Wershe and his
working class family lived in a neighborhood on
the east side of Detroit about from the city center. They lived there during a period from the mid 1980s to early 1990s when Detroit and many other major American cities were gaining widespread reputations for crime and violence, largely due to an influx of cocaine and the emergence of the
crack cocaine epidemic. Wershe's father was also an FBI informant and first reported to the police and the federal agency alongside him before going solo. He was sentenced to
life in prison in
Michigan under the state's 650-Lifer Law, a drug statute passed in 1973 that penalized those found in possession of more than of cocaine or heroin with life imprisonment without parole. The law was overturned, but he was rejected as a menace to society by the Michigan Parole Board in 2003, despite (or perhaps because of) having assisted the FBI in the 1990s with a sting unsuccessfully targeting
Gil Hill and drawing in the relatives of influential city politicians. Publicity about the case in 2017, by which time he had spent nearly three decades behind bars in Michigan as a nonviolent drug offender whose offense was committed when he was 17, led to him being paroled, but directly to US Marshals who took him to begin serving five years in
Florida State Prison on a 2008
car theft ring conviction (crime committed behind bars). In 2019, his application was denied by the Florida clemency board. On July 20, 2020, Wershe was released from custody in Florida, having completed his sentence with credits for good behavior. In July 2021, Wershe sued the FBI, saying in the lawsuit that: "Had I not been an informant for the task force, I would never have gotten involved with drug gangs or criminality of any sort", and that the FBI's actions amounted to child abuse. ==In media==