Taxpayers will foot some of the legal bills of a onetime millionaire Connecticut and Florida developer who pleaded guilty in a real estate fraud case and who now says he can't afford to pay his lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden in Bridgeport, Connecticut, approved paying Robert Matthews' private attorneys with public funds retroactive to April 2018, shortly after Matthews was indicted for scamming foreign investors out of millions of dollars in connection with a hotel-condominium project in Palm Beach. Bolden's ruling came Aug. 12.

It's another chapter in Matthews' fall from grace. The 61-year-old Palm Beach resident oversaw multimillion-dollar real estate projects, vacationed on his island property on Nantucket, Massachusetts, and enjoyed life aboard a 150-foot yacht.