Informant 'White Boy Rick' sues feds for recruiting him as a child
A Detroit man employed by the FBI as an underaged drug informant in the mid-1980s filed suit against the federal government Friday, claiming state and federal law enforcement abandoned him to be attacked and arrested at 17, talked him into informing again throughout the 1990s, and went back on promises of immunity again once that investigation was complete.
Richard Wershe, Jr., dubbed “White Boy Rick” by news media and a 2018 Matthew McConaughey film loosely fictionalizing his life, alleges that FBI agent Jim Dixon recruited him at age 14 after his sister started dating a drug dealer and his father called the FBI.
This early recruitment, attorney Nabih Ayad wrote in the federal lawsuit, started a chain of events that led to the teenager narrowly escaping multiple murder attempts, being pistol-whipped by Detroit police and ultimately spending over 30 years in prison despite assurances of immunity.
After the teenaged Wershe was able to identify several individuals Dixon asked about, the agent and other members of a joint task force with the Detroit Police Department began picking him up unannounced, writing in the force’s files that their information came from the boy’s father.
Wershe was convicted for possession of a controlled substance in 1987 and sentenced to life without parole. He was 17 at the time and had become a “rising star” in Detroit’s drug trade at the task force’s direction, using task force money, the complaint states. Fearful of being discovered as the driving force behind a juvenile drug lord with rising public visibility, Wershe says the task force members stopped contacting their child soldier.
https://www.courthousenews.com/informant-white-boy-rick-sues-feds-for-recruiting-him-as-a-child/
