Richard Wershe Jr. was arrested in his home in 1988 with 17 pounds of cocaine when he was 17-years-old.
Richard Wershe Jr. was arrested in his home in 1988 with 17 pounds of cocaine when he was 17-years-old. Reporters and the police broadcasted the teenager all over the news with headlines that called him the leader of a drug cartel. Wershe, the police claimed, was a dangerous cocaine godfather known to his underlings as "White Boy Rick." Convicted murderers came and went while Wershe was behind bars for possession. "I told on the wrong people," Wershe confessed. That's because White Boy Rick wasn't a drug lord — he was an FBI informant. At the age of 14, the FBI taught Wershe how to deal drugs and planted him inside one of the city's most dangerous gangs. But when Wershe uncovered police corruption that involved the mayor of Detroit, the men who trained him cut him loose. Then they had him thrown in prison for life.