A former bikie boss has to "watch my back" for "retribution" after leaving his outlaw motorcycle gang, a court has heard.
"I've got concerns because I know there are going to be consequences," the man said on Wednesday.
"I've been warned."
John Donald George Wright, 48, was the Canberra chapter vice-president of the Rebels bikie gang when police arrested him in November 2021 during a Braddon drug bust.
He previously pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking and single counts of conspiring to cultivate a traffickable quantity of cannabis plants, money laundering and possessing a prohibited weapon.
Wright told the ACT Supreme Court he had put his former gang life and criminal offending behind him, having handed back his colours and begun the process of covering up a Rebels leg tattoo.
These things were, the court heard, always "held in a bad way" by members.
The man, who is also known as John Winchester, said the mothers of his multiple children felt more "at ease" with him seeing his kids since he left the gang.
"I know it's not going to continue, your honour. I don't want to go back to that lifestyle. I like my life at the moment with my children and work," Wright told Justice David Mossop.
"In the gang life, you can't have kids around. It's a lot safer now."
Police searches of two homes, including Wright's, located about five ounces of a white powder which contained cocaine, thousands of dollars in cash, electronic scales and a large pill press in July 2021.
Court documents state Wright continued to traffic in the drug up until his arrest four months later, when police again searched his home and found nearly $16,000 in cash, cocaine, scales and knuckledusters.
Wright told the court he would purchase about two ounces of cocaine a week both for use and sale, and admitted to personally using about $400-a-day worth of the drug at the time he was arrested.
When prosecutor Marcus Dyason asked the man who he had sold the drug to, Wright refused to provide names.
"I'm not going to dob people in for my own cause," the offender said.
Wright also told the court the drug offending was unrelated to his former gang ties.
His other offending relates to police searches which found 15 planter pots of cannabis plants with lamps, 14 root balls, more than a kilogram of loose cannabis, instructions for growing plants and hydroponic growing equipment.
Defence barrister Steven Whybrow SC said his client showed real "remorse, contrition and efforts to rehabilitate".
Mr Whybrow also said gang retribution was not "an idle or fanciful concern".
"It's something that's real because he genuinely wants to change his life," the barrister said.
Wright is set to be sentenced on Thursday but his co-offender in the cannabis conspiracy, Adam Angelo Beniamini, 39, returned to custody on Wednesday.
While Beniamini previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to cultivate traffickable quantities of cannabis, Justice Mossop described the man's sentence hearing evidence as "self-serving ... unimpressive and unreliable".
Amongst many single worded or tight-lipped responses, the court heard Beniamini's only role was to "set up" the "grow house" but that he would not make any profit.
"I'd get a little bit of green," he said.
Beniamini was handed a jail term of 14 months and 15 days, with a nine-month non-parole period.
The judge cited Beniamini's "substantial criminal history", which included jail terms for burglary, multiple assaults, family violence, drink driving and property damage.
This history and previous "unsatisfactory compliance with community-based orders", Justice Mossop said, "denies the capacity for significant leniency".
Beniamini had previously spent 103 days in custody related to the offending.
