A printer who had a €2m property judgement against him has avoided jail for production of 49 boxes of counterfeit €50 notes.

John Stanley (aged 53) was under severe financial pressure from failed property deals when he used his equipment and skills to print €3.3m worth of the fraudulent notes.

The notes were found in various stages of production and only €9,250 were finished and in a position to be distributed.

The court heard Stanley decided to abort the operation before distributing the notes and that he destroyed some of the templates used to print them.

Judge Martin Nolan told Stanley’s defence counsel that “the only thing saving your client from prison is that he did not put these notes into the public”.

Defence counsel Caroline Biggs SC said Stanley “had a brainwave and it was a brainwave that lasted for a very short period”.

She said he had employed many people in the community in his printing business before his financial problems.

She said he was under severe financial pressure, including the €2m judgement against him, and that “he came up with a daft idea to make money.”

Counsel said there is no link to “subversive activity”.

The judge imposed a four-year term which he suspended in full for four years.

Stanley of Tonlegee Road, Coolock, Dublin but originally from Northern Ireland pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to producing the counterfeit notes before April 17, 2014 at Baldoyle Industrial Estate. He faced a maximum term of ten years imprisonment.

Detective Sergeant Padraig Boyce told prosecuting counsel Sinead McMullan BL that the boxes of notes were found by a maintenance man in a unit in the industrial estate.

Gardaí were alerted and found 49 boxes containing notes in various stages of production. Stanley arrived soon after and was arrested.

He told gardaí that he produced the notes over a two year period and then stopped.

He said he was able to print the watermarks and other security features but had to send them elsewhere to have the holograms put on.

Det Sgt Boyce said only 180 notes had all the security features present. Many of the others were in much earlier stages of production and were printed four to a sheet.

Stanley told gardaí he made the notes “through a trial and error process” and that he created the €50 template plates himself.

He said his plan was to introduce the notes into the public in “dribs and drabs” at €2,000 a week.

His counsel said that on coming to his senses, he planned to destroy the rest of the notes but couldn’t do so without attracting attention.

She added that he was a kind and generous employer who would often pay his employees without taking a wage for himself.