KANSAS CITY (AP) – A Kansas City-area man implicated when his clothes caught fire during a house blaze he helped set has admitted in court his role in an arson-and-fraud scheme.

John S. Wayne of Kansas City, Missouri, entered the pleas Monday in federal court to counts of arson, conspiracy and fraud.

Authorities say Wayne and five other defendants who’ve pleaded guilty participated in buying, over-insuring and burning five Kansas City homes, bilking roughly $435,000 from insurance companies.

Two days after one of the homes only partly burned in 2011, Wayne and another defendant set it ablaze again, destroying it.

A witness saw Wayne bolting from that house with his sweatpants on fire and shedding those clothes and boots in the street. Genetic evidence from the clothing was linked to Wayne.