A reported scam artist well-known on the South Coast has been extradited to California from Pennsylvania and is scheduled to appear in Santa Barbara County Superior Court next week.
Law enforcement searched for six months before locating Steven Kunes, 59, formerly of Montecito, who was released from Wasco State Prison on June 8, 2015, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department reported last month.
Kunes failed to report to local probation and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Kunes was ultimately located in Pennsylvania, where his parents reside, after authorities gleaned information from his social media accounts, said Kelly Hoover, spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.
Kunes is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 9, according to prosecutor Brian Cota of the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office.
Sheriff’s detectives also became aware of a newspaper article in Bucks County, Penn., that reported Kunes had falsely claimed to be developing a Netflix series with numerous movie stars, Hoover said.
The reported scam was similar to a 2011 case in Santa Barbara County in which Kunes was convicted of theft by false pretense when he accepted funds for a Hollywood movie project that did not exist, Hoover said.
Kunes has been the center of several local cases, and was sentenced in 2012 for for second-degree commercial burglary, intent to commit larceny and any felony, and felony counts after trying to pass bad checks at Montecito Bank & Trust.
Noozhawk reported at the time that he also admitted special allegations for previously going to prison for forgery and grand theft. He had been implicated in forgeries at both Business First Bank and Montecito Bank & Trust.
In 2012, Kunes cut off his electronic monitoring device and mailed it to a custody deputy at the Santa Barbara County Jail.
In that case, as well as the most recent one, social media contributed to his arrest.
After the Sheriff’s Office posted his booking photo on the department Facebook page in 2012, a Carpinteria resident saw Kunes at a restaurant and contacted the Sheriff’s Office, which responded and deputies arrested Kunes.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
