These days, a man can't make a dishonest living

I may not be a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure I could have advised this guy that his legal strategy wasn't going to work:

A judge in Suffolk County, Mass., said while Robert Aldrich was cleared of robbery charges after spending several months in jail, the career criminal's claim he missed out on $4,000-a-month worth of home improvement work was questionable to say the least, The Boston Globe said Wednesday.

"Aldrich apparently found another way to support himself, and it was not doing home renovations," Suffolk Superior Judge Nancy Holtz wrote in her decision against Aldrich's compensation claim.

He claimed that he was doing work "under the table" to avoid paying taxes, which doesn't seem like a smart thing to tell a judge, but who am I to tell the guy to go about trying to get his money?

Oh, and what kind of work would he have been doing, had he not been locked up?

"The defendant is a career B&E (breaking and entering) man seeking compensation for burglaries he couldn't commit while locked up," spokesman Jake Wark told the Globe of Aldrich, who had numerous breaking and entering priors.

This Aldrich guy may not be really bright, but he sure has some big balls, huh?