While mobster James “Whitey” Bulger sits in a Massachusetts jail, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned that the FBI is paying the rent on the Santa Monica, California apartment where he hid out for the last 16 years while on the lam from authorities.

“The FBI paid $1,100 for the month of July,” a source told RadarOnline.com. The Santa Monica apartment, just three blocks from the ocean, was under rent control so Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig paid the low amount on the third floor apartment that would normally rent for about $2,500 a month.

He was number two on the FBI’s Most Wanted List – right behind Osama bin Laden. (When bin Laden died, he became number 1).

After spending 16 years on the run, Boston-based mafia kingpin James "Whitey" Bulger will face a federal judge in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday to face charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, narcotics distribution, extortion and money laundering, among others.

Bulger, who inspired aspects of Jack Nicholson's character in the Oscar-winning 2006 film The Departed, has appeared on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list -- with a $2 million reward for key info -- in connection with 19 murders he's tied to.

The FBI said Bulger, who was allegedly the head of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, played a “role in numerous murders committed from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s in connection with his leadership of an organized crime group that allegedly controlled extortion, drug deals, and other illegal activities.”