After years of signing everything from bridge abutments to busway walls, even painting his moniker on a wall its owners couldn't reach, Daniel Joseph Montano couldn't get his name on a routine guilty plea.

Mr. Montano, known on walls around town as "MFONE," or sometimes as "Brown Eyes," and occasionally as "Space Boy" and "Baby Rocks," was in court yesterday offering to plead guilty to a graffiti spree of such monumental proportions that no one was sure of the dollar amount of the damages.

That turned out to be the snag. The dollar amount of damages to repair each of Mr. Montano's "tags" on buildings determines whether he's pleading guilty to a felony or a misdemeanor. The judge balked after Mr. Montano, 22, of Highland Park, asked a question that suggested he wasn't clear on the specifics of the plea agreement.

"I can't accept his plea and will not accept his plea if he is confused -- and he appears confused," Common Pleas Judge Kevin G. Sasinoski said. "There's no rush to judgment here, if he needs overnight to think about it."

That's what Mr. Montano got.

Court reconvenes this morning to make sure that Mr. Montano understands the charges, agrees to the dollar amount of damages that determined he faces 18 felony counts as well as 64 misdemeanors and a pair of summary offenses.

Conceivably, the spree could result in more than 221 years in jail, $493,100 in fines and restitution surpassing $500,000.

The confusion began when Mr. Montano told the judge he didn't understand something about his plea.

"Am I pleading guilty to a general charge or am I admitting to a certain amount of damage?" he asked Judge Sasinoski.

To plead to a third degree felony, Mr. Montano would have to agree that he did more than $3,000 in damages. His lawyer, William Cercone Jr., had asked the court to figure out the damage amounts, but with an eye toward the later restitution order. If he is questioning some of the larger amounts, it would raise questions about whether Mr. Montano committed a felony or a misdemeanor when he spray-painted his name on a given location.

There are 125 of those given locations. Police said Mr. Montano appears to have been one of the most prolific taggers loose in the city.

Prosecutor Matt Rabinowitz told the court that Mr. Montano put his MFONE and other street names on bridge supports, the Eliza Furnace Trail, a city parking lot, the wall of the Fort Pitt Bridge, a paint store, a real estate office. Mr. Rabinowitz reeled off a list so long the court reporter had to ask him to slow down so it could all be entered into the record.

After making bail on one arrest, Mr. Montano was accused of switching names and hitting -- for a third time -- the office of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a sausage shop, a visual arts center and the Fudgie Wudgie Fudge Co.

Mr. Cercone told reporters his client's actions were the result of "drug binges and an ego trip -- a seeing-your-name-in-lights kind of thing."

Today, assuming he can convince the judge he understands the charges and accepts the dollar amounts, Mr. Montano will experience a seeing-his-name-on-a-plea-agreement kind of thing.

That won't be too soon for Dan Sullivan, the Pittsburgh police detective who heads the graffiti task force. He has been fighting a seemingly endless battle with graffiti taggers who he says seek out this city because of its number of old buildings, bridge supports and other large, flat surfaces on which to scrawl a street name.

"We have a serious, serious graffiti problem in Pittsburgh," said Detective Sullivan.

Currently, he said, there are more than 500 individual graffiti tags on walls in Pittsburgh, some of them put there by visitors from Boston, St. Louis and New York City.