By Larry Hobbs
The Brunswick News
Brunswick, Ga.—After striking it big with a winning $3 million dollar scratch-off lottery ticket, Ronnie Music Jr. could have taken it easy for the rest of his life.
Instead, Music invested his winnings in a business -- a methamphetamine sales and distribution enterprise, to be exact. But Music lost his business and faces life in prison after becoming ensnared in a sting operation conducted by the Brunswick-Glynn Narcotics Enforcement Team (BGNET).
“He picked the wrong business,” said Glynn Police Lt. David Hassler, a supervisor with GBNET.
Music, 45, pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking and firearms charges last week before Judge Lisa Godbey Wood in U.S. District Court in Brunswick. The Waycross man could receive a maximum of life in prison at sentencing.
Music won $3 million on a scratch-off lottery ticket last year, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia. He then invested in at least 11 pounds of crystal meth, the office said. Unbeknownst to him, Music’s first clients turned out to be undercover GBNET officers. An accomplice of Music delivered all 11 pounds into the officers’ hands at an undisclosed location in Glynn County last fall, Hassler said.
“We subsequently received 11 pounds that was delivered to us in a controlled delivery,” Hassler said.
Officers later leaned that Music was the source of the meth, which had a street value of more than $500,000, Hassler said. In arresting Music, officers seized more than $1 million worth of methamphetamine, numerous firearms, lots of ammo and more than $600,000 in cash.
“We were able to track back from that controlled delivery that he was the source, but it was actually delivered by people working at his direction,” Hassler said. "(Music’s involvement) really is something that came up from another investigation that we were looking into. It led up from there, once we started getting the information.”
Others taking part in the investigation included the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
Music and other conspirators in the meth operation will be sentenced at a later date.