Ronnie Music Jr had the world at his feet when he won a cool £2.3million on the lottery back in 2015 but it wasn’t long before his gangster lifestyle was exposed following a raid
A man who struck gold after winning millions on the lottery was sentenced to a long prison stint just two years later — after police made a worrying discovery inside his home.
Ronnie Music Jr scooped $3million (approximately £2.3m) in a scratch-off lottery in Georgia, US, in 2015. But rather than splash out on a lavish holiday, a more modern car or a plush new pad, he decided to invest his fortune into crime.
People have been reminded of his foolish choices after a millionaire lottery winner from Wigan was caged this week alongside his son for setting up a drugs lab inside a cottage to sell fake prescription pills. Remarkably, John Eric Spiby, similar to Music, won £2.4m on the lottery, before embracing the drugs market.
Music meanwhile used his £2.3m to set up a drug trafficking ring where methamphetamine was at the heart of it.
At the time of his windfall, he was a 44-year-old maintenance supervisor and a convicted felon. After hitting the jackpot, he told lottery officials his ambition was to invest the cash and you could say he lived up to his word.
After ploughing his cash into the sinister scheme, he was soon trafficking crystal meth, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, across various states.
The dodgy operation was actually being run from Calhoun State Prison in Georgia but the empire he was building threatened to crumble in the same year as his lottery win.
Ten of his co-conspirators were arrested in September 2015 after they reportedly tried to sell a large quantity of meth, with a reported street value of about $500,000 (£362,000), that Music supplied.
But despite his associates getting into serious trouble with the authorities, Music decided to continue flogging drugs, before the law eventually caught up with him.
A court document later revealed: “Mr. Music observed the transaction and the bust, but did not stop his involvement in the drug business.”
However, he was arrested weeks later after an informant dobbed him in. As well as being found with four pounds of meth, he also had £17,000 in cash within his possession.
Police also raided his home and workplace, where they made the ominous discovery of 11 firearms, including assault-style weapons, along with a stolen revolver and an illegal sawed off shotgun.
“As a convicted felon, Music was prohibited from possessing firearms,” a statement from The United States Attorney’s Office said.
Having experienced the high of winning the lottery, Music then, entirely through his own faults, endured the low point of pleading guilty to conspiring to traffic large amounts of methamphetamine and being a felon in possession of firearms.
Then, two years after his windfall, on April 3, 2017, he was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison.
Sentencing judge Lisa Goodby Wood said: “You got a windfall that few in this world ever get. Nobody has ever blown lottery winnings in a more dangerous and destructive way than you did.”
Jim Durham meanwhile, who was the acting US Attorney, said: “This case has received a great deal of light-hearted coverage because of Mr. Music’s unsound investment decision to buy crystal meth with his lottery winnings.
“The truth of the matter is this: Mr. Music is a predator who has destroyed lives by pushing poison and fear.
“As law enforcement and prosecutors, our job is to protect our communities by sending predators like Music to federal prison for a very long time.”
