Don't you hate it when your accomplice in a heist stands up in the middle and says yeah, he planned the whole thing?

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld the home-invasion and kidnapping convictions of a man who, with an accomplice, tied up all the participants in a high-stakes poker game in North Andover, took all the money and fled.

When Santiago Navarro and another masked man tied up all the players, he left Christopher "Shorty" Maldonado's zip tie loose enough that he could easily undo them - not surprising since it turns out Maldonado was the brains behind the robbery. Only Maldonado may not have been playing with a full deck:

Shorty freed himself from his loosely tied zip tie while the robbery was in progress. At that point, Shorty stood up, took the handgun from the defendant, and stated to all the card players present, "Yeah, it was me. I did it. I set it up." The robbery lasted approximately thirty to forty minutes. The defendant, Shorty, and the second masked man left via the backdoor.

In short order, police rounded up the suspects, arrested and charged them.

In its ruling today, the appeals court said Navarro got a fair trial and that his lawyer was not incompetent, so he gets to finish out his 20-year prison sentence.