(WXYZ) — Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr. will be released from a Florida halfway house on Monday.
Related: Rick 'White Boy Rick' Wershe to be released Monday after 32 years
His story begins with time spent as a teenage FBI informant, then later serving more than 30 years behind bars for a nonviolent drug offense.
Wershe began helping the FBI as an informant at the age of 14, and today the same criminal offense would only carry a sentence of up to three years.
He was caught with eight kilograms of cocaine, and under an old Michigan law, anyone caught with more than 650 grams of heroin or cocaine received a mandatory life without parole sentence.
Even worse, record shows FBI agents at the time sidestepped rules to use Rick, only to stop returning his calls when they no longer needed his help. After a movie based on his life was released, his sister Dawn Wershe sat down with us to discuss the role of media at the time.
We put together a timeline of Wershe's history. Check it out below.
