Stephen Foster had no qualms admitting to taking a lucrative stash of jewellery from a Civic store and selling it at a Fyshwick brothel for drug money.
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His defence? The store owner was to pay him $500 to do it.
Foster, 44, told his ACT Supreme Court trial on Friday that he was innocent of burglary, because he had been asked to break in to the shop as part of an "insurance job" to help an ailing business.
Prosecutors allege he committed the burglary at the Gems and Gems Jewellery store in Civic of his own volition in December 2013, and took tens of thousands of dollars in goods.
Foster claimed the $500 payment was to be left in the store for him, but he found only $200. He said he felt ripped off and grabbed some jewellery, got a lift to Fyshwick, and sold the goods at a brothel.
That defence raised some serious questions on Friday.
The prosecution accused Foster of lying, saying he'd first told police he wasn't their man, before coming up with the insurance job story once he realised his fingerprints were found at the scene.
"It's not a story, this really happened, and I'm being ripped off," Foster responded.
Supreme Court Justice John Burns pointed out that Foster's defence – essentially an admission that he was conspiring to commit insurance fraud – hadn't done a lot for his credibility as a witness.
Justice Burns also began to pick sizeable holes in the story.
Foster's evidence was that he had gone back to the shop on the night after the break-in, and saw the shop owner replacing the goods that had been stolen on the shelves.
The judge said that made no sense, and asked how that could possibly help the owner maximise his supposed plans for an insurance job.
Foster, through his lawyer, said the owner was replacing the goods because he had realised the first burglary hadn't been captured on CCTV, thereby weakening his potential insurance claim.
He said the owner was putting the items back on the shelves to allow for a second heist the next night, this time to be captured on CCTV.
But, as Justice Burns pointed out, the only CCTV footage from the area came from the King O'Malley's pub next door.
The judge asked how the jewellery shop owner could possibly have seen the pub's CCTV footage, particularly in that short space of time.
No answer was offered to that question.
Earlier, Foster was asked whether he had ever been directly approached by the store owner about the supposed insurance job.
He said he had not, but had been contacted by a mutual friend.
In another frank admission, Foster told the court he'd helped the mutual friend get into Australia by filling out a statutory declaration in support of his bridging visa.
Foster said he'd been getting $500 a week since for his efforts.
That friend had told him to go to the shop, because it wasn't doing very well, and make it look like a burglary.
Justice Burns reserved his decision in the judge-alone trial.
