WASHINGTON: The FBI has paid out $2.1 million in reward money for the information that led to the capture of feared Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, the bureau said Monday.
The Boston FBI office last week got the green light to disburse $2 million for Bulger and an additional $100,000 in reward money for his companion, Catherine Greig.
"As of Friday, September 23, 2011, the FBI has paid this reward money to more than one individual," the bureau said, without disclosing any information about the parties collecting the reward.
Bulger, who is charged with 19 murders in the 1970s and 80s in Boston, was arrested in June in Santa Monica, California, where he had been living under an assumed name with long-term girlfriend Greig, 60.
Police found some $800,000 in cash and a "fairly big arsenal" of weapons in Bulger's modest apartment after his arrest, law enforcement sources said.
Bulger, an 81-year-old Irish-American, whose life inspired a gritty Hollywood movie, pleaded not guilty to the string of murder charges at a court appearance in July.
Greig, who is accused of helping to shield Bulger during his time on the run, was indicted by a federal grand jury and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
Bulger fled Boston in January 1995 after being tipped off by an FBI contact that he was about to be arrested. He was spotted in London in 2002 and in California in 2000 and 2005, but had managed to evade arrest.
After he fled, it emerged that he had been a long-time FBI informant about the mafia, fueling suspicion about the agency's fruitless efforts to find him.
Bulger became the inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character in "The Departed," the 2006 crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.
Bulger and Greig had lived for years under the pseudonyms Charles and Carol Gasko.
In addition to accusations that Bulger murdered mob rivals, potential witnesses and others who threatened him, prosecutors accuse him of a crime spree spanning into the 1990s that included extortion, money laundering and, at one point, running guns to Northern Ireland's IRA militants.
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