FBI revelations may clear the way for Bulger’s sister to claim lotto winnings

Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2000 | 9:40 a.m.

Jean Holland is seeking to be named as Bulger's legal receiver, which would allow her to manage his property, including his claim to one-sixth of a $14.3 million Mass Millions lottery ticket from 1991.

When Bulger fled in 1995 from a federal racketeering indictment, the U.S. attorney seized the lottery winnings. That year, Holland petitioned Norfolk County Probate and Family Court to be named his receiver.

The court ruled last year that she had not proved that Bulger was absent from the state on a "continuous and long-term" basis because of FBI evidence showing he allegedly made a threatening phone call from a U.S. Customs office in the city's South Boston neighborhood to the FBI's office in Quantico, Va., in October 1995. The call meant he was in town, not absent.

But the FBI recently received new information casting serious doubt on whether Bulger did, in fact, make the call, the U.S. attorney said, according to a filing made by Holland to the Supreme Judicial Court Dec. 21.

The FBI now says the call was really a U.S. Customs employee applying for a job at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which then shared the same main phone number as the FBI, according to The Wall Street Journal's New England Edition.

The U.S. attorney declined to comment on the recent revelations.

In August, a federal court ruled that one of Bulger's brothers, John P. Bulger, could apply for nearly $200,000 that federal agents froze when the reputed mobster disappeared.

John P. Bulger, a Boston Juvenile Court clerk magistrate, held two joint checking accounts with his brother containing $118,000, as well as a safety deposit box containing $81,000.