy. Then he stole $80,000 from his parents and burned through it in a matter of months buying drugs. When the money ran out, Williams kept going, racking up debts to drug dealers.

To try to pay them, Williams used his home computer's combination scanner and color printer to run off bills "in the crudest of ways," Cargill said. He manufactured denominations from $1 to $100. Some of the bills police later found at his Pembroke home had faces on both sides, Cargill said.

When the dealers wouldn't accept the fake money, Williams started going to local stores and trying to break large counterfeit bills to get real money in change, Day said.

That didn't last long. A clerk at the Star Mart in Pearisburg spotted a phony bill and notified authorities. An employee at the Pearisburg Wal-Mart also caught one of Williams' creations while sorting money, Day said. When Williams returned to Wal-Mart the next day with more counterfeit money, he was followed to his car and his license plate was recorded.

On Wednesday, Williams' family members wept as Cargill recounted how Williams was able to get clean last year after a 10-month inpatient rehabilitation program in Florida, but then fell back into drug use after being injured in a car crash and prescribed the painkiller Oxycontin.

"This is a terrible addiction. This is a sickness," Cargill said.

For most of this year, Williams has been under pretrial supervision by a federal probation officer. His weekly drug tests have all come back negative, Cargill said.

Another attempt at rehab, this time in Christiansburg, failed when Williams was kicked out for visiting his girlfriend, but he did not return to drug use, Cargill said.

Williams' parents are letting him work off his debt to them in the family landscaping and tree-cutting business, Cargill said. They also are supporting Williams, his girlfriend and their child, he said. Williams and his girlfriend plan to marry and are expecting a second child, the attorney added.

Williams' plea agreement recommended the low end of the 18- to 24-month range called for by federal sentencing guidelines. But Conrad said he was inclined to go higher because of the money Williams took from his parents. Federal law allows a pattern of behavior to be taken into account at sentencing, sometimes including actions that did not result in specific criminal charges.

Williams apologized, saying his actions were "really dumb."

"I'm aware and prepared to serve any time and do what I have to do to make this right," he said.

Conrad imposed a sentence of 21 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervision by a probation officer. He ordered Williams to pay restitution of $190 to Star Mart, $110 to Wal-Mart and $90 to the Clearview Market.

"Drugs have been your downfall. ... I hope this will be a wake-up call for you."