The two officials hired in the office shake-up have each lost property at sheriff’s sale

Sheriff Bilal announced a reorganization of the office on June 8, 2026, aimed at reducing deed-processing delays, including a planned public “deed tracker” for winning bidders and the hiring of an undersheriff whose identity her spokesperson did not immediately confirm.

The undersheriff was later identified by The Inquirer’s Ryan W. Briggs and William Bender as George Gossett Jr. Their reporting found that in April 2026, two months before his hire, Bilal’s own office had auctioned off a North Philadelphia rowhouse Gossett owned, following years of missed mortgage payments and unpaid-utility liens; a $50,000 mortgage from 2007 had grown to a $78,000 judgment by March 2025, and the property sold for about $58,000.

The same report found that the office’s new deputy chief financial officer and project manager, William Brownlee Sr., had lost two properties to private lenders at sheriff’s sale, most recently in 2024. A bankruptcy filing in November 2025 disclosed $5.3 million in liabilities, including nearly $1.5 million owed to the IRS.