The office ties the Inquirer’s coverage to lost ad revenue; the investigation of those ads ran in 2018, before Bilal took office

The sheriff’s office published a statement responding to the Inquirer’s August 25 article, headlined “After six years of chaos in Philly Sheriff’s Office, Rochelle Bilal must answer to judges.” Bilal wrote that “since the advertising relationship between the Sheriff’s Office and The Inquirer changed, the newspaper has lost more than $5 million annually in advertising revenue previously associated with this office,” and that “since then, its attacks on the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office—and on me personally—have been relentless.” She added: “Financial context alone does not invalidate legitimate reporting, and no public official should be beyond scrutiny.”

The reporting that documented those payments examined the office’s advertising spending. “Sheriff sale ads: A bonanza for the politically connected in Philly,” by Craig R. McCoy and Jeremy Roebuck, ran on April 27, 2018, under Sheriff Jewell Williams; Bilal was sworn in in January 2020. Three days after it published, Philadelphia Media Network publisher and CEO Terry Egger wrote to readers that the company would run a paid Sheriff’s Office advertising section, which its advertising and marketing departments had begun working on in December 2017, without taking payment for it: “We absolutely do not want to potentially benefit if any portion of the advertising/marketing section is being funded through the very means being called into question today.”

The statement also said the office’s Home Asset Recovery Team initiative has returned “approximately $8.3 million to individuals and families entitled to” excess sheriff-sale proceeds, “more than any previous Sheriff administration ever has,” and that staffing and deed-processing work had begun before the court’s order requiring it. The $8.3 million figure was published by the office itself in April 2024, in sponsored content credited to her in City & State Pennsylvania: “$8,312,647.28” for 2020 through 2023, set against “$3,715,815.66” returned “during the 2015-2019 administration.” In April 2017, the Philadelphia Sunday Sun, reporting on Williams’s City Council budget testimony, wrote that the office’s Defendant Asset Recovery Team had returned “nearly $11 million” to “more than 400 people” since 2012.

On the money held between a sale and a payout, the statement said: “Our office generates NO INTEREST because the funds provided must be escheated to the state pursuant to the Disposition of Abandoned and Unclaimed Property Act (DAUPA).” The August 25 article reported that statements showed the office “generated more than $3 million in interest between 2024 and 2025.”