Are Mike and Jerry From 'Moonshiners' Splitting Up? Here's What We Know

One of the most captivating pairs of moonshiners on the Discovery Channel’s Moonshiners is Mike Cockrell and Jerry Benson. While Mike has been featured on Moonshiners since 2016, Jerry came on a few seasons later as Mike’s friend but later became a moonshiner on the series in his own right. Now, something funky is going on with Mike and Jerry’s Facebook page, so fans are wondering if they got busted.

While moonshiners getting busted is the first place our minds go when we hear of something shady happening between some of our favorite Moonshiners distillers, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mike and Jerry got busted. So what’s going on with their Facebook page, and did they get busted?

While distilling moonshine looks like it is a risky business, it may not be as illegal as we think. The Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control has confirmed, “If illegal activity was actually taking place, the Virginia ABC Bureau of Law Enforcement would have taken action,” to the Associated Press. As far as the Tennessee distillers, there may likely be a similar situation. 

Many distilleries are licensed to sell moonshine, so it’s very possible that Mike and Jerry were distilling moonshine for those locations, and there’s no way for authorities to know the difference. Some moonshiners have gotten busted in the past — most famously, Popcorn Sutton, who took his own life a few years before Moonshiners was produced, though his legacy lives on.

Mike and Jerry from Moonshiners seemed to be best buddies, with their Tennissippi Moonshiners logo saying, “Brothers ‘till the end!” But in March 2021, Mike posted a video to their shared Facebook page saying to follow their new page.

Their new page is, strangely, a fan page for just Mike Cockrell, titled “Moonshiner Mike Cockrell.” So what’s going on? Are Mike and Jerry no longer working together? We have a lot of questions. The first question on our minds, naturally, is if Jerry was busted, but not Mike. So we did a little digging.

Neither Mike nor Jerry is too public about their personal lives, but Jerry does love to post live public videos to his personal Facebook page. Jerry’s most recent Facebook post was on April 10, 2021, and the Facebook split was in late March, so it seems like Jerry has not been busted. Or at least, that’s not the reason there’s a new Facebook page.

There’s no way of knowing exactly what happened with Mike and Jerry from Moonshiners, but it does seem like something fishy is going on. Typically, Moonshiners tapes in October and airs months later so that there’s no way to catch the moonshiners for any illegal activities, so any recent developments in their relationship would not be on the show.

It does look like Mike Cockrell has joined up with Tennessee Shine Company and is working with four of their distilleries. This could be the reason for a split between Mike and Jerry if Mike went the totally legal route, and Jerry stuck with his Benson brand. 

In one of his recent videos, Jerry also confirmed that he’d be returning for Season 11 of Moonshiners, but the question stands, will he be returning with Mike, or will he be flying solo?

Watch Moonshiners Tuesdays at 8 p.m. EST on the Discovery Channel.