Jarrod Bacon, in a file photo, testified in his own defence at a cocaine conspiracy trial Monday.Jarrod Bacon, in a file photo, testified in his own defence at a cocaine conspiracy trial Monday. (CBC)

A high-profile alleged B.C. gangster has testified that he intended to steal — not buy — a large quantity of cocaine he is charged with conspiring to purchase.

Jarrod Bacon took to the witness stand Monday and told B.C. Supreme Court that he planned all along to beat and rob the man offering to sell him 10 kilograms of cocaine in 2009.

The purported dealer was a police informant, which Bacon did not know at the time.

Bacon, 28, told Justice Austin Cullen, who is hearing the case without a jury, that he was lying when he said in a recorded conversation that he had investors willing to go in on the purchase of the drugs, and that he was just trying to set the dealer up so he could rob him.

Bacon told the court he was a heavy drug user at the time, using cocaine, OxyContin and steroids daily.

He said that while he was at the home of co-accused, Arnold Wayne Scott, he met a man he thought was an independent drug dealer.

Bacon described the man as "soft," and “easy mark,” and it was then that Bacon hatched a plan to rob the dealer.

Co-accused 'not told'

Bacon repeated several times that he was working totally alone in his robbery plot, but did not tell co-accused Scott about the plan.

The Crown alleges Bacon and Scott conspired to buy a large quantity of cocaine from the agent.

Bacon is expected to be cross-examined by the Crown prosecutor Tuesday.

Bacon and his two brothers had several brushes with the law in recent years as alleged heads of the Red Scorpions drug gang.

Brother Jonathan Bacon died in a hail of automatic rifle fire in a daylight attack outside a Kelowna, B.C., hotel last summer in which four other people were wounded.

His other brother,Jamie Bacon, is in custody awaiting trial on a charge of first-degree murder in connection to the so-called Surrey Six homicides in October 2007 in which four drug-dealing suspects and two innocent bystanders were killed in a highrise apartment.

With files from the CBC's Ben Hadaway