.FromBase64String() is a function that takes a specially formatted string. This string is basically data encoded in base 64, you can't pass any old string into this function and get out a byte array.
In order to get a byte array from a string, use the following function:
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(cipherString)
Also, I don't know what you are .Replacing in the string, since the first replace string is empty, it will throw an ArgumentException.