The youngest paid drug informant in FBI history has been released in Florida, taking his first steps toward freedom since he was jailed as a teenager 32 years ago.
Richard J. Wershe Jr., more commonly known as White Boy Rick, was released from a residential work program in Kissimmee on Monday, the state Department of Corrections confirmed in a statement.
The 51-year-old man has been behind bars since 1988 for a nonviolent drug offense, despite being one of the FBI’s most productive paid drug informants who began working undercover for the Detroit office when he was just 14 years old. .
His controversial case drew national attention and has even inspired a number of books and movies, including the 2018 film White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey.
“He is eager to get home,” Wershe’s lawyer Ralph Musilli told reporters on Monday. ‘His head is in a good place. He has a good support group here, and he’s finally ready to go back to the real world. ‘
Richard J. Wershe Jr., more commonly known as White Boy Rick, was released from a residential work program in Kissimmee on Monday, the state Department of Corrections confirmed.
The 51-year-old man has been behind bars since 1988 for a nonviolent drug offense, despite being one of the FBI’s most productive paid drug informants who began working undercover for the Detroit office when he was just 14 years old. .
Wershe was arrested by Detroit police in 1987, at age 17, after being found in possession of 17 pounds of cocaine and $ 30,000 in cash.
Later, a jury convicted him of possession with the intention of supplying more than 650 grams of cocaine. He was initially sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, however, the drug laws later changed allowing the possibility of supervised release.
Wershe was the oldest nonviolent juvenile delinquent in Michigan history. He was locked up in the state Oaks correctional facility until 2017, before a parole board turned him over to the U.S. sheriffs.
He was then sent to Florida to serve a 2006 sentence stemming from his role in an auto theft ring. The crimes occurred while he was incarcerated in the state as part of the federal witness protection program.
Growing up in the Detroit ghettos, at age 14, Wershe became friends with several of the area’s most prominent and politically connected drug dealers.
The son of a well-known street scammer and scammer, Ron Wershe Sr., the teenager quickly caught the attention of the FBI, which recruited him as a minor undercover informant.
The deal was negotiated by his father, who agreed to put his teenage son’s life on the line in exchange for FBI money.
‘I took the money. I wasn’t doing so well at the time, ” Wershe Sr. later recalled to Atavist magazine. “And I thought it was the right thing to do: keep some drug dealers off the street and get paid for it.”
Wershe was arrested by the Detroit police in 1987, at the age of 17. Authorities reported that he was found with 17 pounds of cocaine in his possession and $ 30,000 in cash.
Wershe, 51, was filmed covering his head when he got into a car on his way to Michigan on Monday
Wershe was taught by the police to pedal drugs and was planted inside one of the most dangerous gangs in the city.
It then became a gold mine of information about the city’s highest-ranking drug dealers.
At age 15, he told the FBI that top merchant Johnny Curry had talked about paying a bribe to the Detroit detective inspector to nullify an investigation into the murder of a 13-year-old boy.
After Curry was found guilty and sent to prison, he admitted to investigators that he had paid Detroit police homicide inspector Gilbert ‘Gil’ Hill $ 10,000 to squander the murder investigation.
Wershe even was shot in the stomach while working as an informant for the office and helped send a dozen corrupt police officers to prison.
A year after the FBI left him as an uninformed informant in 1986, he was arrested on drug possession charges.
At the time of his arrest, the media cited Wershe as a dangerous cocaine drug trafficker known to his subordinates as ‘White Boy Rick’.
Photos of the criminal with a baby face appeared on all the news. Often his face was placed above a criminal hierarchy, showing the 17-year-old at the top of the ladder with the city’s toughest criminals portrayed as his subordinate.
At his trial, the judge insisted that he was not sympathetic to Wershe, saying that he was “worse than a mass murderer.”
At age 14, Wershe was taught to pedal drugs and planted inside one of the city’s most dangerous gangs. Then it became a gold mine of information about the city’s highest ranking drug dealers.
His controversial case drew national attention and has even inspired a number of books and movies, including the 2018 film White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey.
Richard Wershe Sr. tried to get the FBI to help his son, but they refused to intervene.
Her former manager Herman Groman told the Daily Beast that the FBI and the Justice Department did not come to his aid because they are most likely to face intense criticism for enlisting a young teenager in the drug war.
Over the following decades, Wershe observed how hitmen and murderers were imprisoned and released around him while he remained in prison on possession charges.
“ I told the wrong people, ” he told the Daily Beast in 2017, regretting that he lost a lot of time with his two daughters and son, who are now in their 30s.
“I have lost much of my life to things that are not true,” he told Detroit News the same year. ‘I was never the drug dealer … who was this great boss. That couldn’t be more wrong. I sold drugs for 11 months.
Much of Wershe’s time in prison was spent with the Federal Witness Security Program, as a result of his reporting work on corrupt police officers.
For a time he was in Witness Security prison with Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano, the government’s star witness in his case against the late mobster, John Gotti.
Groman says Gravano once told him on the phone: ‘I don’t get it. I hit 19 guys for John Gotti and cooperated. I am leaving this place in April. This boy, who has never pulled anyone’s trigger … has to stay here for the rest of his life. That doesn’t make sense, ‘reported the Daily Beast.
After three decades in prison, Wershe is understood to be returning to Michigan where his mother, sister, and son live. She is still on probation until August 22, 2021.
Speaking about Wershe’s ‘long-time launch’, Groman said it is ‘somewhat difficult to process’.
“He was locked up when he was 17 for a nonviolent drug offense (possession) and largely because of his cooperation with the FBI, and more specifically with me, in a major police corruption case, essentially ended up getting no credit for it and ended up spending more than 30 years in prison. ‘
After three decades in prison, Wershe is understood to be returning to Michigan where his mother, sister, and son live. She is still on probation until August 22, 2021.
You will not be allowed to possess drugs, weapons, alcohol, or leave the state until that deadline is met.
“I think it will be an interesting trip for him,” Groman told the Daily Beast. ‘I think it may be full of great danger. Think about how much the world has changed in the last 30 years. You know, in every way. Your world is going to be completely different.
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