White Boy Rick—He’s Now A Free Man

The youngest paid drug informant in the history of the FBI has spent his entire adult life in prison. He is finally free, released from a halfway-house prison in Florida.

Wearing a black T-shirt which said ‘Free Big Meech’, Richard J. Wershe, Jr. – known to the public as White Boy Rick – walked to a waiting car and his girlfriend. The pair and a driver drove away. Big Meech is the street name for Demetrius Edward Flenory, the convicted head of a Detroit drug gang known as the Black Mafia Family. It was founded long after Wershe went to prison

He is tasting freedom for the first time since he was a teenager.

He’s been behind bars since 1988 for a non-violent drug crime, even though he was one of the FBI’s most productive paid drug informants.

To say he got screwed by the criminal justice system is an extreme understatement.

I spent over two decades reporting on violent crime and public corruption in Detroit. I never covered a story like the tale of White Boy Rick.

A Prisoner of the War on Drugs

I wrote a book about him, and called it Prisoner of War: The Story of White Boy Rick and the War on Drugs.

In a very real sense, Wershe was a prisoner of war: the war on drugs. My book shows how his story typified the nation’s failed effort to stop the relentless flow of illegal drugs on our streets.

In the 80s his story attracted worldwide attention, like an article in The Guardian, a London newspaper.

Rick Wershe was a white kid in the black ghetto. He got to know and consorted with major, politically-connected black drug dealers. That led to his recruitment as a secret, underage paid informant for the FBI.

Hollywood’s Sony Pictures made a second-rate, poorly-written movie about him starring Matthew McConaughey. It was called simply, White Boy Rick.

I wrote the book about White Boy Rick and I can say the movie did NOT tell the story.

Scene from the trailer for White Boy Rick:

“It’s Ricky. He white.”

Ya don’t say. For real?

Hollywood Ignored the Real Story

Hollywood seemed determined to make this a father-and-son-against-the-world tale like another Sony Pictures release, the 2006 Will Smith film called the Pursuit of Happyness. Unlike the Will Smith character in Pursuit of Happyness, Rick’s dad was far from the hero type.

Scene from the trailer for White Boy Rick:

“You realize you’re the worst father ever.”  

That line by an actress playing Rick’s sister, is one of the few things the movie got right about this story.

Sold Out by his Father

Richard Wershe, Sr. was a street hustler and con man, always chasing get-rich-quick schemes and seldom home. Richard Wershe, Sr. didn’t drink, but he indulged in domestic violence against his family, including his son, Rick. One police report details an incident where he throttled his grade-school age grandson for not bringing groceries in the house from the family car.

Rick Wershe Jr. roamed the streets and adapted to the changing complexion of the neighborhood. He befriended some rising stars in the ghetto drug underworld. This caught the attention of the FBI.

Through his father, the FBI recruited Rick—age 14—to become the Bureau’s youngest drug informant. Richard Wershe Sr. readily agreed to put his adolescent son in a dangerous high-stakes secret life in exchange for FBI cash.

Since father and son were Richard Wershe Sr. and Jr. the FBI cleverly listed the father as a secret paid informant in FBI files but it was the son who was the real snitch. The informant on the books was simply known as Richard J. Wershe.

Young Rick was a gold mine of information about top-level drug dealing. When he told the FBI about possible connections between a drug gang and city officials, the feds assigned special agent Herman Groman to be his so-called “handler.” Groman worked with Rick Wershe on and off for years.

Lured by easy money, Wershe, the ghetto kid, was sucked in to the drug-dealing world and tried to become a player on his own. He got caught by local cops and was sentenced to life in prison.

FBI: Reputation Over Integrity

The FBI and Justice Department didn’t come to his aid because they had recruited a teenager. To avoid public criticism for using an adolescent informant, the federal government let one of their best informants rot in prison for 32 years.

I recently spoke by phone with Groman about Wershe finally becoming a free man:

“It’s a difficult thing for me to process. He was locked up when he was 17 years old for a non-violent drug crime—possession—and largely in part because of his cooperation with the FBI, and more specifically with me, on a major police corruption case, he essentially wound up not getting any credit for that and he ended up spending more than 30 years in prison.”

Wershe has been a model prisoner for three decades. He was paroled in Michigan on the drug conviction in 2017 after years of appeals work by his attorney Ralph Musilli.

But Wershe had an outstanding conviction and prison sentence in Florida in a car theft fraud case. That’s where he’s been since 2017.

Groman:

“As a result of his cooperation, a lot of major crimes were put together (prosecuted) and it was always my thought that at some point he would be given some consideration by the government for that and it never really happened.”

After three decades in prison, Richard Wershe, Jr. is going to have challenges adjusting to freedom, even if he gets plenty of help and support.

Groman:

“I think it’s going to be an interesting journey for him. I think it can be fraught with a lot of peril.

Think, Vince, how much the world has changed in the last 30 years. You know, in every way. His world is going to be completely different.

My feelings are, I’m very, very happy for him. I’m happy for his family and I wish him a lot of success.”

Wershe has been keeping a low media profile. At the time of his parole hearing in Michigan, Rick Wershe, Jr. said the person known as White Boy Rick doesn’t exist anymore. He said once he’s free, he wants to disappear from the headlines and public view.

That’s a worthy goal and he deserves the chance to achieve it.