A Detroit teenager who helped the F.B.I. as a drug informant in the nineteen-eighties is now suing federal agents and others for allegedly violating his civil rights.
Richard Wershe Junior is better-known as White Boy Rick.
When he was sentenced to life in prison for drug crimes in 1988, he was portrayed as a teenage drug kingpin.
But Wershe was also an F-B-I informant. His new lawsuit lays out how the F-B-I recruited him as an informant, setting him up in the drug world.
It also details allegations of how the F-B-I and Detroit Police conspired to keep him behind bars, in order to cover up official misconduct and corruption.
Wershe says the lawsuit is about closure.
“I want this chapter of my life closed. I want to forget about it. I want it to be gone.”
Wershe says the allegations made in the lawsuit will be substantiated by documents and former F.B.I. agents.
The Detroit Police Department has not yet responded to a request for comment.