Not quite. For the first few months after he went on the lam in late 1994 sure, but after that the old Winter Hill gang went to pieces as the indictments started raining down and he was pretty much dependent on the resources he himself had piled up before hitting the road. The whole point wad to avoid all contact with old friends. It was how it took the FBI until 2011 to catch him, this very lack of network contact.
There wasn't much interest in finding whitey until after all the people he could have told "interesting" (true) stories about had retired with their pensions.