‘White Boy Rick’ Sues FBI Agents, Detroit Cops Year After Release

DETROIT, MI — Rick Wershe Jr., known to many as “White Boy Rick,” has filed a lawsuit against former FBI agents and Detroit police officers after spending more than 32 years in prison for a non-violent drug offense that his new attorney said was set up by the FBI.

“They didn't want it exposed that a child was working for the FBI,” attorney Nabih Ayad said in a Tuesday news conference.

Wershe’s lawsuit claims the government used him as a child, from age 14 to 16, and then turned on him to cover up their own conduct, Ayad said in a statement reported by a number of Detroit-area news outlets on Monday.

The White Boy Rick lawsuit names former Detroit police officers William Jasper and Kevin Green, retired FBI agents Herman Groman and James Dixon, and Lynn Helland, a former U.S. Attorney, as well as the city of Detroit, according to the Detroit News.

It seeks $100 million in damages, claiming child abuse in that Wershe was forced to work as an informant when he was 14 years old, Click on Detroit reported.

“The justice system hasn’t been fair to me over the last 33 years,” Wershe said during the news conference announcing the lawsuit. “I lost 33 years of my life. My father is not here. I didn’t get to see my kids grow up.”

Wershe was sentenced to life in prison in a Wayne County courtroom in 1988 on a drug conviction due to Michigan’s “650-Lifer” law that mandated the sentence for those convicted of some drug offenses.

Ayad said Tuesday Wershe’s arrest at age 17 was “set up,” that cocaine was not found initially but only after Wershe was arrested. The attorney added that Wershe continued to cooperate with authorities after his sentence began when promised a "quid pro quo" deal to get him out.

"Rick was a lone wolf in the lions' den, with no one there to protect him," Ayad said.

After he was initially denied parole in 2003, Wershe was granted it after his case made national headlines, and was the subject of a documentary and film, titled "White Boy Rick," that starred Matthew McConaughey, among others, in 2017.

But instead of being freed, Wershe was taken from a Michigan prison to one in Florida to serve a five-year sentence for a car theft that was reported while Wershe was in the witness protection program.

Wershe was released on July 20, 2020, one year to the day before his lawsuit was announced.

The FBI and Detroit police have declined requests from media outlets to comment on the Wershe lawsuit.

Ayad acknowledged that Detroit and others named in the lawsuit will likely argue that Wershe's constitutional claims are too old to bring to court.

Ayad’s statement from Monday called on the court system "to finally bring justice to a man whose life has been taken from him at the tender age of 14 all the way up to 51 years of age.

“For conduct that was not of his free will, but that of a minor who has been used, abused, reused, and re-abused by those that have sworn to protect and serve this country."

The Associated Press contributed reporting.