Former Police Informant Sues Detroit Police, FBI for $100 million

Richard “Ricky” Wershe Jr., a former teenaged confidential informant in the early 80s, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the city of Detroit, two former FBI agents, two former Detroit police officers and two former federal prosecutors, alleging that FBI agents and Detroit police officers had him buy and sell drugs from dealers around Detroit in what amounted to a years-long campaign of “government grooming and indoctrination into criminality,” reports the New York Times. The suit also alleges that when Wershe was arrested, the FBI agents and police cut off any support. Bribed with money to keep him from talking, Wershe claims that the task force knew they were endangering a child and replaced his name on official files with his father’s to cover up their misconduct.

Wershe claims he was eventually pushed into the role of drug user and dealer. In November 1984, someone shot Wershe in “an attempted assassination.” Instead of stopping his undercover work as a confidential informant once he recovered, agents and officers on the task force pushed him to keep going, the suit alleges, and even increased his workload. On May 22, 1987, Wershe was arrested for having eight kilograms of cocaine worth $5 million at the time and labeled a 17-year-old drug kingpin by the media. Later in 1987, Wershe was sentenced to life in prison without parole. While in prison he continued key informant work that yielded major cases for federal prosecutors in exchange for promises that his sentence would be commuted. In 2017 he was granted parole and was finally released from prison in July of 2020. He is now 52.