British detectives have seized tens of thousands of pounds from the estate of infamous crime boss James 'Whitey' Bulger, who was once second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
James Joseph 'Whitey' Bulger was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, a violent organised crime group based in Boston, Massachusetts, that engaged in mob wars across the United States for decades. In the late 1990s, he moved to California with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, settling in Santa Monica to evade the law after being tipped off by a former FBI handler about attempts to find him.
The FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted fugitives list and offered a $1,000,000 (£738,000) reward for information leading directly to his capture, though it later emerged he had been working as an informant for much of his criminal career.
He was caught in 2011, ending a 16-year manhunt. Bulger went on to be convicted of 11 murders and a sweep of other charges, including racketeering, drug dealing, firearms possession, money laundering, and extortion. He was murdered in prison in 2018 at the age of 89.
Three inmates charged over his murder reached plea deals with prosecutors in 2024.
Actor Johnny Depp played Bulger in the 2015 crime thriller Black Mass, while Jack Nicholson's character in the film The Departed is said to be loosely based on Bulger.
When he was jailed, US courts made an order to forfeit more than $25 million (£18 million) from his accounts, judging them to be the proceeds of racketeering, with $19 million (£14 million) awarded to families of his victims.
In later years, the National Crime Agency (NCA) investigated Bulger's links to bank accounts in the United Kingdom and discovered that he had opened two accounts in the UK in the early 1990s—one in his own name and another using an alias.
A freezing order executed by the NCA last year has now seen £53,041 handed over to US authorities, which will be used to further compensate victims' relatives.
The NCA's Rob Burgess, Head of Investigations for Asset Denial, said: "This is a great example of the NCA and international partners working together to do everything possible to ensure full justice is served. Bulger brought misery and heartbreak to countless families, and we are proud to have worked with our American partners to see his criminally obtained wealth returned to the US."
