Jamaican-born reggae star Denroy Morgan was busted on drug charges after cops saw him leaving a Bronx house carrying 25 pounds of ganja, police said Thursday.
Morgan's capture led to the seizure of a 310-pound stash of marijuana and the arrest of another man caught toting 16 pounds of pot, cops said.
Known for his 1981 reggae-disco hit "I'll Do Anything For You," Morgan, 66, told cops he was flush with weed when they pulled his car over Wednesday afternoon and got a whiff of the drug, police said.
A source insisted the unraveling of the cannabis caper did not stem from a surveillance sting but was the result of eagle-eyed narcotics detectives.
The detectives were working on an unrelated case in Soundview when they saw Morgan walking out of a building at 4p.m. carrying what appeared to be a brick of marijuana in shrink-wrap packaging, the source said.
The cops immediately pulled Morgan's car over for running a stop sign and noticed a strong odor of weed wafting from his rolled-down window, the source said.
Morgan copped to having a trunkload of pot, the source said.
Cops opened the trunk and found two large bags filled with 25 pounds of grass, the source said.
When detectives returned to the Taylor Ave. house, across the street from the Blessed Sacrament School, they spotted a second man coming out with a large package and getting into a car, the source said.
Cops stopped Wayne Swavy, 46, for not wearing his seat belt and found an additional 16 pounds of ganja in his car, the source said.
Armed with a search warrant, police entered the house at 1122Taylor Ave., near Bruckner Blvd., and found a pile of the wacky tobacky shaped into bricks.
Cops said the 351-pound seizure has a street value of $140,000 to $351,000.
Morgan, of Springfield, Mass., and Swavy, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., were charged with criminal possession of marijuana.
Morgan showed some of his old stage presence at the arraignment, wearing a blue camouflage outfit with a white porkpie hat. He was held in lieu of $8,000 bail.
"All I can say is I'm not surprised. We figured it was a drug house," said a neighbor, who refused to give her name.
"I hardly ever saw him. When I did, he never said hello. He was very quiet. Just in and out," said Elizabeth Arjun, 57, who lives next to the Taylor Ave house.
Born in Clarendon, Jamaica, Morgan immigrated to New York at 19 and quickly scored a record deal with Right Track in Manhattan.
"I'll Do Anything For You" became a smash hit in the city's discotheques, rose to No. 40 on the Billboard pop charts and led to a recording contract with RCA.
"I had a growing family an' the song allowed me to tour an' earn some money. It changed my life financially," Morgan said in July in an interview with The Gleaner, a Jamaican newspaper.
Morgan is the father of 30 children, including five who in 1994 formed the popular reggae band Morgan Heritage.
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