I was astonished, or gob-smacked to use a popular term, when Richard “White Boy Rick” Wershe walked out of prison in Florida recently.
He’s been in prison for 32 years. He was recruited by the FBI at age 14 to be the Bureau’s youngest paid drug informant. When he got in trouble with drugs, the FBI wouldn’t help him. They’d have to admit they were using a kid as a drug snitch.
Wershe was wearing black pants and a black T-shirt which said, “Free Big Meech.” Social media went nuts. Not about Wershe’s release, but about his T-shirt.
Social Media Users Noticed
“LOL. He rocking the free big meech shirt?
“And he wears a Free Big Meech t shirt? Really? If Gotti was alive would he be pushing for his release too?”
“Dawg. White Boy Rick got released today wearing a Free Big Meech shirt.”
“Shoutout to White Boy Rick for exiting the system with a Free Big Meech shirt on”
“White Boy Rick leaving prison wearing a Free Big Meech shirt is too Detroit even for me.”
“White Boy Rick wearing a Free Big Meech shirt is the hardest shit ever!”
In ghetto lingo, the hardest shit means the coolest.
Wershe swore before his parole he was leaving the street life behind. Why would he wear a T-shirt promoting the release of Big Meech a notorious federal narcotics prisoner? And who is Big Meech?
Well-known In Certain Circles
That would be Demetrius Flenory, one of the biggest dope slingers in Detroit’s history.
Big Meech makes Johnny Curry, the dealer Rick snitched on for the FBI, look like a dime bag dealer on a ghetto street corner.
In the late 1980s, when Wershe was 17 and beginning his life prison term,
Demetrius Flenory, 12-years old and selling Fifty Dollar rocks of crack cocaine on the streets of Ecorse, a southwest suburb of Detroit.
For years Demetrius and his brother Terry ran a sprawling multi-state cocaine racket centered in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit. The DEA says the Atlanta hub alone distributed over 2500 kilos or 5500 pounds of cocaine every month.
Big Meech wormed his way in to the hip-hop music business. He sometimes bankrolled music acts with the profits from drug dealing.
He started a magazine called The Juice.
The American Dream?
These are comments by Big Meech in a phone interview from prison:
“Every entertainer or athlete or whatever, everybody want to live like they selling kilos. That’s the real American dream. That’s it. That’s the American dream. Everybody wanna live like they sell dope.
“Scarface (the Al Pacino film) inspired me, but it’s just funny how everybody who has money, from all walks of life, the majority of them want to live a Tony Montana-type life. They just don’t want his troubles.”
The character Tony Montana in the movie Scarface died in a hail of bullets.
Demetrius Flenory is serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison in Oregon.
Living the Tony Montana life was fun while it lasted:
“People gotta understand, ‘Oh man, he shoulda been low-key.’
Low-key what? There’s a lotta low-key dudes locked up, too. Me? I mean I enjoyed billions. I made billions. I spent billions.”
Terry “Southwest T” Flenory was somewhat low-key. He was the organizing mind behind the conspiracy.
But Demetrius was the people-person who lived large, as they say.
He drove the priciest cars. He routinely spent up to a hundred thousand dollars in an evening when he and his crew went to nightclubs. He encouraged hot women to wear Black Mafia Family clothing.
The BMF or Black Mafia Family used hip-hop music and the black entertainment industry as cover.
They used to advertise on highway billboards in Atlanta that the world was theirs. BMF operated in 11 states and major cities.
Not A Victim of the System
Demetrius Flenory is no victim of an unfair system. He’s no candidate for the Innocence Project. He pleaded guilty to operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise—the so-called Kingpin statute.
Wershe is reported to have said Big Meech is in prison for a non-violent drug crime. That’s the same thing that was said about Rick. But in the case of Big Meech, it’s not true.
The prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia dropped a two-count murder charge against Flenory in the shooting deaths of two close associates of rap entrepreneur Sean “P Diddy” Combs. One of the murder victims was Combs’ one-time body guard.
Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family are so notorious in black entertainment circles that Starz, the cable network, is going to run a multi-part drama series based on the misdeeds of the Black Mafia Family.
It will be produced by another hip-hop entrepreneur, Curtis Jackson, known by the name 50 Cent. The Black Mafia Family series looks to be a black version of Boardwalk Empire, minus the politics.
That brings us back to Rick Wershe’s Free Big Meech T-shirt.
White Boy Rick has been bitten by the movie bug, even though Hollywood’s film about him was second-rate. There’s something wrong with a movie about a snitch with no snitching.
When Wershe was released, among the media cameras recording the event was a documentary crew with exclusive access to the prison star after he left the grounds. They are apparently recording his first days of freedom after three decades behind bars.
The surest way to make money on a documentary is to have it broadcast by a cable network. TV is hungry for new content.
Selling A Documentary Through A Convicted Racketeer
A documentary about White Boy Rick might play well paired with the Starz drama series about Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family. Wershe’s Free Big Meech T-shirt is about as subtle a sales pitch to Starz as the gaudy bling at a dope dealer’s nightclub.
There’s no evidence Rick Wershe ever had any direct contact with Big Meech.
Demetrius Flenory was a kid just learning how to sling dope when
Rick went to prison for life. What’s more, Rick was an east-sider. Meech was peddling his rocks of cocaine in what’s known as Downriver Detroit. But they wallowed in a similar lifestyle and wound up the same way.
There are many people who tried to help Rick Wershe over the years.
Many are disappointed to see him wearing a Free Big Merch T-shirt. They hoped he had learned a lesson. But there’s money to be made if Rick turns his back on his promises to leave the old life behind him. Rick appears to be validating that old saying that bullshit walks and money talks.
You act like Big Meech can’t change his life as well!! Just because White Boy Rick had on a shirt saying free Big Meech doesn’t mean that he hasn’t changed. I’m so tired of people judging other people like everyone in the world is perfect SMDH
Facts …. Another unmentioned fact is Meech ain’t no snitch whereas Rick been eating government cheez and dope profits his whole short career. . I’m willing to bet Meech got no love for him
Nobody should be getting 30 40 year sentences for non violent crimes the justice system in this country is a joke
“Ghetto lingo” lmao
I fear you’ve missed the point. The T-shirt is a statement that no one should be serving that mount of time for a non violent offense. Charges being dropped in a double murder that by all accounts he didn’t commit is not a violent offense.