'White Boy Rick' may finally be a free man sooner than expected

Notorious teenage drug hustler and FBI informant Richard “White Boy Rick” Wershe Jr. may be a free man sooner than expected after spending more than three decades in prison on drug charges.

Wershe, 50, is now scheduled to be released from a Florida prison on Aug. 17, more than eight months earlier than his initial release date, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

Wershe was recently moved from Putnam Correctional Institution in East Palatka, Fla., to the Transition House of Kissimmee, a Florida prison that works with nonviolent offenders, according to the state's DOC.

Wershe, who was the subject of a movie called White Boy Rick, was just 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine.

Wershe was Michigan’s longest serving nonviolent juvenile offender when he was paroled in 2017. But he never got a taste of freedom and was sent to a Florida prison following a 2006 conviction involving a car theft ring.

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