For police, the $6 million armed robbery trial was a complete disaster.

Reynold Glover, Corey George Farrell, Willie Caldwell and Nathan Stuart stood trial in front of a jury in the Sydney District Court for a marathon 98 days.

When the case finally ended on October 25, 2012, the score card made for catastrophic reading for the police and prosecution lawyers.

Of the 34 charges, the jury found the four men not guilty of every single one of them.

It seemed the major problem with the trial was the evidence given by Mr X.

The jury didn’t believe he was only a minor player in providing back assistance to the robbers.

In his opening address, the Crown Prosecutor in the case told the jury was a minor player in the robberies.

“(Mr X) is a convicted drug dealer and what [he] did in relation to these robberies, in a general sense, was to source vehicles, stolen number plates and weapons for use in some of these robberies,” the prosecutor told the jury.

“He also provided premises for counting and distributing the proceeds of the robberies and assisted in the disposal of evidence after the robberies had been committed.”

The defence lawyers for the four men told the jury the evidence pointed to Mr X being a principal in the robberies, rather than a minor player.

The major problem was Mr X’s spending in 2009, when the robberies occurred.

He gave evidence that at the beginning of 2009, he had cash assets of about $60,000 that had been earned through drug dealing.

But under cross examination from Stuart’s barrister Julie Hickleton, Mr X admitted he had spent significantly more.

The question was, if not from the robberies, where had Mr X’s money come from?

There was $55,000 he spent on a boat, $55,000 on a custom Harley Davidson, a BMW for $17,000.

Mr X also dropped $15,000 fitting out an Ultimo unit for his mistress and another $6500 on jewelry for his wife.

He invested about $300,000 with Mr Choker (who was not charged or accused of any wrongdoing), lost another $200,000 at the casino, put a deposit on a $142,000 Bentley and $12,000 on prostitutes and his personal trainer.

The grand total, Ms Hickleton told the jury, $824,900 in spending by Mr X in just seven months.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to be flippant, but this man has better cash flow than the state of Tasmania,” she said.

One explanation, Ms Hickleton told the jury, was that Mr X had lied to the police about the extent of his involvement in the robberies and that he may have been more heavily involved than he claimed.

It was put to Mr X that the reason why he knew so much about the armed robberies and could lead police to cars, guns, and dumped cash canisters was because he had committed them.

Glover’s barrister Tom Hughes grilled Mr X in the witness stand and described him as “a filthy grub“ and a ”cocksure, arrogant smartarse”.

The other problem was that one of the guards from the Lane Cove robbery gave evidence that one of the armed men told him “Get in the f---ing truck or I‘ll blow your head off” in a Middle Eastern accent.

None of the accused men had a Middle Eastern background.

Mr X’s credibility as a witness was shot.

The prosecution case was dead in the water.

Glover also made the surprise decision to give evidence in the case.

From the witness stand, he told the jury that Mr X had come to his Circular Quay apartment around the time of one of the robberies and asked if he could hide a balaclava and a key from a stolen BMW linked to one of the robberies.

The decision would come back to bite him and led to him being charged with perjury.

On November 4, 2012, Caldwell posted to Facebook a picture of a news report about the acquittal with the caption: “Not guilty all the (da) way to the bank.”

The triumph of the acquittal was short lived.

Glover had reached out to Mr X prior to the trial and it was about to cause him a big problem — and it ended in jail time.