Matthew McConaughey
Richard Wershe Sr.
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Richard Wershe Jr. (born July 18, 1969), known as "White Boy Rick", is an American former drug trafficker and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant. The youngest known informant in the history of the FBI, Wershe became a confidential informant when he was 14 to 16 years old.
- Richard Wershe Jr. Becomes An Informant
- White Boy Rick Is Born
- A 15-Year-Old Exposes Widespread Police Corruption in Detroit
- The Hit on White Boy Rick
- A 16-Year-Old Drug Lord
- 17-Year-Old Richard Wershe Jr. Goes on Trial
- A 48-Year-Old Up For Parole
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“I was brought into this life by law enforcement,” Richard Wershe Jr. reported to Vice, “I was taught it, they left me alone, and a year later I’m busted and put in jail for life.” The law enforcement to which he’s referring are the FBI agents who came to his door for his father in 1984. White Boy Rick’s father, Richard Wershe Sr., wasn’t a man who...
Richard Wershe Jr. was good at what he did. He went above and beyond what the FBI asked him to do. He took up with the Curry Gang, the foremost drug slingers in Detroit at the time, and made friends with dangerous criminals so that he could get better information. The FBI, in turn, began to train the young Wershe Jr. on how to be a gangster. They t...
White Boy Rick, though, was a little bit too good. Pretty soon he uncovered a conspiracy that ran through the whole city. Rick Wershe Jr. began to see the corruption when a 13-year-old boy was shot by the Curry Gang and the Detroit police did nothing about it. Their chief of homicide, Inspector Gilbert Hill, deliberately diverted the investigation ...
The case had grown exponentially. The FBI was now involved in mayoral corruption. But they worried that if they took action on their findings, the agency would get wind of their all-too-young informant. So the FBI left Richard Wershe Jr. to fend for himself. He was forced to find a way to navigate the streets and make ends meet without the FBI’s pr...
In Detroit in the ’80s, everyone knew when White Boy Rick was around. He might have been a pimple-faced teenager who struggled to pull off a mustache but he came out in style. Rick went out in mink coats wrapped up with a belt made of solid gold and a diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist. He’d roll up in a white jeep he was too young to legally dri...
White Boy Rick was still a few days shy of his 18th birthday when the Detroit police broke down his front door. They caught him with 17 pounds of cocaine. The police took White Boy Rick right to the media. The baby-faced teenager, the news said, wasn’t just a drug dealer. He was a kingpin. They put up pictures of a criminal hierarchy, and each one ...
It took 30 years for Richard Wershe Jr. to win his freedom. While the people he’d exposed were sent free, Wershe stayed behind bars and spent the bulk of his life in a jail cell. It was journalism that saved him. In 2014, freelance writer Evan Hughes read Wershe’s outlandish claims about a conspiracy that had put him behind bars and started to look...
Learn the true story of Richard Wershe Jr., who became an FBI informant at 14 and exposed a police corruption scandal in Detroit. Find out how he was betrayed by the FBI and sentenced to life in prison.
- 4 min
Sep 14, 2018 · Based on a true story, the film follows Rick Wershe Jr., a teenager who became an FBI informant and a drug kingpin in 1980s Detroit. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Richie Merritt, and Bel Powley, the film explores the rise and fall of America's youngest hustler.
- (43K)
- Crime, Drama
- Yann Demange
- 2018-09-14
White Boy Rick is a 2018 American crime drama film directed by Yann Demange and written by Andy Weiss, Logan Miller, and Noah Miller.
Mar 13, 2024 · Under Michigan’s 650-Lifer Law, Richard Wershe Jr. was sentenced to life in prison for having more than 650 grams of cocaine, with no chance of parole, in 1987 at the age of 17. However, in 1998, Michigan revised its 650-Lifer Law, and Ricky was eligible for parole beginning in 2003.
- Zachary Moser
- Staff Writer
Jul 31, 2021 · It’s one of myriad milestones Wershe Jr. – who the media and Hollywood christened “White Boy Rick” – says he missed because the FBI and Detroit police groomed him to be a drug informant at age...
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Jun 4, 2018 · Set in 1980s Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs, WHITE BOY RICK is based on the moving true story of a blue-collar father and his teenage son, Rick Wershe Jr., who...
- 3 min
- 6.5M
- Sony Pictures Entertainment
