$8 million in new fee-account spending includes $606,540 to the former campaign manager’s firm

An Inquirer analysis of bank records by Ryan W. Briggs and William Bender found that the sheriff’s office made nearly $8 million in purchases from the “Operation Cost Payable” fee account between March 2024 and October 2025 — a separate, later period than the roughly $2 million the reporters had tracked from the same account for October 2022 through February 2024.

Among the largest checks: $250,000 in October 2025, $255,569 in April 2025, and $100,971 in July 2024, totaling $606,540, to TML Communications, a firm run by Teresa Lundy, Bilal’s former campaign manager, for a “deputy hiring campaign” — including a 30-second television ad, featuring Bilal dancing, that aired during a November Penn State-Michigan State football broadcast. Bilal and Lundy would not comment on the new expenditures.